Nobody likes cancer.

Hey, you maybe didn’t know that I have low-grade abnormal cells (aka: pre-cancer) on my “Wizard of Os”, and Angela just sent me this weirdly free offer from Merck.

Merck is the pharma company that’s coming up with groundbreaking new drugs and stuff and maybe even an HPV (aka: genital warts) vaccine (or something like that). That would be cool, because “HPV is so common that by age 50 as many as 8 of 10 women who have sex will be infected with it.” HPV causes cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is a bummer. Now you know.

Either way, the deal is they’re sending out TWO FREE bead bracelet kits, and donating $1 to cervical cancer research.

I roll my eyes at a pharma company donating money to research that they’re pursuing, but then again, I’m interested in not having cervical cancer. So, order a bead kit. They don’t say the word ‘cervical’ on the beads, and maybe you can make your mom something nice for her birthday. Or a cat collar. Or shoelace sparklies. Or just a bunch of stuff to stick up your nose. You choose.

Edit: To clarify, there are 30-some strains of HPV. Only six or so can cause cancer. The rest just give you nasty warts on your junk, which actually sounds kind of nice, compared to cervical cancer, but not as nice as not having warts. The other thing is that dudes usually don’t show symptoms, especially the cervical cancer kind, so you really can’t tell just by looking. Condoms don’t necessarily protect. Kinda scary, yeah?