HPV vaccine

There has been a lot of talk about the HPV vaccine. Basically, it's a vaccine that when given to girls before they are sexually active, it can prevent certain strains of the very common sexually transmitted disease HPV or the human papilloma virus. HPV is a very, very common STD and a small percentage of women who get HPV will go on to get cervical cancer. Most women with cervical cancer also have HPV so the idea of preventing HPV and therefore reducing a woman's chances of developing the disease. This is all awesome news. Seriously, that we can give pre-teens, say 8 or 10, a vaccine that can prevent a really common STD and possibly cancer. What I find so stunning is the amount of debate over it.

The people against it are saying giving girls the vaccine will make them more likely to have sex. Right, like teenagers avoid things like cigarettes in high school because they're dangerous long-term. Kids that age aren't thinking about turning 30 or 60, they're worried about math class next period. Their attention spans are so short that I think this argument is bunk.

I also disagree that this is a "cancer vaccine." It is, only kind of since it only prevents a factor of what can lead to cervical cancer, not the cancer itself. Also, this needs to be put into perspective. There are about 11,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed a year in the U.S. True, 11,000 is a lot of women and any cancer we can prevent is a good one, but 178,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year so cervical cancer isn't really a wide-spread health hazard the way STDs like HPV are. I will give props to the marketing folks at Gardasil for dubbing this a cancer vaccine instead of an STD vaccine. (STDs are dirty somehow, but cancer is no one's fault, right?)

We give our kids vaccines for lots of communicable diseases, like polio, TB and even hepatitis (which I believe can be a sexually transmitted disease although I'm unclear if the vaccine they give kids prevents the STD one). Is this one so controversial because it's about sex?

I don't have a daughter, but I would absolutely recommend this for my stepdaughter or my nieces. I just think it's important to clarify that we're preventing an STD that can possibly lead to cancer, not cancer itself. I also think that if medicine cancer outright prevent and possibly eradicate a public health hazard like this, we should totally do it.

Rant over. Talk amongst yourselves.

HPV Continued

One of the perks of my job is I get to talk to people who are really making a difference in the lives of folks living with a diagnosis of cancer (don't call them patients, they don't think they're sick the way you think of a patient in a bed in a hospital). These advocates are on the front lines helping people and trying to make a difference. I have a lot of admiration for them. I had a fascinating chat the other day with a guy about head and neck cancers. Turns out, a lot of oral cancers are also linked to HPV, making it even more important for parents to consider giving their kids the vaccine (see earlier rant). Here's a great link to learn more about HPV and oral cancers. It's a slightly dense read (with apostrophe errors intact), but it's pretty interesting. And it's even more exciting to think that this vaccine could help reduce incidences of another cancer as well.