USA Today has some good news that was expected but nice to see:
The study, published Monday in Pediatrics, is the first to show falling levels of dangerous strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) among women in their early 20s. Researchers believe those women are the leading edge of a generation that should see fewer cases of cervical, vaginal, anal and throat cancers in the decades ahead….
• 2.1% among sexually active girls and women 14-24 who were vaccinated vs. 16.9% among those who were not.
The vaccine is reducing the relative risk by a factor of 8 for the population that is at the highest risk.
This is a massive win for public health.
And it is a good argument that vaccines should be absolutely no cost sharing at the first level of technocratic fix. More simply, vaccinations should be federally funded either directly or as a pass through to front facing paying entities. Vaccinations are an excellent way to save money because they avoid thousands of conversations that start with “I’m sorry, you have cancer….” A simple shot, especially as the vaccine is coming off patent by the time my kids are due to get it, is way cheaper than treating a single case of cancer. Cost effective and more humane is what the research is showing.
Baud
This is bad news for slut punishers.
Ohio Mom
Actually, in this case, 3 simple shots, spread over several months. My son had the series a couple of years ago but I don’t remember the exact schedue.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m just stunned that parents would refuse this for their children because they’d rather the kid have cancer than sex. So stunned that I almost don’t believe it. Is there data showing people refuse the vaccine for such a reason?
OzarkHillbilly
But but but…. our precious little pure and innocent teenage daughters will succumb to the Devil’s evil sexual urges if they aren’t forced to risk cancer 30 years later. The immediate risk of pregnancy, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and herpes that comes with unprotected sex are NOTHING compared to that much delayed cancer.
Matt McIrvin
There was just a wave of negative publicity about the HPV vaccine making the rounds a few days ago: somebody (one of the vaccine’s developers?) claiming that there’s no evidence the protection lasts more than 5 years, which would mean that for preteens, the risk of side effects could actually exceed the health risk of not getting the shot. The article included scary anecdotal reports about kids having terrible side effects, and it’s getting the usual kind of panicked attention on places like Facebook, more antivaxxer than Anti-Sex League.
I guess the time frame in this study isn’t really long enough to provide evidence for longer-term protection, but is there any reason to suspect the effect wouldn’t be longer-term?
Iowa Old Lady
On the topic of reproductive health care, John Oliver did a segment on abortion restrictions yesterday
Mathguy
Vaccines work?! Really? Don’t tell Jenny.
Cermet
As soon as that vaccine was available I had my daughter vaccinated; also, always had her obtain every single voluntary as well as recommended vaccine available. How can someone not do this for the person they love? Avoiding any easily preventable illness isn’t just smart but the very point of being a parent – we are guardians, protectors and steward’s for our children’s future well-being!
WereBear
I wish the news of the doctor who falsified that study and served time in jail and lost his license would travel around Facebook with the same speed.
Elizabelle
Great news.
And if Michele Bachmann opens her piehole to refute this study, she’s a has been and former congresscritter.
And Scalia is still off the court. Gone gone.
Happy Monday.
Cermet
@Matt McIrvin: The CDC says that the HPV vaccine has been fully effective for as long as studies have been available (currently TEN YEARS!) and there has been, so far, no fall off in protection for people over that period. I trust the CDC so you might want to check the source you got that information.
One point I know as a fact – side effects have been proven to be incredibly minor so that conclusion by whoever is utter bullshit.
WereBear
I think the holistic health movement can be a needed counterbalance to current medicine’s blind spots, but I have no patience with the anti-vaxxer streak which runs through it.
There’s a condition and a name for people of the past who ate only organic foods and exercied a lot and who did not have chronic stress as we know it today. They had the short-term version known as “The Mongols are coming.”
And nonetheless, they would have epidemics and become The Dead.
Central Planning
I have 5 kids, 4 boys and a girl, and they all have gotten, are in process of getting, or will get, the HPV vaccine.
I don’t think any of them have even asked “Why am I getting the HPV vaccine?” since they don’t really care why they are getting vaccine A, B, and C, because they know they are going to be getting all the mandatory and recommended vaccines.
Central Planning
@Cermet:
Hasn’t the HPV vaccine been available outside the US for more than 10 years? Or am I thinking of some other vaccine that has taken a long time to get approved here?
Cermet
@Central Planning: AS far as I know, the HPV was widely distributed a bit over six years ago so I assume the ten years is based on first use in selected groups. Since there are many more variants of HPV (but far more rare to infect) and the vaccine protects against only a sub-set (the most common), of course for a small group of people who get one of these other types of HPV (Not protected by vaccine) will lead to cancers (DUH!) So some people are beyond stupid confusing cancers caused by HPV strains not covered by the vaccine with ones that are. This again, shows how stupid many people (not just because someone gets fooled by posts) who do not use that strange device located between their ears – a common thug condition that no vaccine can help.
Matt McIrvin
@Cermet: Thanks! The whole thing smelled really fishy to me.
Glidwrith
Last shot for my son in March. Both kids do protest their shots and I treat them to graphic descriptions if they don’t. Very serious, indeed, about protecting them.
Ohio Mom
@Matt McIrvin: This might be something nobody knows — yet. In twenty years, we might discover a booster is needed, or that the initial series is enough. That’s how medical science works. At one level, we are all guinea pigs.
For a similar example, there is some controversy about the shingles vaccine (which is given to people 60+) and how long that protection lasts. Some people think it’s only a matter of time before boosters are instituted because there is evidence the vaccine only confers immunity for a limited number of years.
Cermet
@Matt McIrvin: Your most welcome. Again, posting issues found that impact health but are not explained or claim strange details from the internet is a good idea since often, someone can find the required information. Glad to clarify this a bit. Vaccines are always a good idea (unless allergic, of course!)
Keith G
The absolutely only thing that I can give Rick Perry credit for was his 2007 attempt to mandate the HPV vaccine for sixth-grade girls in Texas.
He got viciously kneecapped by other conservatives nationwide, but good on you, Rick Perry.
Cermet
@Ohio Mom: The age for the shingles vaccine has dropped to 50. I’ve had that shot for about 7 years and know it is effective for that time period. But it is new and who knows? Maybe a booster will be needed. As a guinea pig, (and very happy to be one) I can only give my one minor bit of experience.
gene108
@WereBear:
There is a crazed lack of trust, with regards to authority figures such as the FDA, big business, scientists, and anyone else who is part of the traditional establishment of telling us what is or is not good for us.
The cat is out of the bag and is not going back in.
If it was not the British docs false report it would have been something else.
People want to believe there’s a “man”, or cabal, behind the curtain pulling the strings.
NorthLeft12
@Iowa Old Lady:
I think you are missing the point. Those parents [IMO] have completely brainwashed themselves that their darling daughters will never engage in premarital sex, thus the vaccine would be a waste and besides, vaccines are dangerous, amirite?
Also, there is the public shame [snark] of admitting that your daughter sleeps around by agreeing to have her vaccinated. What would the neighbours say?
Central Planning
@Cermet:
I think I might have been thinking of RU-486. That was developed around 1984, and finally got approval in the US in 2000 (according to Wikipedia)
@Cermet:
One of my kids had shingles when he was 4. When he was an infant, he got exposed to chicken pox before he got the vaccine. It was an extremely minor case, like only a few blisters. Our pediatrician said to us after diagnosis “Can I have some other staff come see this?” She told them that this was probably the youngest case of shingles they would ever see.
NorthLeft12
@Cermet:
Remember what George Carlin always said; “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
That wonderful observation of humans is one of the reasons that George Carlin was a genius.
Matt McIrvin
@Cermet: I had bad reactions to DPT vaccine when I was a kid/teenager and since then, I’ve been a free rider on herd immunity for diphtheria and whooping cough (and kind of rolling the dice on tetanus), so the consequences of that particular form of antivaxxerism terrify me. Fortunately my daughter doesn’t seem to have inherited whatever condition I’ve got, so she has all her shots.
Central Planning
@NorthLeft12:
I can’t believe the number of comments I get from people asking if I read the riot act to my daughter’s boyfriend, or told him I know how to make people disappear, or anything else like that. If everyone could have mature conversations about sex and sexuality with their kids, things would be much easier. We were having a conversation with her one day about sex and she said “Ewww. I’m ONLY 15.” The umbrage she took was great.
I think I have the same amount of fear of her getting pregnant as I do about my boys getting someone pregnant. Either way, it’s going to drastically alter your life path and plans.
Keith G
@NorthLeft12:
Not completely right.
Added in the mix is the notion that such precautions grant a form of permission. That has been part of the ongoing fight over sex ed. in general. Also HPV adds one more example of why sex is bad/dangerous and that purity is the way.
Sherparick
@Iowa Old Lady: Its actually a little worse than that. They want the kids who have sex be punished for it. They imagine a God just like themselves. Arseholes.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cermet:
FTFY. You’ll get my bill in the mail.
Sherparick
If one of these guys become the next President, we will get the Government we deserve, good and hard.
http://www.thenation.com/article/why-the-results-of-south-carolinas-republican-primary-should-worry-democrats/
Also, Juan Cole reveals the truth of South Carolina, still the birthplace of treason, to small to be a Republic, but perhaps is the world’s largest insane asylum. http://www.juancole.com/2016/02/trumps-sc-victory-and-anti-muslim-hatred.html
JCJ
Another conversation avoided is the one that follows – “I never smoked, how did I get this?” I see many cases of what are commonly called throat cancer (base of tongue, tonsil) that are related to HPV. By the time I see these patients they already know the diagnosis, but I am frequent asked that question. When the cancers are related to HPV it becomes an uncomfortable conversation for the patient when his/her partner questions where the exposure to HPV occurred. None of that approaches the discomfort the patient feels during and after what is often a seven week course of radiation given with chemotherapy.
JCJ
@JCJ:
Also, this article about early cervical cancer is interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/health/rise-in-early-cervical-cancer-detection-is-linked-to-affordable-care-act.html?_r=0
Detecting this disease in an early stage can preserve fertility with better outcomes. It will be interesting to see if there is a decrease in cases related to lower prevalence of HPV referenced in this post.
Immanentize
@Ohio Mom: This cannot be stated enough — the vaccine is also FOR BOYS! Part of the slut shaming involves downplaying this very important point. My son had the series because he would be a potential infector. Please please get your sons vaccinated too….
PurpleGirl
@NorthLeft12: What some people fail to understand is that even a married woman could be affected and get cancer because her husband played around before they got married. That is a problem for any sexually transmitted condition — both people have to be absolutely non-active if you want to be sure nothing will be transmitted.
Sherparick
During the freakout on Saturday night and Sunday morning about Trump winning South Carolina and becoming the odds on favorite to win the Republican nomination, one thing common with all the MSM journalists, Republican Establishment types, Militant Movement Conservatives, and 3rd Way Democrats (the only kind allowed on the MSM shows), was an inability to comprehend how attractive white working class voters found Trump’s trade protectionism and his promise to protect those “icky” entitlement programs Social Security and Medicare. And how repelled they were by establishment Republicans like Bush, Cruz, and Rubio who they know have been crushing them economically for years by exploiting their allegiance to White Tribalism. For example what JEB did to Florida’s Department of Labor and turning its labor and work safety laws into “dead letters” http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18899/how_jeb_bush_dismantled_floridas_labor_department You see the anger and denial today about this in columns by George “F’ing” Will and John Fund about how Trump is destroying what they see as the main purpose of the Republican Party, establishing the Rule of Property and placing the working class in appropriate position of subordination and low wages.
benw
People refusing the HPV vaccine and squealing about sexy-time for teenage girls are the same people who liked having the power to force women to put a big scarlet ‘A’ on their foreheads. Same impulse, even stupider now.
yellowdog
@Cermet: I’ve had shingle several times and then got the shot last fall. I have had two mild shingles outbreaks since then. I don’t know what is going on.
Cermet
@NorthLeft12: And I have had occasions to be part of the lower 50% of stupid; luckily, if one doubts and then reads primary sources, they can avoid that lower half much of the time.
Cermet
@Matt McIrvin: And it is best you avoid them. That is why all those able to vaccinate do so and this allows those who can’t (for good medical reasons like yours) to also benefit.
Matt McIrvin
@Keith G: And on top of that, there’s the whole complex of feelings that lead to general antivaxxer sentiment. Needle injections are scary, they’re not “natural”, people don’t trust the authorities who say they’re safe, and for some parents there’s a visceral horror of actively doing something that harms your child that outweighs the more nebulous fear of the child catching some unfamiliar disease in a hypothetical future.
Cermet
@yellowdog: Sorry to hear that. Once one has the chicken pox virus, all depends on the immune system. A vaccine can’t help if the immune system does not do all the heavy lifting. I would suggest you have your Vitamin D blood levels checked and keep your levels above 40 ng/dl or more. Also, sufficient zinc is helpful but I have zero ideas on how to know that one … . These agents are vital to good immune health.
PurpleGirl
@yellowdog: It is possible that the two outbreaks you’ve had since getting the vaccine were milder than they otherwise might have been because of the vaccine. That is also a way that vaccines can work — they don’t prevent the condition completely but keep you from having a severe case. I know that that happens many times with the flu vaccine.
Matt McIrvin
@Cermet: I try to make up for it by getting the flu vaccine every year at my earliest possible opportunity, so I can at least be part of the solution there…
pseudonymous in nc
Public health.
The structure of what the US has instead of a healthcare system means it’s still often really bad at it.
Punchy
I refuse to have my kid vax’ed because it causes altruism, relentless leg syndrome, and unnatural flow of fluid from her eye sockets. It’s just easier to treat her Hep B with a liver transplant and her diphtheria with dippin’ dots than to go to the doc once a year for needle sticks.
Fair Economist
If this carries through to the cervical cancer rate (likely) that will save 3,500 lives per year! More than a 9/11 every year.
RSR
Both of our boys (14 & 11) have received/are receiving the HPV vaccinations. (Currently, it’s a series of three shots over a year or so, but pediatrician said it may be changing to two shots in the foreseeable future.)
Completely covered in their well-visits with the copay. 11 YO needed second dose in November, and office synced up appointment with flu shots.
It’s a no-brainer.
Roger Moore
@Keith G:
I think that attitude is a result of people getting means and ends confused. They see chastity as a goal in and of itself rather than a means of preventing the negative consequences of sex. Once you see chastity as the goal, you do all kinds of stupid things like discouraging people from making sex safer because they make chastity less necessary. It’s ultimately a result of the authoritarian approach of blind obedience rather than trying to understand why the rules are the way they are.
Face
Yours,
Evangelical shitbag
Iowa Old Lady
@NorthLeft12: I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m asking if there’s data on how many parents refuse this vaccine and for what reason. I suppose it’s hard to differentiate refusal from neglect if a parent just doesn’t take the kid to the doctor. Other reasons might be cost, not knowing it exists, etc. I’m guessing experts in this field have a pretty good sense of what’s happening.
Barbara
@Cermet: Regarding the Shingles vaccine: I have not heard as much on the duration of its effectiveness, but it is no better than 50-60% effective at all. Because the severity of shingles tends to increase with age, that is why the vaccine has been limited to older populations. I can attest that getting shingles at a younger age is not the worst thing you can have — but it does vary greatly. For instance, my husband had it on his optic nerve and health professionals were considerably more concerned than when I had it on my upper right quadrant (back, arm, shoulder). The drugs that you take to combat it also vary in their effectiveness — they were highly effective for me, as in, Valtrex stopped the rash in its tracks, but others have a harder course. Shingles is like having a case of poison ivy in the same place where you already have a nasty sunburn.
Barbara
@RSR: My daughters (20+ years old) were vaccinated at around age 11. I do plan to vaccinate my son as well.
scav
@Roger Moore: Ah yes, those good old Victorian Moral days when syphilis was rife and the pater famillis somehow was never responsible for his wife having it and all the congenital infected and dyingbabies that resulted. Things like this were just not talked of and socity was all the better for it, right?
HelloRochester
@Immanentize: Also, if you don’t get your boys’ weenies trimmed (we didn’t), the one and only legitimately increased risk factor without circumcision is HPV-caused penile cancer (rare, but not good when it happens). These shots make that even less likely. Plus, protecting their future partner’s cervixes. Also, aside from being infectors, boys can get throat, mouth, and anal cancer later in life from various forms of sex, including heteronormative sex, with an unvaccinated partner. This becomes much less likely with HPV vaccination.
If I was on a jury where a 40 year old woman had bludgeoned her sour godbothering parents to death after she contracted cervical cancer, I would not send her to prison.
HelloRochester
@Iowa Old Lady: http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/infographics/vacc-coverage.html Coverage rates are too low for sustained herd immunity. Map follows politics/godbothering mostly. Notable exceptions: North Carolina and New Hampshire are doing a great job with girls. New Jersey is strangely low for a state with decent medical access.
EthylEster
@JCJ: My gynecologist told me last year that it is now thought that the overwhelming majority of cervical cancer cases are caused by HPV. This is astonishing; no one could have imagined that…(if true…i have not tried to confirm my doc’s stmt).
Mnemosyne
@JCJ:
When Michael Douglas was diagnosed with throat cancer a few years ago, he tried to talk publicly about the fact that it was almost certainly HPV-related, but of course our immature MSM turned it into, So you’re saying that your wife is a dirty whore who gave you a social disease?!? Because, of course the guy who went through a nasty divorce with his first wife because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped could only have gotten HPV from his second wife and not one of the other dozens of women he’d slept with before they met.
Mnemosyne
@EthylEster:
Your doctor is correct. There are a few other potential causes, but they’re fairly unusual — for instance, I have to get a Pap smear every year because my mother was given a hormone called DES while she was pregnant with me, and one of the issues it can cause is cervical cancer. So far, so good, though.
Iowa Old Lady
@HelloRochester: Thanks.
Denali
@Purple Girl,
As the mother of a woman who contracted HPV from her husband and only had relations with him, and then went on to be diagnosed with vaginal cancer, I can tell you that no one should undergo what she has been through. It is not easy to talk about, but there is no question about the benefits of this vaccination.