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Today we hear from a man who survived oropharnygeal throat cancer caused by HPV and who says,
"If there was somebody who had to get it,
THEY PICKED THE RIGHT PERSON."
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Robert Mock |
That's from Robert Mock. Why would he say such a thing? Because he received his diagnosis while working for GSK, whose products included the HPV vaccine Cervarix. He says,
"I was selling vaccines while not knowing the HPV virus lay dormant inside me.
I had the very thing I was talking about every day."
(Ironically, given our topic, GSK failed to do the research needed to get approval to administer Cervarix to boys. Merck did so for their vaccine, Gardasil, and so came to dominate the market -- so much so that GSK recently pulled their product from the U.S.)
Robert's diagnosis, late stage, came in June, 2012 and he went into chemo/radiation treatment, whereupon he lost 50 pounds and what he saw in the mirror reminded him of photos from wartime prison camps. Asked for a photo from that time, Robert replied, "I was fighting for my life and I didn't want anyone to take any pictures of me at rock bottom. I was too scared that the image would haunt me. The closest thing I have is a photo from when I started to recover, taken at my daughter's kindergarten graduation." (Before and After photos)
Robert points out that it was just a decade or so ago that oncologist Maura Gillison, then of Johns Hopkins, now at Ohio State University, published research showing throat cancer's dramatic transformation. The cancer had been considered one of the problems associated with chain smoking and problem drinking, then Gillison's work showed that rather than smoking and drinking, the cancer's leading cause had become HPV. She and others are still trying to work out why it affects far more men than women.
While throat cancer dangers double-down on the case for vaccinating boys, there is the uncomfortable subject of how the virus gets into the throat. The one celebrity throat-cancer survivor who actually talked about the subject, Michael Douglas, has since muddied his earlier statement on the subject, and further confused the issue by now saying that he lied -- it wasn't really throat cancer, but tongue cancer.
(People reported in September on a U.K. interview in which Douglas said that his original diagnosis came shortly before a promotional tour for a movie and that he and his doctor decided that calling it throat cancer was somehow less distracting than calling it tongue cancer. Odd.)
Given the relative silence on the subject, it's admirable that Robert Mock is so open about his experience. He does presentations, often at dental colleges, and talks about how HPV is sexually transmitted. However, he also includes new research that shows HPV can be passed in saliva and even by skin flakes on the fingers. He also quotes an Australia report that declared,
"Kissing overtakes smoking as the leading risk for head and neck cancers."
Perhaps that will help others in conversations with parents of pre-teens. Robert says of his own conversations with parents and health care professionals,
"I have the passion. I have the passion to get parents to get their kids vaccinated. If they don't, shame on them."
As for Robert's health, while he's cancer-free, he carries side effects of chemo/radiation and throat surgery -- no saliva, hearing impairment and lack of taste. Nevertheless, he says, "I've made the adjustment needed to live life to its fullest and not get consumed with the past." He adds that he's now coaching his 12-year old son's baseball and football teams.
Further, as we finished up our conversation with him, he mentioned that he was headed out that afternoon, going with his family to the mountains to cut a Christmas tree. "I'm back to our life now that my healing has taken place."
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