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[Deleted]September 28, 2024
I wish to god that this was available when I was younger--this, and knowledge about sunscreen! Gen X/late baby boomers had a deathwish!
RNPhalaropeSeptember 28, 2024
Definitely good news for women!
(And men as well.) HPV can lead to anal, throat, and other cancers.
jadegreenSeptember 29, 2024
I'm in the right age range but I wasn't allowed to get this as a minor and by the time I was 18 I wasn't of the right mind set to be thinking about preventative care. Thankfully all my paps have been normal.
I wonder if nowadays getting vaccinations are included in the medical care a minor can choose to pursue for herself. I know back then I could go to the doctors on my own and get most of my care without the input of my parents but they needed special parental consent for vaccines.
VestalVirginSeptember 29, 2024
Can't you still get it as adult, if you pay for it yourself?
I am considering doing that. (Reason I didn't get it when it came out was because I didn't trust they had taken enough care with the research, seeing as it was only recommended for women ... if it was really harmless, wouldn't they recommend it for males, too? But it has been on the market for a while now, so I am considering getting it.)
JBeauvoirSeptember 30, 2024
I got it at 30 after ahem multiple sexual partners. My doc felt any attempt to prevent cancer was worth it. Wish I'd gotten it sooner, but my mom was one of the puritanical objectors, and I didn't think about it much until my new Dr brought it up. I hope to goddess I got it in time because I've watched my sis deal with the bad HPV, and I wouldn't wish the treatments she endures on anyone.
[Deleted]September 29, 2024
Athough the results of this study are very positive, I think STAT News is being a bit hyperbolic in the way it's ballyhooing the findings. I especially take issue with the way that STAT News is hailing the study as historic and unprecedented because it was done "over such a long time period."
The fact is, the women in this study were all only 24 to 32 at the time the study was done. So the study doesn't tell us anything about the longterm effectiveness of the HPV vaccine in preventing both HPV and the development of cervical cancer over the full course of women's lives.
The findings of this study show that for young women in Scotland born between 1988-1996 who got the HPV vaccine at age 12-13, the chance of being diagnosed with cervical cancer in the next 20 years was reduced to nil; and women in the same narrow age group who got the the HPV vaccine when they were between 14 and 22 had a greatly reduced chance of being diagnosed with cervical cancer in the relatively short span of years between when they got their vaccinations and 2020, the year the study was conducted.
https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/839/7675607
Because cervical cancer typically takes a long time to develop, most women who get cervical cancer are diagnosed after age 30.
Using figures from 2017-2019, Cancer Research UK says that in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, cervical cancer is most frequently diagnosed in women who are over 30.
In the UK as a whole, women age 30-34 have the highest incidence of new diagnoses of cervical cancer per 100,000, followed by women 35-39, women 40-44, women 45-49, women 25-30, women 50-54, women 55-59 - and continuing to decline in that order to age 90+.
But overall, more 88% of new cases of cervical cancer in the UK are diagnosed in women who are 30 and up.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/cervical-cancer/incidence#heading-One
Using figures from 2017-2021, the USA's National Cancer Institute at the NIH says that that in US:
https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cervix.html
So a study that looks at cervical cancer cases and rates solely in young women age 24-32 needs to be recognized as only going so far. The fact that the young women in Scotland who were in this study appear to have been protected from cervical cancer by the HPV vaccine so far can't be taken as evidence of how the HPV vaccine will affect their risk of developing cervical cancer later on in life.
Also, I found it significant that this study of cervical cancer in young women in Scotland only looked at how many young women born in 1988-1996 had been diagnosed with full-blown cervical cancer by the time they reached 24-32. My hunch is that a better gauge of how effective the HPV vaccine is in preventing the HP virus in the first place would come from looking at how many women in the study ever had cervical smear test results that showed the worrying sorts of HPV-related changes which often appear long before cervical cancer.
I also wonder if anyone is doing ongoing testing of the people who've had the HPV vaccine to look for indicators of the vaccine's continuing efficacy, such as the presence, number and behavior of HPV antibodies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7655971/
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jcm.01403-22
As of this date, it's not clear how long the protective effects of the HPV vaccines last.
https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-hpv-vaccine-access-and-use-in-the-u-s/
Most of the language about longterm efficacy of the HPV vaccines in official documents is vague:
https://www.cdc.gov/hpv/vaccines/index.html#:~:text=The protection provided by HPV,evidence of decreasing over time.
Also, there have been changes in the formulations of different brands of the HPV vaccines since they were first introduced circa 2006:
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/infectious-agents/hpv-vaccine-fact-sheet
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/21613-hpv-vaccine
I think part of the reason they're crowing about it in this way is partly to emphasize that this vaccine in general is a good thing -- I remember being stunned about the degree, and irrationality, of the hostility to it when it first came out. It took years to get it made routine, and it felt like all the objections (which were passionated) wholly ignored the issue of lots of terrible and painful deaths of female people. As if the objectors were more concerned about something else. So they're probably still trying to kind of beat that back. It's more public communication about science than it is scientific communication. That's my guess, anyway. But thank you for all the great data on it!
[Edit: "You're saying our daughters are sluts and our sons are gay!!! We're coming for you!" was a lot of the tone, lol kind of]
I'm one of the parents who responded with skepticism and objections when the HPV vaccine was first rolled out in the USA, and my memory of what happened and why is very different to yours. I think the questions and wariness that many of us had at the time were reasonable. Sure, maybe some people acted out of "irrationality" and "hostility" because deep down they were "more concerned about something else" like you claim. But I don't think it's fair to characterize all the objections and doubts that everyone had in that way.
As I recall it, the questions and objections that many of us had about the HPV vaccines when they were first introduced as products that girls as young as 9 should take arose out of an appropriate sense of adult/parental responsibility, legitimate concern for kids'/girls' longterm health, and what I believe was - and to this day remains - a levelheaded, healthy attitude of chariness towards new Big Pharma products, especially when it comes to kids. Along with a particular reluctance to use girls as guinea pigs for a new Big Pharma product whose longterm safety and efficacy were totally unknown at the time.
It's also definitely not true that "all the objections (which were passionated) wholly ignored the issue of lots of terrible and painful deaths of female people."
On the contrary, a main reason many parents objected is that we thought the way Big Pharma, public health authorities and the medical establishment in general originally pitched the HPV vaccine as something that preteen and teen girls and young women should be pressured to take - but not as something that it would be suitable for boys and young men to take - was extremely sexist. We thought it smacked of misogyny and reflected an exttremely careless attitude towards girls and women's longterm health. Some of us thought putting all the onus on girls and young women would end up being harmful to boys and men's health in the long run too.
As I'm sure you recall, when the first HPV vaccine - Gardisil 6 - was approved by the FDA in 2006, it was specifically approved solely for girls and young women. Government officials, the manufacturer, the medical establishment and the media made it clear that Gardisil 6 (and the other HPV vax Cervarix that came out the next year) were medical interventions they all agreed should be targeted at females only:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5920a4.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5602a1.htm
To some people, the fact that all the onus and pressure for taking the new HPV vaccine was initially placed on young females - and none was placed on their male peers - smacked of a glaring and galling double standard.
Many of us suspected two strands of misogyny were at play. Along with one strand of misandry.
First, the medical establishment seemed to be displaying the same sort of cavalier attitude about the possible longterm consequences to female health that they'd displayed seen before in the case of other Big Pharma products peddled to women that ended up causing huge amounts of harm like DES, the original formulations of "the pill," the Dalkon shield, vaginal mesh, Essure, Alosetron and GnRHa drugs.
Second, by originally insisting that girls should take the HPV vaccine but not boys, the medical establishment seemed to be placing all the moral responsibility for reducing the rates of an commonplace STI that's found in both sexes - but which is more common in males than females - solely on the shoulders of young females. What's more, the burden of stamping out HPV was being placed on girls starting at age 9-12, when most girls are still so young they've not engaged in any consensual sex acts yet.
Third, some of us feared that by originally insisting that girls should take the HPV vaccine but not boys, the medical establishment was putting the longterm health of males at needless risk too. Because at the time that Gardisil was first approved by the FDA and marketed to girls in 2006, most people who were paying attention had already twigged to the fact that oral and throat cancers in men were rising - and there was already ample evidence that many of those cancers were linked to/caused by HPV, and specifically the same strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer.
I have more info on this topic written up in a file somwhere. I'll come back and post it later. But in the meantime, please don't be so quick to write off everyone who voiced objections to the new HPV vaccines being pushed on girls when they were first rolled out some years back as just a bunch of silly, idiotic, ill-informed nitwits who were all acting out of irrationality, hostility, denial and the kind of Victorian prudishness and weird homophobia you've ascribed to us. It's fine to disagree with the reasons people had for objecting. But it's not cool to misrepresent our reasons for objecting, or to suggest that we didn't really have any reasons at all.
All very fair. But I wasn't characterizing everyone that way at all, I was just talking about the people who were responding that way. I think they got a lot of press, because they're what I remember reading about in the nooz...
There is a good deal of truth in what you wrote.
At least now it is recommended for males as well.
I do know people who objected to it because SEX! My daughter will never have sex! Unlike your objections which are well reasoned and rational.
And finally, I believe it really has saved lives and protected many women.
My mom was against me getting it for the reasons you outline, and also because we had heard of multiple cases of young women getting the shot and then suddenly dying of apparently mysterious causes very soon after. Coupled with the feeling that girls my age were being used as medical Guinea pigs, we decided against me being in the first waves. I ended up getting it much later in life.
In Texas, where then-governor Rick Perry tried to make HPV vaccines mandatory for adolescent girls in 2007, much of the objection came from the notion of treating girls like livestock. I'm not certain if other U.S. states have/had similar mandates or attempted mandates.
That's a bizarre one.
I wonder if they eventually accepted it due to all the MEN getting throat cancer--Michael Douglas, Val Kilmer, etc.
Ooooh, good point! Yes.
I actually had a doctor discourage me from getting it. She said it was moslty for ppl with certain lifestyles.
Right. There were very conservative parents who had to have it explained to them that there is such a thing as sexual assault.
Wow. I mean it's something stupid like 80% of people over a certain age have some form of hpv or another. i know i found out right after i turned 17, but many people don't have any symptoms. When i was in my early 20s a friend had to have her cervix removed and just last year a long time family friend died of it, and one of my aunts back in 2007-ish. She was the second wife who died from it that married my uncle. But i get it, i was arguing with some women i knew they were all, "my daughter isn't having sex," little do they know it's transmittable orally.
Wow. I am so sorry all of that happened. This stuff is not a joke. And the anti vax sentiment that many Americans have is concerning.
They feel their bodily autonomy is at stake. I do feel there should be more choices, like vax without stabilizers -- that increase the shelf life. Or allow people to submit to a titer test. If they have the antibodies, they should have to have a shot. And remember healthcare is privatized, so at the end of the day, this means additional spending to many struggling families.
And thanks. I did pick up another strain of it in my mid 30s. A lot of people would say that's 'proof' that it doesn't work. But i paid attention and knew that going in it didn't cover every strain. A GP did tell me the visual ones are less likely to cause cancer, but i have no idea if that is true.
Great analysis. When I saw those birth years, it seemed unimpressive. A fine start to be sure, but we need to see another 30+ yrs.
Thank you for this intelligent comment. We all know how corrupt and lopsided pharma is.