The findings come from the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The study leader, Dr Silvia Franceschi, said that early infection gives the human papillomavirus (HPV) more time to “produce the long sequence of events that are needed for cancer development”.
Dr Lesley Walker at Cancer Research UK said: “Infections at a very young age may be especially dangerous as they have more time to cause damage that eventually leads to cancer.”
The Government plans to increase the number of sex education lessons. However critics have attacked the content of the lessons as likely to make the situation worse, not better.
The Family Education Trust argues that young people do not need to be presented with a menu of sexual options from which they can make “informed choices”.
Instead the whole issue should be approached with modesty and “within a clear moral framework that shows a proper respect for parents and for marriage”...
Earlier this year a Government-backed scheme spent £6 million on sex education and contraception advice for a group of teenagers. Yet the rate of teenage pregnancies among the group more than doubled.
At the end of the scheme there were more teenage pregnancies among the youngsters who had taken part than among a comparable group who hadn’t.
("Early Sex Linked with Cancer Risk," Christian Institute, December 22)
