How Dare HPV Vaccine Basically End Cervical Cancer When I Already Had HPV?

Cervical cancer canceled.

There is news on the vaccine front, and it is that the HPV vaccine really does work to stop cervical cancer. Tell us, Lancet! 

We used data from a total of 13·7 million-years of follow-up of women aged 20 years to younger than 30 years. The estimated relative reduction in cervical cancer rates by age at vaccine offer were 34% (95% CI 25–41) for age 16–18 years (school year 12–13), 62% (52–71) for age 14–16 years (school year 10–11), and 87% (72–94) for age 12–13 years (school year 8), compared with the reference unvaccinated cohort. The corresponding risk reductions for CIN3 were 39% (95% CI 36–41) for those offered at age 16–18 years, 75% (72–77) for age 14–16 years, and 97% (96–98) for age 12–13 years.

A ninety-seven percent reduction in the cases of cervical cancer compared to unvaccinated peers, if you catch girls when they're really really really unlikely to have had sex yet? That's like polio and small pox not combined!

But. Is this actually good news, when some of us already had HPV before there was a vaccine to stop it that also ends cervical cancer? Is it even fair to expect our daughters not to die of cervical cancer?

Oh, shut up? Right.

(Did you get it? I was mocking you — you personally — for being against student loan forgiveness because it's "not fair" that you already paid yours off when your loans — and mine! — cost half what kids are paying now.)

The study by UK researchers will hopefully push more parents to vaccinate their young girls and boys for HPV. In the US, less than half of eligible kids are vaccinated against HPV, which causes about 36,000 cases of cancer a year in the US, from cervical to throat and anal cancers in men and women. And why aren't we vaccinating our kids FROM CANCER?

[F]or girls, the top four reasons parents gave for not vaccinating stayed relatively stable between 2010 and 2016. These included safety concerns (cited by 23 percent of non-vaccinating parents in 2010 versus 22 percent in 2016), lack of necessity (21 percent versus 20 percent), knowledge (14 percent versus 13 percent) and physician recommendation (9 percent versus 10 percent). Those citing their child's lack of sexual activity shrank by nearly half over these years (19 percent versus 10 percent).

I'd bet it's a hell of a lot more than 10 percent that thinks a vax for cervical cancer will give license to their little Ashleys and Madisons to whore it up. But if we take them at their word, and I never do, I'd hope that other 90 percent will get off their asses and think about whether the "safety" of vaccinating against cancer trumps the safety of "might have a bad reaction."

Fucking Robert F. Kennedy Jr., man. That guy's going to hell.

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Wonkette loves you. Vax up your kids people.