From what I've seen and know regarding HPV and cancer, it's more of a concern for women rather than men. You see more cervical cancer in women than penile cancer in men, hence why preventive vaccines are more encouraged in the former.
Then again, I keep reading that HPV is the number one cause of colorectal cancer in men.
I'm not sure where you got your stats but I think there are other more common causes than HPV for colorectal cancer. While HPV might serve as an increased risk for anal cancer amongst people who practice frequent anal sex with the disease, history of genital warts or HPV infection is not really the first thing I'd immediately jump to when diagnosing colorectal cancer.
Like what Not Even Dave says, the best way to confirm your current symptoms and give you peace of mind is a colonoscopy. Unless you have a strong medical history of colon cancer in your family, it would unlikely be cancer as it does take a fair bit of time for ca to manifest. For the more overly concerned or the very high risk, colonoscopies can be done regularly (like every 1 or 2 years, or if you're clean and low risk, 3-5 years).
I had a simple physical check from a really young doctor at the hospital and he told me he believes it is just IBS and not cancer, but I plan to get a second opinion from a specialist. It is funny that he told me he thinks it is only IBS with all the major swelling because swelling isn't a symptom of IBS at all...it is a symptom of inflammatory bowel disease aka IBD.
IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning that if you're still symptomatic but there is no clear textbook explanation or evidence that suggests that you have something more serious or a clear identifiable cause of your symptoms, a medical professional would consider the possibility of IBS.
IBD is quite identifiable and can be confirmed easy with colonoscopy. It is also a rather inconvenient disease that comes with a myriad of other symptoms, not only swelling and distention.
We rely too much on antibiotics to treat bacterial infection. In the eastern bloc, healthcare systems developed bacteriophage therapies, which, while effective, are difficult for our systems to approve. (Multiple viruses administered in a variety of combinations - specific to each bacterial infection - doesn't lend itself to clinical trials).
I believe that this is the solution to the current arms race that we're in with bacteria. And the challenge is political rather than technical.
Although this may be unrelated to the current topic at hand, I too agree that the FDA can be rather overly strict (and political) with newer or experimental treatment modalities. But seeing how the FDA have allowed certain newer cancer drugs a fast track approval for practical use in the recent years, I would not be surprised that this can happen for phage therapy if antibiotic resistance becomes too big a hurdle to handle or there is increased recognized evidence of its effectiveness against multi resistant infections in the near future.
