HPV vaccine endorsed for males

[tlh]

Gardasil, already a $1-billion vaccine marketed worldwide to young women, was endorsed Wednesday for use in young men, too, reports CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook.

Studies of more than 5,000 boys and men found Gardasil was 89 percent effective at preventing genital warts which affect an estimated 1 million American men and women. The same virus also causes rare cases of anal, genital and oral cancers in men.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/...n5298965.shtml

[ckberkey]

No thank you.

[needhelpplease]

That will make it even harder for people to use circ as an argument against HPV now.

It's hard to write a post on this without debating the merits of the vaccination, and I suspect my view is different to most, but I do think those who are against it are making it more likely for people to suggest something like circ instead.

[PuppyFluffer]

I agree, no thank you. I also agree that having the vaccine makes the "circ to reduce STDs" arguement less effective. (Not that I think it's an effective reason!)

[Fellow Traveler]

I was hesitant to post this here because I know there are people who are against some or all vaccines. I will say that this does degrade the argument for circumcision as it relates to HPV issues; but it does so in two ways, one unexpected.

Firist, one could of courjse point to this as an alternative when someone brings up the cancer canard. Second, the advisory board pointed out that aside from genital warts, which are relatively harmless and clear themselves, other HPV related issue in men are so rare the vaccine hardly matters. Iam still working through the report but it seems that for persistant HPV infection over three years there were not more than 40 events for any strain in the control group. That is 5000 participants 3 years.

It makes me wonder what makes them so sure about circumcision and hpv related cases.

[tutucrazy]

I don't vax but I am happy this is out b/c what it means for our cause.

I'm going to post what a (male)friend said to me when he heard this news:

I know even before they did testing for Gardasil, they were deciding if they should focus study and research on boys, or girls, and they went with girls. But in the beginning the idea was to find vaccines that would work for both genders. After Gardasil passed studies so successfully, there were doctors who were already giving it to boys, so the fact that they are making this official is not surprising.

To be honest, I like that they are doing this. It bothered me when researchers decided to focus on girls first, because it matched the usual theme of "lets try and provide girls with medical solutions to problems, and lets just circumcision solves all those same problems in boys and not give it much thought."

This pattern can be seen with UTI's where girls (who experience this more commonly) are simply treated with antibiotics, but boys are seen to have an inherent problem with their body, and need a part cut off.

Again you can see it with HIV, women are being told to be informed about their sexual health, and to make sure they use protection. While men should just be circumcised in infancy because they cant be expected to make proper sexual health decisions for themselves as adults.

So I guess this is my bias, but I am happy with this news. Boys are being treated as patients, not as the problem itself.