Oncology lost a hero recently and I missed it. A quarter of a century ago, Maura Gillison saw an epidemic coming. She was the first to see that HPV was causing a lot of head and neck cancer cases. At the time head-and-neck cancer -- we really mean cancer of the throat here -- was a disease people mostly got in old age because of risk factors like smoking and drinking, which damaged the cells that line the throat. But Gillison published a paper in 2000 showing that a quarter of head and neck tumors were positive for HPV. "She totally changed our understanding of the etiology of head and neck cancer and demonstrated that one person can make a difference," the oncologist Otis Brawley told @TheCancerLetter. This was not a small thing. Over the past two decades, HPV head and neck cancer went from being a blip to a common occurrence. CDC estimates now put the annual number of cases in the U.S. at 19,000 and growing. Changing sexual habits -- namely oral sex with more partners -- are the most likely reason. The condition affects men more than women. Recently we had news that the HPV vaccine has eliminated cervical cancer deaths in women aged 20 to 24 in the U.K. But the FDA label also indicates that the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, is approved to prevent head and neck cancer. That was something Gillison fought for. Here are some links for Maura Gillison.