Doctors now urging that the HPV vaccine be offered to boys:
A government advisory committee agreed a month ago to recommend the vaccine for girls ages 11 and 12, for girls and women ages 13 to 26 who have not yet received the vaccine, and for women who have had abnormal pap smears, genital warts or certain other conditions.
Bradley Monk, associate professor in gynecologic oncology at the University of California at Irvine, said the best use of the vaccine would include giving it to girls and boys and all women and men, regardless of individual risk factors.
“We need to move toward a paradigm where this is a universal vaccine,” he said in a commentary published in the latest issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Giving the shot to both boys and girls will do even more to build up herd immunity than will giving it to girls only. Plus, it neatly sidesteps the promiscuity argument, since wingnuts tend to be concerned with preserving the purity of their daughters, not their sons.
Men can pass on the virus to their sexual partners, so it makes sense to vaccinate boys against HPV, and it would also protect them from genital warts, Monk said.
He dismissed the argument that vaccinating people against a sexually transmitted disease would encourage promiscuity.
“Just because you wear a seat belt, does that mean you drive recklessly? Or just because you give your son a tetanus shot, does that mean he is going to go out and step on a rusty nail? Of course not,” Monk said.
And since the vaccine has been sold as a way to prevent cancer, here’s something else to consider:
The virus is usually harmless, but it can lead to abnormal cells in the cervix lining that can turn cancerous. It can also cause cancer of the penis.