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HPV Vaccine Recommended For Boys
necro81 writes "An advisory committee to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon issue new recommendations that pre-adolescent boys be vaccinated against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). The disease is sexually transmitted, endemic in the sexually active, can cause genital warts in both men and women, and is the primary cause of cervical cancer, which kills hundreds of thousands of women globally each year. The three-dose vaccination has been available for several years and is already recommended for pre-adolescent girls. Vaccinating boys should further reduce transmission."
This is no surprise, but I am glad it's been approved. Once again science making the world safer.
Science isn't about asking "why?", it's about asking "why not?". Cave Johnson, I'm done here.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What a sensible idea.(Incidentally, males aren't strictly carriers; but penile cancer is much less common than cervical for some reason)
If we had celebrities coming out and saying "I think the vaccine could have more side effects than the disease..."
We'd still have polio...
measles...
mumps..
Rubella...
Tuberculosis
Whooping Cough...
and a bunch of other nasty diseases flying around like the common cold. I think many parents (atleast around here in Northern California, think you need 200 years of concrete data, or Oprah to claim a vaccine is needed).
Can we invent vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases that get transmitted sexually? Imagine the distribution efficacy and cost benefits we could realize with STVs!
I got the HPV vaccine last year as a male at the age of 26. There is the overall thought that if you are sexually active (ie, not a non-infected virgin with another non-infected virgin), you will have obtained some strain of HPV (there are more than 150, most are relatively benign). Your body can "clear" most of these, and they will never be an issue. I thought it was still appropriate for me to get the vaccine, as there are some benefits:
Vaccination was uncovered by my insurance (gee, thanks!) but I figured it was worth the $510, to protect myself and any partners (should I be a carrier).
OTOH, SEX!
On one hand it will allow many couples to have children that may not have otherwise due to cancer, which most agree is a good thing
OTOH, SEX!
And really isn't that what is all about? Preventing anyone from having sex outside a state defined and mandated relationship. We can't have people going around enjoying themselves without the approval of the feds, can we?
I was amazed at the opposition to HPV for vaccines. Do people really think that kids alone in the backyard are going to limit themselves to mutual handjobs because they are afraid they might give each other cancer? Do they really think that kids are going to be more likely to want to see what all the fuss is about because they have the vaccine? Sure I understand the implicit idea is that the vaccine assumes multiple partners over a life time, but isn't that the status quo that is modeled? Newt Gingrich has slept with at least three women. If marriage is between one man and one women, and we promise god that we will be faithful untile death do us part, isn't any number more than one kind of morally equivalent.
One hesitates to suggest that if this was a vaccine against prostate cancer there would not be so much discussion.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
from the article: "More than one in five boys and girls have had vaginal sex by the age of 15, surveys show." by 15! holy ....! im 23, where was I when this was happening? oh right, im a nerd :-( Its funny, when the doctor asks me if I'm sexually active sometimes I give a sad sigh when I answer "No", Now I just snicker the same answer. *forever alone face*
Vaccination can lead to retardation in mothers, up to voting for Michele Bachmann.
Fandroids hate facts.
Back in *my* day, we all had chastity belts and if anyone had sex we burned them as a consort of Lucifer. And you know what, we were happier and WE LIKED IT!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In 2000, there were approximately 40 million people in the US between the ages of 10 and 24 (censusscope.org). The 3 dose Gardacil cycles costs approx $360 (cervicalcancer.about.com). Total cost of HPV public health vaccinations: 14Billion in the first year, and maybe $1Bn per year in each subsequent year.
There are approximately 12000 cases per year and 4300 deaths per year from cervical cancer (cancer.gov).
If Gardacil prevents 90% of those cases (it's a very effective vaccine), then vaccination has an effective cost of approximately $157,000 per case (assuming we amortize the initial 14Bn hit over 20 years).
I understand there are other public health benefits than simply prevention of cervical cancer, but let's hope we get a biosimilar quickly to drive the cost of vaccination down significantly.
HPV is 100% avoidable... it's like herpes... it isn't something that just happens.
HPV and HSV are 100% avoidable if you abstain from physical contact with others. Not just sexual contact, _all_ contact. HSV has been transferred from parents to children by kissing. You can acquire it just by making out with someone, which I assume most people would refer to as a "safer" activity.
In addition to transfer via fluid, HPV can be active under the fingernails. If an infected person with an active outbreak touches you where you have broken skin (or digitally penetrates you without a barrier) you can be infected. Essentially, skin-to-skin transfer with an infected person _can_ give you HPV. Touching, mutual masturbation, frotting, making out.
Then, of course, you have things like this, where children are being infected out of no cause of their own.
Or the fact that you can do everything right (and have "safe" sex, using condoms and dental damns and finger cots and not-brushing-your-teeth-before-oral-sex and discussing histories with your partner, and still get infected, because many people can carry these infections without having an outbreak or being aware that they are a carrier.
your ignorance is rampant, you're turning this into The Scarlet Letter for the present time.
No it isn't, and your source kind of sucks.
This reads like the autism fraud news stories.
Here is the CDC's page on the whole issue. Excerpt (my emphasis):
People get vaccinated and die. People brush their teeth and die too. Statistics.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Not everyone will be vaccinated, and not everyone who does get vaccinated will develop immunity. But if enough people are vaccinated, then the disease can't reach enough susceptibles to spread and even the people who aren't immune are protected, too.
There's a kid in my son's first grade class with a liver transplant, and is hence on immunosupressive drugs. Vaccinating my kids helps protect that kid's life. Same principle with all vaccines.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Thanks for the information, seems awfully expensive. In fact Merck only spent $250M on research of HPV but sold $365M in vaccine in the first quarter after introduction. It's the most expensive vaccine in the world, and for something which frankly isn't anywhere near the top of the deadly transmittable diseases. I think I'd rather give the $510 to an organization that will distribute the new Malaria vaccine where I know it will actually save many lives and also help to reduce world population growth.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Are you kidding me? Try reading up on the Tuskeegee experiment. I think it was Siphilus they told the people they were being vaccinated against, in reality they were deliberately infecting them to see how it would spread and affect the community.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/cbsnews_investigates/main5253431.shtml
(CBS News) Amid questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine Gardasil one of the lead researchers for the Merck drug is speaking out about its risks, benefits and aggressive marketing.
Dr. Diane Harper says young girls and their parents should receive more complete warnings before receiving the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. Dr. Harper helped design and carry out the Phase II and Phase III safety and effectiveness studies to get Gardasil approved, and authored many of the published, scholarly papers about it. She has been a paid speaker and consultant to Merck. It's highly unusual for a researcher to publicly criticize a medicine or vaccine she helped get approved.
Dr. Harper joins a number of consumer watchdogs, vaccine safety advocates, and parents who question the vaccine's risk-versus-benefit profile. She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years; there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years.
This raises questions about the CDC's recommendation that the series of shots be given to girls as young as 11-years old. "If we vaccinate 11 year olds and the protection doesn't last... we've put them at harm from side effects, small but real, for no benefit," says Dr. Harper. "The benefit to public health is nothing, there is no reduction in cervical cancers, they are just postponed, unless the protection lasts for at least 15 years, and over 70% of all sexually active females of all ages are vaccinated." She also says that enough serious side effects have been reported after Gardasil use that the vaccine could prove riskier than the cervical cancer it purports to prevent. Cervical cancer is usually entirely curable when detected early through normal Pap screenings.
Dr. Scott Ratner and his wife, who's also a physician, expressed similar concerns as Dr. Harper in an interview with CBS News last year. One of their teenage daughters became severely ill after her first dose of Gardasil. Dr. Ratner says she'd have been better off getting cervical cancer than the vaccination. "My daughter went from a varsity lacrosse player at Choate to a chronically ill, steroid-dependent patient with autoimmune myofasciitis. I've had to ask myself why I let my eldest of three daughters get an unproven vaccine against a few strains of a nonlethal virus that can be dealt with in more effective ways."
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Never been known to fail..."