Hey ladies and gents, if you’re a fan of fellatio or cunnilingus, you may want to sit down for this: according to one oncologist, going down on your partner could lead to throat cancer. Via Daily mail:

Dr Hisham Mehanna an oncologist at the UK’s University of Birmingham wrote in the Conversation that people with six or more oral sex partners in their lifetime are 8.5 times more likely to get the cancer than people who do not practice oral sex.

In a study by Dr Mehanna, he found that 80 percent of men and women practice oral sex at some point in their lives.

And surveys suggest that those rates are rising particularly among women.

Writing in the Conversation, Dr Mehanna said: ‘Yet, mercifully, only a small number of those people develop oropharyngeal cancer. Why that is, is not clear.

‘The prevailing theory is that most of us catch HPV infections and are able to clear them completely. 

‘However, a small number of people are not able to get rid of the infection, maybe due to a defect in a particular aspect of their immune system.

‘In those patients, the virus is able to replicate continuously, and over time integrates at random positions into the host’s DNA, some of which can cause the host cells to become cancerous.’

So, what can be done? Do we all need to stop giving each other hawk tuahs? No, the answer is much more palatable:

There is a highly effective vaccine for HPV, but in the US rates are considerably lower than the 85 percent needed to reach ‘herd immunity’, the term that means enough people have been made immune so that the virus cannot spread. 

Hey y’all – get your vaccine. Otherwise we may need to stop 69ing, and no one wants that!