Our View: Take the politics out of HPV vaccine
We’re going to discuss an adult topic today. If that makes you uncomfortable or makes you upset, perhaps you should turn the page.
Human papillomavirus, otherwise known as HPV, can cause several types of cancer, including cancer of the cervix and vagina in women; in men, it can cause cancer of the penis and throat. HPV is most often transmitted by sexual contact and does not always cause cancer.
If such thoughts make you uncomfortable then this might make you feel better. We’re on our way to eradicating the most horrible impacts of HPV, meaning a decade from now we might not be talking about this.
A report in the medical journal Pediatrics issued Monday shows that in the past decade the incidence of HPV in women age 14 to 19 has fallen by nearly two thirds. For women 20 to 24, it is down a third. Considering the consequences of the diseases associted with HPV, this is an extraordinary accomplishment.
How did it happen? Through vaccination of young women and, increasingly, young men.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that roughly 40 percent of girls age 13 to 17 have been vaccinated. As more become vaccinated, the numbers will improve.
“The vaccine is working even better than we would expect,” Debbie Saslow, a cervical cancer expert at the American Cancer Society told the Chicago Tribune.
This is news worth celebrating. Teenage girls here have had access to the vaccine since 2006; it has been recommended for teenage boys since 2011. It is approved by the FDA, and now we are seeing that it works. Some would say it works miracles.
Unfortunately, the flip side is that HPV-caused cancers still kill more than a quarter million women annually, mostly in developing nations. Yet, nearly 13,000 American women last year were diagnosed with cervical cancer. More than 4,000 died, though Pap screenings are a routine part of checkups.
Something that works this well, and protects from diseases so heinous, should be routinely accepted by parents everywhere. Yet, some still resist.
Why? That brings us back to where we started. HPV is sexually transmitted. And many people want to believe their children will never engage in such activities. Some feel that if they take the fear out of teenage sexual experimentation their children might be more inclined to have lapses in judgment. So, they refuse to allow them to be vaccinated when it would do them the most good.
Most such folks are on the right side of the cultural continuum. But over on the left there are just as many people who refuse to have their teenagers vaccinated for entirely different reasons. They believe the vaccines themselves are more dangerous than the cancers they prevent. They talk about government conspiracies, the evils of big pharma and coercion.
All such fears are baseless and such thinking should change. No child should risk cancer for the sake of parental politics. And no American should squander an opportunity that, in less privileged nations, would be welcomed as a lifesaving gift.
This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 3:39 PM with the headline "Our View: Take the politics out of HPV vaccine."