Do Gay-Straight Alliances cause cancer?
Image via Wikipedia Those engaged in the fight against cancer are always looking for risk factors – behaviors which make one person more likely to have cancer than another. A study published in May, 2011 in the journal Cancer, discovered such a risk factor. In a large study, 8.25 percent of men who self-identify as gay were cancer survivors, versus 5.04 percent of men who self identified as heterosexual.[1] This is a very significant difference and those who reported on it seemed surprised, which is really surprising since such a difference is totally predictable. Gay men are more likely to smoke (a risk for lung cancer), far more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease, such as human papilloma virus (a risk for anal cancer) or hepatitis (a risk for liver cancer) or HIV/AIDS (a risk for a score of different cancers). They are more likely to begin sexual activity at an earlier age, to abuse drugs and alcohol, to be depressed or suffer from other psychological disorders,