[sailingparrot]

You are giving some honestly really bad and dangerous info.

The HPV strains that cause cancer and the ones that cause genital warts are different. The strains that cause cancer do not cause warts.

So you can very much have HPV without genital warts.

And conversely, while having genital warts tells you you are infected with the low risk strains, it does not guarantee you that it is the only strain you are carrying.

Thus you cannot rely on the presence of genital warts to know if you are or are not infected with the high risk strains, they are completely uncorellated.

The cancer-causing strains cause no symptoms and can only be detected by getting tested for them.

[0xbadcafebee]

You're putting words and assumptions in my mouth that I never said in my comment. My comment includes different facts about different strains, in one comment, which some people might misinterpret. Your reply is re-stating the facts in more detail, so that's fine, I am happy for anyone to clarify information. However, the assigning of bad faith and action to me just because you don't like the way I presented the facts, is pretty rude. If you want to get really specific, we should probably clarify to the readers these statements you made:

> The cancer-causing strains cause no symptoms and can only be detected by getting tested for them

Cancer-causing strains can still cause the following symptoms: persistent sore throat, lumps, pain when swallowing, earaches (one-sided), swollen lymph nodes in the neck (painless lump), painful/difficult urination or bowel movements, unusual lumps or sores, or unexplained weight loss, in addition to others I have not listed here. However, early cancers often do not present symptoms.

> and can only be detected by getting tested for them

There is no test that covers all strains. You would need to get penile brushing, urethral brushing, semen samples, and anal pap smear. So "getting tested" is not the only solution, and getting regular scans for cancer is the best detection method. Therefore there is more involved than you have indicated, making your own comment as ;really bad and dangerous' as mine.

Perhaps we should trust people to do their own research and ask their doctor, rather than only listen to randos on the internet?

[sailingparrot]

Which words am I putting in your mouth?

> HPV causes genital warts

False. Not all do. And more importantly, the ones that cause cancer do not!

> Once you are confirmed HPV positive (again, you won't be confirmed without getting genital warts)

Again false. You can be tested without genital warts and be positive to a strand of HPV that simply does not cause wart. You might have had (or heard about) a bad experience with a health professional that refused to test without warts, but the presence or absence of warts has absolutely nothing to do with the strands that matter.

> you need to inform your partners, as it causes cancer in both men and women (but mostly women).

False again. Since you were specifically talking about the strands of HPV causing warts, then it does not cause cancer. You can still inform them if you care about no propagating warts, but the fact that you have wart-strand HPV does not make you more at risk of getting/causing cancer than someone with no symptoms whatsoever.

Your comment clearly says that someone with cancer-causing HPV will have warts, thus someone reading this might feel confident they are not carrying a cancer-causing strand since they do not have warts, which is dangerous because again, it is 100% false. It might also needlessly worry someone that recently noticed genital warts on themselves into thinking they might have gotten/propagated a dangerous disease, while the wart causing strand are in fact harmless and are just unpleasant aesthetically.

So tl;dr, you should get vaccinated if you can, and if you want to be sure you do not have a cancer causing strand, you need to get tested for it, that's the only way. Warts or no warts is completly unrelated.

> Perhaps we should trust people to do their own research and ask their doctor, rather than only listen to randos on the internet?

On that we agree!