Save a Life, Learn About HPV

This morning, NPR ran an health story about a potential vaccination for
HPV. I want to take a little blog space to talk about HPV because it is a widespread disease that is affecting many women but isn't usually publicized very much.

The Human papillomavirus (HPV) comes in about 100 different forms, of which 30 are sexually transmitted. Transmission can be as simple as skin-to-skin contact. It results in genital warts in men and women that can appear inside as well as outside the body. There are often no symptoms and the incubation period can be as short as 3 months or even longer. The virus can remain dormant for years before turning up again. It can go away on its own and then come back randomly. In fact, the warts your get on your hands or feet are a from of HPV, although those are not, obviously sexually transmitted.

Women usually discover they have HPV when they show an irregular pap smear. This is usually the high risk type of HPV that can lead to cervical cancer. About 14,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year and over 5,000 women die annually of cervical cancer in the United States.

Three are 5.5 million new cases of sexually transmitted HPV infections are reported every year in men and women. At least 20 million people in this country are already infected. Three out of four Americans between the ages of 15 and 49 have been infected with genital HPV in their lifetime. For more information, I encourage you to visit here or here.

The latest news is that the FDA is reviewing a potential vaccine for HPV, or at least for the most dangerous forms of HPV. The vaccine is showing little or no side effects and so far seems to be good for up to 5 years. They will be deciding if the vaccine should be given to all children. Christian groups are opposed to making such a vaccine mandatory, although they aren't opposed to the vaccine in general. Sorry guys, some things just have to be mandatory. And the very fact that we have to consider what religious groups have to say about a medical issue such as this ticks me off. It is a public health issue, not a moral issue.