The controversial vaccine Gardasil has dominated health headlines lately, but HPV isn't just a women's issue. According to Time magazine, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine links the human papillomavirus to an increased risk of a kind of oral cancer more often seen in men. The main risk factor is oral sex, along with smoking and drinking.
In the UK, the Department of Health has already agreed to introduce the HPV vaccine for all 12- and 13-year-old girls from September 2008 to guard against cervical cancer in the future. So should we vaccinate boys as well?
The British Dental Health Foundation thinks so: they have already appealed to the government to include males in a planned vaccination programme to guard against HPV virus, in response to the rising number of mouth cancer cases.
So far, the official word from the CDC
is that they don't yet know if the vaccine is effective in boys. They
say that "it's possible that vaccinating males will have health
benefits for them by preventing genital warts and rare cancers, such as
penile and anal cancer", and also that "it is also possible that
vaccinating boys/men will have indirect health benefits for
girls/women," (since both men and women can be carriers of the virus).
Many parents, according to The New York Times, don't want to expose their children to a vaccine without multiple generations of research, or don't trust big pharmaceutical companies with huge profit margins.
Fair enough. But parents can't really afford to be squeamish about
the sex conversation when the bottom line is preventing death (and when
genital warts are the most common sexually transmitted infection in the UK). In any case we need to open up the debate up and get some answers; for future generations of both men and women.
Debauching the young is such fun, eh?
Posted by: Roger Pearse | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 03:10 PM
Is this comments bit really necessary? I usually only read the weekly column and have only recently noticed this section, filled with freaky comments from shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool types both supporting and berating Catherine Townsend. I guess it gives the Christian Voice types a place to vent - sort of a virtual 'Care in the Community' - but I hope noone at the Independent places any value in what's written here.
Posted by: David | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 05:49 PM
David or David Smith aka Catherine Townsend. The comments are more interesting than anything you/she writes. Catherine is paid to titillate and she obliges.She waxed lyrical about her vagina last time. So tasteful.Catherine who?I preferred Lara
Posted by: Nick | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 06:10 PM
FAO ‘Roger Pearse’:
Debauching the young?
This is, as you are well aware, NOT what CT is arguing for.
Whereas you ARE arguing for killing them/giving them AIDS/Cancer/Syphilis/Herpes/Genital Warts/Chlamydia/Gonorrhoea/unwanted pregnancies.
Oh and you are UNDOUBTEDLY also insisting that they MUST carry all those unwanted pregnancies to term - and equally undoubtedly flat-out refusing to support the armies of unplanned children that will result.
Your twisted soi-disant ‘morality’ has been the bane of our species for millennia.
It keeps the poor perpetually uneducated, barefoot & pregnant - but, by doing so, it *does* provide a large & pliant pool of cannon fodder & cheap servants for the rich to exploit.
So ‘it's all good’, eh?
Posted by: Ed R | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 06:28 PM
loppo David is CT. It's the only way she gets her own back by making bitchy comments by pretending to be David. She's in a foul mood she didn't get all the attention in the last blog.
Posted by: P.Keane | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 06:42 PM
Get with it. Loppo, Nick, et al are really Lara who is a sad wannabe. Remember anyone who disagrees with you is not Catherine, you idiot - or idiots - if there really is more than one of you posting under pseudonyms, which I doubt.
Now, please post lots because I really, really love reading your fascinating comments which are so good they are really worthy of the Guardian!
Posted by: billy | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 09:40 PM
hmmm.
serious, medical subject raised. Cretinous responses received. Have the trolls even read the subject on which they are supposed to comment. Apparently not
Posted by: definitelynotlarahonest | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 09:43 PM
There's some unfortunate paranoia here. I am not Lara nor any of the others mentioned. Grow up Catherine and realise that valid criticism of you doesn't mean it's unwarranted. Your reactions which resemble tantrums reinforce the widely held opinion that you are egotistical and unable to engage in a mature debate.
Posted by: P.Keane | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 10:10 PM
Thanks for speaking for me Billy and why if I contribute to a blog am I a wannabe? Do my comments irk you? Sorry for that. I am entitled to my opinion as you are Billy and if I choose not to agree with CT then that does not make me a sad/crazy whatever. You've got a problem and it probably sits in your trousers around the zip area. Can't stand a woman having an opinion but only interested in a woman who speaks about her sex life in a million ways? Glad you find this blog so interesting anyway; it does pass some moments here and there i must admit.
Posted by: Lara | Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 10:42 PM
Re this health issue:
I look forward to equality in healthcare (in the UK - in the US you get ill you die basically, unless you're a princess like catherine of course and you don't worry your pretty little head about political issues...).
At present, the spending on female-specific healthcare in the UK is 7 or 8 times the spending on specific male helth issues.
The health service also has to realise that, due to evolutionary urge to soldier on, and the fact that men are tougher than women, men will not go to the doctor when one of their eye-lashes falls out or they've got a 'little pain' or 'feel a biit depressed'. The mountain has to go to mohammed - the healthcare should go to the men and where they go and advertise on their TV programmes etc. (esp working class men). So, the health service should be defeminised and both sexes should get equal funding - why are there no feminists campaigning for this... Well?
Re this jab. Unfortunately in the UK our family structure has been so utterly destroyed by feminism and family breakdown that there is no solution at all to young girls sleeping around. Still, good for men and boys I suppose - in the past, many had to visit prostitutes to get looses women, but now...
Posted by: Strumble | Thursday, 15 May 2008 at 10:08 AM
Strumble, seriously what are you on about going to the Doctor's when an eyelash falls out or feeling a little depressed? Get with it will you
Posted by: Patst | Thursday, 15 May 2008 at 11:03 AM
Infact I agree with Nick.Someone like Lara should write this blog.
Posted by: P.Keane | Thursday, 15 May 2008 at 12:18 PM