Press Release: HPV Vaccine Debate

Utahns Debate About the HPV Vaccine

The human papillomavirus vaccine will soon arrive at the one-year approval mark by the FDA. Advocates champion the vaccine’s potential to prevent cancer, but opponents voice concern.

Salt Lake City, Utah (PRWEB) June 5, 2007—With the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine’s one-year anniversary just around the corner, some Utahns are celebrating the vaccine’s accomplishments while others are still questioning its social implications.

Even though the HPV vaccine may dramatically reduce the incidence of cervical cancer and possibly prevent other cancers, Utah lawmakers showed their disapproval for the vaccine earlier this year when they refused funding an education and vaccination campaign for HPV.

Philanthropist Jon M. Huntsman Sr. responded by donating $1 million to the Utah Department of Health to initiate an HPV-cervical cancer awareness campaign and distribute HPV vaccines to uninsured and low-income women.

Despite Huntsman’s belief that "the lives of sisters and daughters, wives and mothers throughout Utah may be saved" through widespread HPV vaccination, controversy still clouds the issue.

The pushback against HPV vaccination comes mostly from social conservatives who believe that immunizing young girls against HPV will promote promiscuity. Others repute this argument by reasoning that the vaccine protects against only one sexually transmitted disease and there are so many others to be worried about.

"I don't think it is a blank check for going out and having safe sex. There are definitely other sexually transmitted diseases,” said Karen Zempolich, a gynecologic oncologist who worked on the vaccine’s clinical trials at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Moreover, "cervical cancer is not a disease of sexual promiscuity; it's caused by a virus and we have a vaccine for this virus. It prevents cancer and can potentially save lives," said Kalynn Filion of the Utah Department of Health’s cancer program.

Because the HPV vaccine is the first of its kind developed to prevent cancer, numerous health professionals like Filion honor its accomplishments that have ensued since June 8, 2006 when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed the vaccine for use in females ages 9-26. By the end of 2006, the vaccine had been approved in 49 countries worldwide.

Numerous studies prove that the HPV vaccine, sold by Merck under the brandname Gardasil®, is nearly 100 percent effective in preventing the occurrence of HPV types 16 and 18, which account for 70 percent of all cervical cancers. Only recently have researchers begun to study the vaccine’s potential to eliminate vulval and vaginal cancers.

A study published in the British medical journal The Lancet last month shows that the vaccine was also 100 percent effective in preventing vulval and vaginal pre-cancerous lesions associated with these two HPV types.

Despite opposition against the HPV vaccine, many still agree that the potential of this vaccine to prevent cervical and other cancers requires thoughtful consideration: “Cancer knows no age, knows no race, it knows no gender. It can happen to anyone, and I just beg mothers out there to please research. Please find out all you can about the vaccination before you make up your mind,” pleaded Heather Burcham, a 31 year old dying of cervical cancer caused by HPV.

For more information about the HPV vaccine, please visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

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