Making It Universal Would Cut Down on the Slut-Punishing

42 thoughts on Making It Universal Would Cut Down on the Slut-Punishing

1. Makes sense to me. I think this would be a good idea.

2. Oh well, it can cause cancer in the PENIS?!?! Why didn’t you say so in the 1st place? Now teh men will be all over that shit.

3. Jennifer: exactly, it would almost be funny if it weren’t so NOT.

   Seriously, though, I am so glad they finally started talking about this. Since men are carriers of HPV strains, and some strains also pose health risks to men, I’ve always wondered why recommendations for both girls and boys didn’t come out from the beginning.

4. It’s simple statistics and medical analysis which supports women-only vaccines at this point in time:

   Penile cancer is extremely rare. Each year in the U.S., there will be about 1500 new cases and under 300 deaths from penile cancer. This is a comparatively tiny number.

   Cervical cancer is much more common. Approximately 13,000 cases of invasive cervical cancer and 50,000 cases of cervical carcinoma in situ (i.e., localized cancer) are diagnosed yearly. That’s 63,000 new cases PER YEAR, as compared to 1500 new cases of penile cancer; it’s a 42:1 ratio.

   Of those cervical cancers, a very high percentage are KNOWN to be caused primarily by HPV. OTOH, HPV is suspected (not conclusively proven) to be implicated in penile cancer.

   The 5-year survival rate for all stages of cervical cancer combined is approximately 70%. Judging from the penile death rates, cervical cancer appears to be quite a bit more lethal. This is for a variety of reasons. Two (not all) of them are 1) it is relatively difficult to detect cervical cancer, and 2) it’s in your abdomen, so if it DOES spread at all you run into other issues more easily.

   The result? Women are harmed by HPV much more than men are harmed by HPV. Wasting vaccine on men is like spending a lot of money to research male breast cancer: Yes, some men die of breast cancer, but as a public health decision it’s ludicrous.

   If you have unlimited resources you would vaccinate everyone. But the vaccine is expensive (upwards of $300 per dose), and the harm to women from HPV is much greater than the harm to men. All the money for HPV vaccines should be spent on women first, at least for a while. Once the cervical cancer rates decline a lot, or if the vaccine gets extremely cheap, it might make sense.

   Not to mention, of course, that women can pass HPV on to their infants through a vaginal birth, which is yet another reason to prefer vaccinating women. Transmission in birth is controlled by the woman.

   It is true that you’d avoid the slut-punishing idiots. But we’re talking about saving a huge number of lives here. I just don’t think the public health benefits are worth it.

   The “it will make people act recklessly” argument is ridiculous. I’ve written on it on my blog, and dissected the problems in detail.

5. The phrase “cancer of the penis” is making me giggle like a ten-year-old.

6. women can pass HPV on to their infants through a vaginal birth, which is yet another reason to prefer vaccinating women.

   Sorry — who exactly passes it on to women, again?

7. Transmission in birth is controlled by the woman.

   Just continuing sophonisba’s argument above… this phrasing makes it sound quite a bit like the woman is responsible for transmitting HPV, as if she has some “control” over the matter.

8. The result? Women are harmed by HPV much more than men are harmed by HPV. Wasting vaccine on men is like spending a lot of money to research male breast cancer: Yes, some men die of breast cancer, but as a public health decision it’s ludicrous.

   Men can’t give women breast cancer. Your argument doesn’t make sense. HPV harms women more than men, but men can transmit HPV to women, so it would benefit women if men were also vaccinated.

9. “It can also cause cancer of the penis….”

   Yes, that’s bad and all, but why would anyone endorse the vaccince that can prevent this? After all, we wouldn’t want to send our boys the message that they can have sex without consequences.

10. *vaccINE

11. No vaccine is effective in 100% of individuals. The major benefit of vaccination is herd immunity. That is, if you vaccinate enough people, the virus lacks enough hosts to spread and dies out within a specific population. Vaccinating men will protect both men and women.

12. Cancer of the Penis makes me think of Bubba Ho-Tep. Which is an awesome movie.

13. # sophonisba Says:

    Sorry — who exactly passes it on to women, again?

    Either a woman or a man, depending on the sexual contact involved. And the transmitter gets it from a woman or a man, and so on.

    Herd immunity is a tricky solution for the U.S., and a relatively slow one: Not only do we have a huge percentage of peop-le who are already infected, but we also have a decent influx of immigrants and visitors who are not vaccinated either.

    Herd immunity works well on diseases which don’t incubate. With most infectious disease, you’re contagious for a short period of time. If you’re around vaccinated folks while you’re contagious you can’t infect them, and when you’re not infectious it doesn’t matter who you come in contact with.

    HPV is a “carrier” disease, which means that you can be contagious (even without symptoms) for your entire life, once infected. This makes herd immunity much harder to acocmplish.

    The “vaccinating men will protect both men and women” argument is a side track: Sure, there will be some protective effect for women if you vaccinate men, but much less of a protective effect than the women herself receives.

    This is SCIENCE. not politics. if you want to get snippy about the difference between sexes, step back for a moment and think: We are probably not going to be able to vaccinate everyone at first. Any push to vaccinate boys is almost certain to result in a reduction in vaccines for girls. Do you want to put them at risk for HPV?

    If you’re responding to the argument wars and not the science, you’re being foolish.

14. Actually, sailorman has it right. Penile cancer is extremely rare, and public health measures are expensive. If there isn’t money to vaccinate everyone, vaccinate the people who are most harmed. It might sound harsh, but realists understand that money is an issue. Plus, we already have a medical intervention which reduces the likelyhood of penile cancer – circumcision. I’m happy to hear that the vaccine is being tested for boys. I’d be happier if it were being tested on women over 26.

15. If there isn’t money to vaccinate everyone, vaccinate the people who are most harmed.

    actually, you are still looking at this wrong…the virus is carried by MEN, you do a LOT more good killing it at the source than you do vaccinating women against secondary infection.

    I’d be happier if it were being tested on women over 26.

    dude, it was already tested on women, throughly…then somebody finally went, ‘oh hey, since guys are the CARRIER, maybe we should see if it works on them.’ Brilliant.

16. frumiousb: Careful with the circumcision talk. There are some who strongly object to circumcision on the grounds of bodily integrity, and I have to say they have a point. Mastectomy is a pretty good preventative measure for breast cancer too, but we don’t go around doing it to all women.

    And public health measures are not that expensive. Especially relative to the cost of treating the resulting diseases. The chicken pox vaccine was introduced pretty recently and is now widespread.

    Again, what we’re trying for is herd immunity.. If we can get enough people, both men and women, vaccinated, the incidence of cervical cancer will decrease drastically.

17. Either a woman or a man, depending on the sexual contact involved.

    So that would be men, 80, 90 percent of the time, then.

    You’re saying it’s “politics” to vaccinate men to protect women. Do you not remember saying women should be vaccinated to protect their children? That was politics too, then, was it?

18. twolovcats,

    I don’t think you’re trying to be deceptive or deliberately argumentative. I just don’t think you’re understanding the underlying science.

    I wrote a longer analysis and deleted it. here’s the short version:

    If you get the vaccine, the main benefits accrue to you, because you will not get HPV. For a woman, those benefits are extremely high. For a man, those benefits are relatively low.

    The secondary benefits accrue to your sexual partner. Let’s say your partner is named Blair, and is either a man or a woman.

    Because you are (presumably) not the only sexual partner that Blair will have, the benefits to Blair are not as high. In fact, the entire secondary benefit to Blair can be erased if only one of Blair’s partners is a carrier.

    The benefit to Blair doesn’t really have clinical relevance until vaccination levels become high enough that Blair is significantly less likely to get HPV, because Blair’s partners are vaccinated. This is “herd immunity.”

    You can work towards this herd immunity by selectively vaccinating women, or men, or nonselectively vaccinating both.

    But…
    Because the secondary effect is smaller than the primary effect;
    Because the primary effect on women provides a much greater benefit than on men;
    It is rational (and sensible) to selectively vaccinate women FIRST. Not women ONLY, just women FIRST.

19. # sophonisba Says:
    You’re saying it’s “politics” to vaccinate men to protect women. Do you not remember saying women should be vaccinated to protect their children? That was politics too, then, was it?

    It’s not that women “should” be vaccinated to protect their children. But from a public health standpoint the ability to protect infants through their mothers is a real benefit. it is only one more chip on the ‘this benefits women more’ pile.

    I also think that most mothers who have HPV would probably rather not pass it on to their infants, don’t you? And that most female infants would rather not receive HPV through the birth process before they had a chance to get vaccinated, don’t you?

    Jeez, this is really weird. I mean, I am arguing for methods which will save women’s lives by the thousands. I am arguing AGAINST a benefit to men. I am basing my argument ENTIRELY on the enhanced benefit to women, and not on some “men shouldn’t have to get vaccinated” concept.

    Yet you are acting as if I’m trying to promote genital mutilation or something. Can’t you take your blinders off for a moment?

20. Sailorman: If you have unlimited resources you would vaccinate everyone. But the vaccine is expensive (upwards of $300 per dose), and the harm to women from HPV is much greater than the harm to men. All the money for HPV vaccines should be spent on women first, at least for a while. Once the cervical cancer rates decline a lot, or if the vaccine gets extremely cheap, it might make sense.

    I read that phrase “cancer of the penis” and instantly said to myself, “Self, all anybody needs to do is spread that nauseating phrase around and this fight is over, and the good guys won for a change. Next!” I understand your point about vaccinating women first, but that’s not the stumbling block. It’s not like there’s a problem of limited medical resources or funding. $300 per dose is peanuts; how much has our government spent per capita to demolish Iraq? The only really significant problem in distributing HPV vaccine is organized opposition by religious freaks.

    The idea is to make HPV vaccination universal, and as you’ve see by reading the news, hard though it is to believe, we’ve had to fight lunatic fundies. The fact is, (mostly male) fundies will cheerfully sentence tens of thousands of women a year to death by cervical cancer, rather than offend the magic sky-spirit by appearing to countenance sexual immorality. But I know these selfish clowns; all anyone needs to do is murmur the horrible phrase “cancer of the penis” a few times here and there and, the Russian Skoptski sect notwithstanding, when it comes down to the choice between making the baby Jesus cry vs. possibly getting their dicks amputated, 99% of those fundies will not only instantly drop their jihad against the vaccine, but they’ll also promptly slap the remaining 1% of holdouts into silence.

21. If you get the vaccine, the main benefits accrue to you, because you will not get HPV. For a woman, those benefits are extremely high. For a man, those benefits are relatively low.

    Wrong. In the vast majority of cases in both women and men, HPV infection is benign. About one in 7500 women with HPV develops cervical cancer each year, very roughly speaking. (I here use a 50 percent US infection rate, following the CDC estimate, and a little over 10,000 women developing invasive cervical cancer per year in the US. If someone has more precise figures, I’d be interested.) The risk to men infected with HPV of developing penile or anal cancer is about a third that. (Equivalent infection rates, about 1500 penile cancers and 2000 anal cancers in the US per year.)

    Women face a greater risk from HPV, certainly. But reducing a 3:1 ratio between numbers on the order of 1 in 7500 to “women see extremely high benefits and men see barely any benefit at all” is stupid.

22. Yes: I agree that this is a rational reason for not vaccinating girls first. I disagree on the intepretation because my ‘guesstimate’ of what will happen is different from yours. So I still think it’s bad idea… but I am well aware that I might be incorrect and your position is certainly defensible.

    (Funny aside: I read ‘cancer of the penis’ and thought “Well, that would suck. But if it isn’t metastisized, you can amputate it without a lot of fuss” so perhaps this explains my different viewpoint)

    BTW: Though $300/dose is peanuts as compared to Iraq, it’s not as if the public health agencies which actually provide these things are swimming in money. To my knowledge, there are still some folks out there without the CHEAP vaccines.

    (It is also an interesting question whether if you had $300 and only $300 to spend, per 10-15 year old, on public health, whether you would be best to spend it on the HPV vaccine or on something else. But that is a separate thread)

23. It’s not that women “should” be vaccinated to protect their children.

    The hell? Of course they should.

    I also think that most mothers who have HPV would probably rather not pass it on to their infants, don’t you?

    No kidding. Just like most men who have sex with women would probably rather not pass HPV on to them. You’re not making a lot of sense.

    Yet you are acting as if I’m trying to promote genital mutilation or something.

    This here is you making shit up.

24. First:
    I apologize to those who are following the science behind this; I inadvertently copied/pasted my stats from the wrong source. Correct stats follow.

    1) About 6.2 million Americans become infected with genital HPV each year (slightly over half of all sexually active men and women become infected at some time in their lives.)

    2) The HPV types affected by the vaccine are responsible for about 70% of all cervical cancer in the US. This does not mean that having HPV gives you cancer. It DOES mean that if you have cancer of the cervix, there’s a 70% chance you got it because of HPV. My understanding is that though HPV is considered a “risk factor” for penile cancer, this link has not yet been quantified.

    3) There are in the range of 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer and somewhere just under 4000 deaths attributed to cervical cancer in the United States each year.

    Sorry for the error; it took me a while to realize my mistake. Doesn’t really affect the argument though as relative benefits remain much greater for women.

25. I am arguing AGAINST a benefit to men.

    What’s wrong with benefits for men? The problem is when men’s benefits come at the expense of women’s benefits, or when all benefits are not distributed equally. That’s clearly not the case with the HPV vaccine, because vaccinating men also benefits women.

    Contrary to what some might believe, making life miserable for men is not a feminist goal.

26. This is the sort of thread that makes me want to throw up my hands and shout, “Fine! Do you WANT penile or anal cancer?” Because arguing that we shouldn’t vaccinate men merely because women benefit more from vaccination MAKES NO SENSE.

    I need to start stockpiling links to arguments that give lie to the sad old “men are the more logical and rational sex” stereotype. This one qualifies in spades.

27. Sigh.

    I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t vaccinate men.

    Here, I’ll quote my own post (apparently this is necessary for some reason):

    It is rational (and sensible) to selectively vaccinate women FIRST. Not women ONLY, just women FIRST.

    See?

    And, ilyka, i really DO know how you feel.

    This is the sort of thread that makes me want to throw up my hands and shout, “Fine! Do you WANT women to get cervical cancer?” Because arguing that we shouldn’t vaccinate women preferentially over men even though women benefit more from vaccination MAKES NO SENSE.

    I have to say, though, that the combination of your, um, unusual use of the word “merely” does make the sentence sort of funny. And also makes the attack on my supposed irrationality even funnier.

    I mean, next thing you know, I’ll have people saying “Fine! Do you WANT to vote against a $300 tax credit from the government? Because arguing that we should give it to the poor merely because they need it more MAKES NO SENSE.” And so on. Hell, I think I’ll turn this into a trend.

    Merely.

    Christ.

28. This is the sort of thread that makes me want to throw up my hands and shout, “Fine! Do you WANT women to get cervical cancer?” Because arguing that we shouldn’t vaccinate women preferentially over men even though women benefit more from vaccination MAKES NO SENSE.

    JESUS BUGGERING CHRIST ON A POGO STICK, NOBODY IS ARGUING THAT WOMEN SHOULDN’T ALL BE VACCINATED.

    Just that men should also be vaccinated because it would get us to herd immunity that much faster, and hey, throwing around the term “cancer of the penis” might just shake a few fundies off their opposition to this vaccine — which is based on their belief that it will give girls an excuse to run around fucking.

29. zuzu,

    I think we’re talking in circles here. But hey, I’ll try one more time:

    YES, I agree with you: Ideally, women should be vaccinated. All of them.

    YES, I agree with you: Ideally, men should also be vaccinated. All of them.

    YES, I agree with you that IF the debate was (vaccinate X women) versus (vaccinate X women plus Y men) then obviously the second option is superior, duh, adding additional vaccinations is better.

    BUT,

    I don’t think that it’s going to be an “ideal” situation. So I don’t think this is an accurate summary of the debate.

    I don’t think we WILL vaccinate all the women who should get the vaccine. I think there will be a limited quantity of vaccine (I’m including here limitations on funding as well as production when talking about “availability”), and that adding more people who could get it won’t increase the quantity available.

    I believe this is the case because our government–and in particular the Bush folks–have done a HORRIBLE job of getting necessary things out to the public in general. I don’t trust them to do their job right. At all.

    If there is a competition for a limited resource of vaccine the debate becomes whether we should (vaccinate X women) versus (vaccinate [X-Y] women plus Y men). Then, the benefit analysis is extremely relevant. Then, the question is NOT merely “will we reach herd immunity?” but is ALSO “How can we be most effective while enroute to herd immunity?”

    Perhaps we are merely disagreeing on whether or not we think the government will provide all necessary doses of vaccine to women, even if men don’t get it (I think this is most likely); whether they’ll only provide women vaccine if some men also get it (I think this is less likely) or whether they’ll provide EVERYONE with vaccine who might need it (I think this is extremely unlikely).

    In that case, there’s no reason for anyone to get especially annoyed, since all the sides are just guessing.

    I think men can/should be left out of it so we can focus on women.

    If you disagree, then: I think that if men NEED to be included to get the ‘fundie vote,’ that men should be included to as minimal an extent as possible, so we can focus on women to the greatest extent possible.

30. I think the problem here is that you’re arguing a lot of ifs and contingencies that don’t exist. You seem to be taking the stance that this is something with a limited supply, or that the government will be distributing it. This is not the case, which is why you’re meeting with so much frustration from people who know that it’s not the case.

    What we have here is a vaccine that has been recommended strongly for young girls and women, meaning that the government will fund it for low-income women and girls, and it will be covered by private health insurance plans. The fundies who have opposed this have done so on the basis of “encouraging promiscuity.” They couldn’t get the full benefit of that reasoning when opposing the approval of the vaccine itself, because they ran the risk of being seen as pro-cancer.

    But, now that the vaccine has been approved, they have shifted their efforts to fighting efforts to make it mandatory or a condition of school admission. This is where having a recommendation that boys also receive the vaccine (and get it covered by insurance) comes in. Because there will be a significant population of girls whose parents elect not to get them the vaccine, the herd-immunity effect of the vaccine will be lessened. So if you recommend that boys also get it, the girls who don’t get the vaccine will be more than offset by the boys who do, thus boosting herd immunity.

    Are you getting this yet?

    Nobody’s making a zero-sum argument that limited supplies of vaccine should be distributed to boys rather than to girls. As far as we can tell, this will be a big moneymaker for Merck, so they’re quite willing and able to produce as many doses as needed. There is no shortage.

31. Vaccines are very rarely produced in the quantities needed. Particularly new ones. Hell, look at the flu vaccine: we do the same thing there. First is the people who are most vulnerable (immunocompromised, respiratorily compromised, elderly), then healthcare professionals and the people who are around the 1st tier – family and so on – then everyone else. But you don’t start on tier 2 and 3 until tier 1 has had a shot at it, even though ideally we’d all get the shot.

    I think that’s what sailorman is arguing.

32. Well, he’s arguing against a strawman, because not one person here has said that we shouldn’t vaccinate women first.

33. This is certainly true about the flu vaccine, but I think the school admission requirement makes the HPV vaccine different. If it’s required for school admission, it would stand to reason, I think, that enough would have to be produced. Those in favor of this measure would be equating the HPV vaccine with things like your MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) which I’m pretty sure you can’t enroll in an American school without. (I think they’re also doing this with the hepatitus (sp) vaccine, too, right?) I’m not sure about this, but I think the reason why the flu vaccine so often comes up in short supply is because we depend on natural (rather than chemical) resources for it (chickens). Also I don’t remember there being a shortage before Bush took office — is that just me?

34. #16 tlc: the virus is carried by women and men. vaccinating women only also helps prevent spreading the virus to women. It will prevent F-F transmission and F-M-F transmission.

    There is precendent for using limited vaccine supplies on the population most at risk – for example, we give flu vaccines to the elderly first.

    No, it was not tested on women thoroughly. It was tested on females 9-26. For it to be tested on women thoroughly, it would have to be tested on women over 26. Testing is either proposed or already in process for males.

    #17 twf: what, there’s not bodily integrity issues with vaccines? Nothing is 100% harm free, including vaccines. With most childhood vaccines, the risk/benefit is a no brainer – the risk of harm from the illness is astronomically higher than the risk of harm from the vaccine. The bodily integrity issue is also a no brainer for most childhood vaccines- it makes sense for a parent to make a decision about their child’s body without consulting them b/c the kid would probably die before it reaches an age where it can make its own decisions.

    With diseases that affect primarily adults, one can make the argument that the considerations are a little different. Does a parent still have a right to make decisions about their children’s bodies if the medical condition motivating the intervention is not likely to occur until the child is old enough to make his own risk/benefit analysis? So far the answer in our culture has been yes – witness the infant Hep B vaccine. We routinely give Hep B vaccines to children even though most new cases affect adults. We do this because voluntary vaccination by adults was not effectively reducing the incidence of new Hep B cases. As a societal benefit, violating the bodily integrity of an infant by giving it a Hep B vaccine makes sense.

    Now we are discussing violating the bodily integrity of girls and boys by giving them HPV vaccines. Most people here are in favor of it. We won’t know until the trials are over and the vaccine has been in routine use for boys whether negative effects from the vaccine are more frequent than negative effects from circumcision (injury). If the negative effects of the two interventions are similar, is it really so different to vaccine a boy against HPV than to circumcise a boy to reduce his risk of penile cancer?

35. # zuzu Says:
    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:22 pm

    Well, he’s arguing against a strawman, because not one person here has said that we shouldn’t vaccinate women first.

    Oh come on, zuzu, this is your blog, but that’s ridiculous.

    You know as well as I do that plenty of people in this thread HAVE said, or implied, that vaccinating women first is a bad idea. sophonisba, twoluvcats, and others, for example. What exactly do you think the debate is about? Only a very few people have raised the political angle; almost everyone else is jumping on the ‘no women first’ wagon.

    if everyone thinks that we should vaccinate women first, then why are there all those comments attacking my “obvious” point, and almost no comments other than yours which say “yes, that’s obvious” or “yes, that’s right” or whatever?

    And (if you’re on the straw man tactic) in all fairness I’ve tried to stay away from representing anyone else’s views. I’ve been straw manned quite a few times, though, myself. Would you mind being a tad more equitable? “Specially as we apparently agree on this?

36. ps,

    zuzu, comment #3 asked why recommendations didn’t include boys and girls from the beginning. Sailorman provided an answer.

37. Sailorman,

    If it were the case that there were limited quantities of the vaccine, I could see your point that we should vaccinate women first, from a simple cost-benefit analysis point of view.

    But barring some odd reason for there to be inadequate quantities of vaccine, it makes the most sense to vaccinate everyone. Especially if it’s going to be mandatory

    frumiousb,

    You have a good point about vaccines and bodily integrity. However, I would argue that there is a qualitative difference between removing a part of a body for disputed medical reasons and giving a shot that stimulates the production of antibodies to protect from a disease. The ethics of the situation depend on the balance of risk between side-effects of vaccination and getting the disease itself.

38. it seems to me that the argument stems from two different perceptions. that being, is the goal to eliminate HPV, or is it to eliminate cervical cancer?
    obviously the answer is both, but if you’re looking at it from the HPV side (and ignoring the cancer, for my hypothetical), you should be vaccinating everyone, and if there’s a shortage, you might even want to slightly *favor* vaccinating boys over girls, as from what I know, it’s easier to transmit from a penis into an orifice than vice versa, and the case could be made that a penis protected cuts down on transmission more than a vagina protected (if the transmission info is true, then a vaccinated woman means one person who can’t get it, but a vaccinated man means however many partners he has over his life won’t get it from him. again, this assumes that it follows the pattern of it being harder to transmit from vagina to penis than vice versa.)

    if you’re just strictly looking at it from the cancer angle, then again you should be vaccinating everyone, but if you have a shortage, you’d favor vaccinating girls over boys, because the cancer risk is much higher, so you’d get more protection per vaccination, in a way.

    and all of that is academic if there’s enough vaccine to go around. but it says to me that whether you think they should go on to the men once you’ve finished with all the women, or whether you should just mix them from the start, there’s an argument that can be made right and wrong, when you’re speaking in terms of public health policy.

    however, speaking strictly politically, the mixed idea is better, because (and i wish we didn’t have to care about this and could just let public health people do their thing without it being dragged down by politics) it could make the fundies shut the hell up, because of the slut-punishing thing.

    so now the issue is to weigh all of these concerns, and hope that there’s enough vaccine to go around.

39. You know as well as I do that plenty of people in this thread HAVE said, or implied, that vaccinating women first is a bad idea. sophonisba, twoluvcats, and others, for example. What exactly do you think the debate is about? Only a very few people have raised the political angle; almost everyone else is jumping on the ‘no women first’ wagon.

    “Implied” is a far cry from “said,” Sailorman. If you’re going to make claims like that, I’d appreciate some quotes. Because it could just be that you inferred something that wasn’t, in fact, implied.

40. Pingback: Noli Irritare Leones » Blog Archive » Some more HPV vaccine links

41. anyone who works in a health field should know that there’s never an unlimited supply of anything. even if merck made enough doses for every person on earth, someone would have to pay for them, and since we’re having a hard time getting even immediately necessary health care to a large number of people already, i don’t think this is going to be a priority for governments or other health providers.

    what seems more likely to me, if vaccinations are encouraged for men, is that men and women with enough money for insurance are going to be vaccinated, and poor people in rural areas are going to get very little coverage. i don’t think the richer men will be vaccinated at the expense of poor women (because their funding won’t come from the same sources), but poor men might be vaccinated at the expense of poor women (for example, in a first-come-first-served situation, which is common for free clinics). it doesn’t matter how much merck makes, because there is not unlimited available money to get the theoretically unlimited number of vaccinations to all poor people.

42. Sophinisba: Sorry — who exactly passes it on to women, again? A lesbian friend of mine as herpes and she is pretty damn sure it was not a man who gave it to her. Your tone that men are always the source is not appreciated, as it is an STD. As you know, any unprotected sex can result in this transmission. More broadly, I think women should be vaccinated first as they are the most likely to benefit the most. Any reduction in cervical cancer would be welcomed, and if this is the means to an end, so be it.

    You’re saying it’s “politics” to vaccinate men to protect women. Do you not remember saying women should be vaccinated to protect their children? That was politics too, then, was it? You already know this, but it is always POLITICS when the government is involved, even with something like innoculations. Sad, but true.

    Can anyone direct me to a more longitudinal study to look at the ramifications of innoculating so young? i.e. sideeffects, longterm results, does it need a booster after so long [like measles, mumps]etc…? Looking for results 10-20years out if possible.

    I think eventually innoculating men is logical step just to prevent the spread and hopefully erradicate it from most of this country hopefully like polio.

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