HPV vaccine

Another day, another study on the potentially life-saving impact of vaccines. This time it’s a new study on the vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer. Earlier this week, researchers announced that since the vaccine came on the scene, rates of HPV among young women in the U.S. have plummeted. Published in the journal Pediatrics, the study used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to analyze HPV prevalence among women ages 14 to 34 in the four years before the HPV vaccine was introduced in 2006 and…
In a perfect example of how the Affordable Care Act is broadening access to relatively low-cost and potentially life-saving interventions, a new study finds that the health reform law likely led more than 1 million young women to seek out the human papillomavirus vaccine and protect themselves against cervical cancer. In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers studied the impact of two ACA provisions: one requiring insurance providers to extend dependent coverage through age 26 and another that required insurers to offer a range of preventive services, such as…
There has been concern over the safety of Gardasil (and other?) HPV vaccines. This concern emanates from the usual Anti-Vax sources. The Anti-Vax people are wrong, often to the point where we have to regard them as delusional, about everything they say. If you find yourself leaning towards thinking that they have a point, you need to check yourself because they don't. There are good reasons why parents worry about vaccines (see "The vaccination does make the baby cry, so why do it?"), but in the final analysis (or even way before the final analysis) these worries are falsehoods. I would…