human papillomavirus

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…
I guess this is in effect part two of yesterday's post. Regular daily readers (and you are a regular daily reader, aren't you?) will remember that yesterday I commented on the recent uptick in anti-Gardasil vaccine rhetoric coming from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism and other sources, in the process deconstructing speculation masquerading as a case report allegedly indicting the quadrivalent HPV vaccine as a potential cause of premature ovarian failure in a 16 year old Australian girl. The article was so bad and so biased that I couldn't believe BMJ Case Reports published it in the…
I must admit, I've been enjoying my vacation thus far and have hardly paid attention to the blog, other than a couple of quick posts. For me, this is quite amazing. Still, every so often there pops up a story that I can't resist commenting on, particularly given that I'm just sitting around watching the Olympics, and I'm deadly tired of beach volleyball. (As an aside, notice how it's always women's beach volleyball that NBC shows, not men's, no doubt because the powers that be think that toned young women in bikinis playing volleyball translate into big ratings. Unfortunately, they seem to be…