The Cervical Cancer Vaccine Is Safe And Effective
There are few vaccines as contentious as the Human PapillomaVirus (HPV) vaccine. It’s often called the cervical cancer vaccine as its main aim is preventing the lesions (damaged tissues) that cause cervical cancer.
To put it another way, the vaccine prevents cancer. Which is cool.
There are a few reasons for this for the contention around the HPV vaccine. One is that it’s very new, and new vaccines are always a bit controversial. The HPV vaccine was only licensed in 2006/7, and has been routine for less than a decade in most countries. As with all new vaccines, there’s also fears about rare side-effects, because once you start vaccinating lots of people you often find side-effects that you didn’t when you ran studies on smaller patient groups.
But mostly, the objections are about sex.
But luckily for all of us, the evidence is incredibly clear.
The HPV vaccine is safe, effective, and prevents cancer.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Let’s talk about the biggest objection first. It usually goes something like “But if I give my son/daughter a vaccine against a sexually-transmitted infection, they’ll bang anything that moves!”
There are several issues with this argument. Firstly, evidence shows that there is no association between getting the HPV vaccine and increased sexual activity. It just doesn’t happen.
But more importantly; teenagers are going to bang. That’s a hard fact of life. You can either accept that fact and try and mitigate the harms of banging, or let them get cervical cancer and die later in life.
I know which I’d choose.
Another big argument is about side-effects. Several prominent anti-vaccination activists have raised concerns about the HPV vaccine causing any number of problems.
Fortunately, the HPV vaccine is amazingly well-researched. There is strong, consistent, and very conclusive evidence that the vaccine only very rarely causes serious issues, with about 1 person experiencing one for every million people vaccinated.
And when I say “strong research”, I really do mean it. We have data examining the experiences of hundreds of thousands of people who have received the vaccine in controlled clinical trials, and millions who have been vaccinated worldwide, demonstrating that it is safe.
On the other hand, cervical cancer is one of the leading causes of death in women, killing 4,200 people in the US each year and affecting tens of thousands more.
The benefits vastly outweigh the risks.
The short answer is: yes.
The long answer is that cervical cancer takes time to develop, and we’ve only had the vaccine for a decade, so it’s hard to know exactly how much cancer the vaccine will prevent.
What we do know is that the vaccine is already preventing more than half of the pre-cancerous lesions that are caused by HPV, as well as cancerous lesions, but what impact exactly this will have on cervical cancer rates is unknown, although some people estimate that it could eliminate cervical cancer entirely as a disease (seriously).
The HPV vaccine has been one of the biggest success stories in modern medicine. When we initially introduced the vaccination, most people thought that it would just protect girls who got it from getting cervical cancer. A decade later, we are seeing reductions in genital, anal, and throat cancers in both men and women, as well as the decreases in cervical cancer, because the vaccine is even more effective than we first thought.
There really is no question. Cancer is shit. Preventing it is an amazing thing.
Get your kids vaccinated. If you’re eligible, get yourself vaccinated as well.
The HPV vaccination is safe, effective, and can stop you from getting cancer.
Go get it.
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The Cervical Cancer Vaccine Is Safe And Effective
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