I always wondered why all of the concentration was on women, men get and carry HPV too. The male cancer facts were new to me as I'm sure they would be to many men. I'd like to see some PSA's targeted at men the same way I've seen them targeted at women about the facts regarding HPV and the vaccine. Any virus that we can vastly reduce or eradicate can't be anything other than good and I like seeing a doctor stomp on that silly right-wing drama of if they can not get HPV they'll go out a fuck like bunnies!

While I think making it mandatory for going to school is a little too far as it really can only be transmitted through sex acts, isn't it really just a ploy to force the religiously insane to have their kids vaccinated too? We don't like it when the right uses underhanded tactics as this, so I don't think using it against them is a good idea. If anything, vaccination should just be a public health policy based on reducing cancer. It's true without being the "HPV is a virus transmitted through sex that can cause cancer" that freaks prudish people out.

and it would work, herd immunity eliminates diseases.

I don't see how vaccinating only girls is going to protect them. Isn't this a gross oversight?

I, too, would like to see the HPV vaccine become as universal as the DPT vaccine every child receives. Both women and men carry HPV, and it's not a scarlet letter of sluttiness or anything silly like that. Nor is getting the vaccine going to make girls and boys go hog-wild and hold orgies unless, of course, they were planning to do that already - and not getting vaccinated is not going to stop them.

Pediatricians, unite! Let's make the HPV vaccine a universal childhood vaccine and save lives!

are around, I don't think a vaccine preventing something that young people don't worry about AT ALL currently will increase promiscuous unprotected sex.

A vaccine for HIV and herpes, the two most common incurable STDs, would certainly have that effect. But this is just a good idea which will likely have no effect on sexual behavior.

Since, pardon me while I shout a little, the ONLY way women contract HPV, and its resultant genital warts and cancer, is through sex, of course boys should be vaccinated. Yes. Yes. Yes.

As a card carrying cervical cancer survivor, I say to everyone, get thee to a doctor and get this vaccination. Lives as well as the agonies of cancer and compromised fertility are at stake every day we debate.

But doing safety and efficacy studies for FDA approval takes a long time. They did young women/girls first, now they are doing older women, and I'm pretty sure boys are in the pipeline. Of course the manufacturer wants as many people as possible to receive the vaccine, because that equals more money for them!

Plus, in terms of efficacy for vaccination, as many people as possible should be vaccinated to create herd immunity. Letting parents opt out is a terrible idea, in my opinion, because it reduces the efficacy of the vaccination for everyone. There was a story about a town in Colorado where a significant number of parents opted out of a vaccine and an outbreak of measels or whatever resulted. I lived in the Northwest, and because Idaho has such terrible vaccination rates, an outbreak of whooping cough happened, and even people who had been vaccinated as children were affected.

Almost all of the media, including Salon, has acted as though the only reason one might not want to get their son (and daughter) vaccinated for HPV is the wacky idea that it will make them more likely to have pre-marital sex. Thus by dismissing this argument as ludicrous, everyone gets to go home with their beliefs in neat little boxes and assumption unscathed. There's lots of compelling reasons why this vaccine shouldn't be mandatory. Check out: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_suzanne__060725_it_s_not_just_religi.htm

the fact that not all girls will be.

there isn't any data on efficacy in boys. There are ongoing efficacy studies of Gardasil in men, but no published data yet. To recommend universal vaccination without any evidence that it will actually help men is premature. The issue of the benefits of vaccinating boys to help reduce the incidence of disease in women is a little trickier, both on scientific grounds (unfortunately, there is almost no data on how easily HPV is transmitted, so the types of modeling studies needed to estimate population benefits are even more uncertain than usual) and ethical grounds (is it ethical to expose a large segment of the population to some risk for something that will have no benefit to them?).

I read the article you linked to and what troubles me about it is that the author only uses the 3700 deaths a year as a reason the vaccine is not so necessary to be mandatory. True, maybe that number is not so horrific as other causes of death, but it does NOT address the vast number of women who get complications from HPV before getting full-blown cancer.

I am one of those women. I've had 3 colposcopies in the last 5 years due to 3 bad paps. I get checked every 6 months instead of yearly due to my being high-risk from the previous results. The first one revealed enough serious dysplasia that a LEEP was required, which was basically peeling off the entire outside layer of my cervix to rid it of abnormal cells.

When my latest pap required another colpo, the doctor prematurely started talking about things that might happen if it reveals more severe dysplasia. She started throwing around hysterectomy (I haven't had children yet) as an option since she said most women might not be able to handle two LEEPs. I remained calm since thats my disposition not to worry before I need to, but another woman might have completely freaked out upon hearing that.

In the end, everything turned out fine, was just some run-of-the-mill abnormal pap result. Plus, she noted that my cervix looked OK enough to handle another LEEP had that been necessary.

But what your author doesn't reveal is that there are more complications beyond death and that many women may need to have premature hysterectomies to deal with those complications. All of this added together would make me want to vaccinate any daughter of mine as early as possible. I wouldn't want her to have to go through what I have these past 5 years on some off chance she might get some arthrytis.

And I say vaccinate the boys too. Just because Suzanne Nelson considers sex an "optional" activity doesn't mean most humans are going to go along with that. Should we just opt for turkey basters to get pregnant now? Eventually most everyone will have sex so to consider it an optional function, different than an airborne disease to be vaccinated against, is a bit misguided. Especially since HPV can be transmitted by more than just intercourse, when it comes to sexual activity. Much wiser to just vaccinate and be done with it.