14 ms·

HPV vaccination reduces oncogenic HPV16/18 prevalence from 16% to <1% in Denmark

591 points by stared 9mo ago

kasperni 9mo ago
It has really been a great success in Denmark. In the 1960s, more than 900 people were diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, corresponding to more than 40 cases per 100,000 Danes. Today, that number is below 10 per 100,000 nationwide – and among women aged 20 to 29, only 3 out of 100,000 are affected. This is below the WHO’s threshold for elimination of the disease.
garbawarb 9mo ago
> Infection with HPV types covered by the vaccine (HPV16/18) has been almost eliminated. Before vaccination, the prevalence of HPV16/18 was between 15–17%, which has decreased in vaccinated women to < 1% by 2021. However, about one-third of women still had HPV infection with non-vaccine high-risk HPV types, and new infections with these types were more frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated women. I wonder if we'll those non-vaccine strains will eventually become the most prevalent.
- perlgeek 9mo ago
  Sounds like in countries like Denmark, they are already on their way to becoming the most prevalent. Hope we'll develop vaccines against those too.
  - IndrekR 9mo ago
    In my EU country Gardasil 9 is the most common HPV vaccine nowadays. This protects against 9 most common strains. I would assume the same is true in other countries. We have gone from HPV 16/18 -> +6/11 -> +31/33/45/52/58 protection with 2/4/9-valent vaccines. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine
  - LorenPechtel 9mo ago
    The thing is there's not much incentive to develop a vaccine against something that's just a nuisance.
Traubenfuchs 9mo ago
Everyone already knows! HPV vaccination leads to massive reduction in nasopharyngeal, penile and rectal cancer in men. The focus of messaging around HPV vaccination on ovarian cancer, female fertility and the age limitations for recommendations / free vaccination in some places are nothing short of a massive public health failure and almost scandal. Just truthfully tell the boys their dicks might fall off and see how all of them quicklky flock to the vaccine.
- blell 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - port3000 9mo ago
    That's not what they are saying. Read it again.
    - blell 9mo ago
      [flagged]
- spiderfarmer 9mo ago
  [dead]
- nephihaha 9mo ago
  Promiscuity is not a healthy lifestyle and we need to stop presenting it as one. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s should have been enough of a warning. If people don't sleep around then HPV's spread will be much reduced and they will be much less likely to catch other STIs.
  - matthewmacleod 9mo ago
    This adds nothing. It has been repeatedly shown that stupid abstinence-driven approaches to public health do not work. It’s equivalent to saying “maybe the obesity crisis would be solved if we all just ate less”. Moral crusades have zero place in public health and are actively harmful.
coreyh14444 9mo ago
Just a quick point as an American living in Denmark, one of the reasons government programs like this work so well is everything is delivered digitally. We have "e-boks" https://en.digst.dk/systems/digital-post/about-the-national-digital-post/ https://en.digst.dk/systems/digital-post/about-the-national-... official government facilitated inboxes so when they need to notify you of vaccinations or whatever else, it arrives to your inbox. And basically 100% of residents use these systems.
- Muromec 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - nathanaldensr 9mo ago
    In high-trust societies these things work, yes. Not all societies are high-trust. Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors.
    - emil-lp 9mo ago
      > Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors. Citation needed.
      - Forgeties79 9mo ago
        Trump rode to the White House pitching that the government is broken/corrupt and as an outsider he would fix it. A significant part of his appeal is that he was a big middle finger to the establishment and current system writ large. This is well studied, documented, and easy to see in our daily lives. How many campaign ads begin with “the system is broken” or “Washington is out of touch”? Nobody ever lost voters for saying the government isn’t doing enough for them and isn’t trustworthy. You can look at any Gallup or Pew poll or whatever sources you prefer and you will likely see that Americans have been steadily losing trust in their government. It has been in steady decline since the post-war era with some notable brief increases, but they don’t last. >citation needed I disagree as it is incredibly easy information to track down. But here you go anyway: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/12/04/public-trust-in-government-1958-2025/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/12/04/public-trust...
nextos 9mo ago
Lots of viruses are really oncogenic. The real success here is the ability of Denmark to track effectiveness. It sounds crazy but most countries do not have electronic health record capability to measure the effect of many interventions at population scale. Once good EHRs are rolled out, we will be able to double down on effective interventions, like this one, and vice versa.
- spiderfarmer 9mo ago
  Sadly, no matter how good the data is, some societies will value opinions of uninformed celebrities above facts and reason, leading to a resurgence of preventable diseases.
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    These celebrities should serve some jailtime. Quackery is criminal, it kills people.
    - alecco 9mo ago
      Agreed. But we should also stop enabling celebrities when they push popular agendas even if they are correct. For example, climate change.
      - shevy-java 9mo ago
        Celebrities in general are quite dubous. See a certain actor suddenly promoting Palantir spysniffing on mankind. I decided that guy won't get a dime from me for the rest of my life - when actors suddenly become lobbyists for Evil, they need to not get any money from regular people really.
        wang_li 9mo ago
        This is just normal not supporting things you disagree with. It's not a rule of thumb you can quickly use to discount an opinion. Ignoring actors is a pretty handy rule of thumb. Their main skill is repeating someone else's words and emoting. There is no reason to consider them smart, knowledgeable, informed, or competent.
zerofor_conduct 9mo ago
[flagged]
- aniviacat 9mo ago
  > Despite this being clearly shown within the HPV vaccine trials, since testing before vaccination would reduce vaccine sales, it was never recommended within the prescribing guidelines (some groups even said to not test before receiving the vaccine). Citation needed. In Germany, the HPV vaccine is recommended only to below 14 year olds, so as to reduce precisely that risk. https://www.rki.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/DE/Impfen/HPV/FAQ-Liste_HPV_Impfen.html#entry_16870774 https://www.rki.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/DE/Impfen/HPV/FAQ-Liste_H...
m00dy 9mo ago
[flagged]
afarah1 9mo ago
A comment with an article citing published medical literature on risks associated with this type of vaccine was flagged and hidden. Why? I don't know the author nor am I a medical doctor to understand the topic at depth, so it's a genuine question. Was it misleading? If so, how? That's what the comment was asking, actually, if there were counter-points to the text, which was favorable to live vaccines (e.g. shingles) but critical of those developed with other methods. Is there no merit to that? I genuinely don't know, and since it seems impossible to discuss the topic, it's hard to say.
- wpietri 9mo ago
  I sometimes vouch for incorrectly flagged posts. You got me curious, so I took a look. What I found was a blog from an anonymous conspiracist vaccine opponent claiming to be a doctor. He's a decent writer but in my estimation a loon. So I'm fine with it being flagged and decline to vouch for it.
- icegreentea2 9mo ago
  It was a misleading post. For the HPV section specifically, there were at least two major omissions. First, in his table showing autoimmune adverse effects, he has chosen to crop out the next column in the table containing the control conditions - which show very similar rates of adverse effects to the vaccine condition. Secondly, when discussing negative efficacy in the case of existing persistent infection, he only quotes the data from one of three studies that the linked report covers. The linked report indeed covers the negative efficacy in study 013 as an area of concern. However, study 015 (which had roughly twice the number of total participants as study 013) showed no real evidence of negative efficacy. When all 3 studies are pooled together, the point estimate still says negative efficacy, (at ~-12%), however the error bars are quite wide. Why this is tragic, is because these two omissions do actually point to failures in public communication about the vaccine. For example, the control condition in the Merck trials were a mix of saline injections (this is the traditional placebo), as well as injections with just the adjuvant (AAHS). This is less standard, and raises legitimate questions about why Merck used an adjuvant as the control, instead of just saline. There a cynical/conspiratorial angle to this question, which I think would be directionally correct. The second omission is because I think there is a reasonable question of "are there extra risks associated with getting the HPV vaccine while having an active persistence infection", even when taking into account the different and larger study populations within the original trial data. Once again, I think the idea that both companies and public health agencies don't want to deal with a vaccine that requires testing before hand is true. I also believe that on a population level, even if there was a modest increase in risk in that specific subgroup, it makes sense to implement broad vaccination campaigns. That said, I think the unwillingness of public health agencies to engage with this tricky area of communication and education creates these types of opening for anti-vaccine messaging. If you want a sense of "conspiracy" - here's a random review study - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/ Notice that when reporting results, the groupings for HPV status at enrollment time are "naive" and "irrespective" - the "test positive" grouping isn't broken out. EDIT: The article that we're discussing is https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-perils-of-vaccinating-when-you https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-perils-of-vaccinating...
stared 9mo ago
I would like to add: - HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives. Unless you plan to remain completely celibate, you are likely to contract a strain. - Sooner is better, but vaccination can be done at any age. Guidelines often lag behind, but vaccination makes sense even if you are currently HPV-positive. While it won't clear an existing infection, it protects against different strains and reinfection (typically body removed HPV in 1-2 years). See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/ - HPV16 is responsible for a large number of throat cancers (around 50% in smokers and 80% in non-smokers!). This affects both men and women. Vaccinating men is important for their own safety and to reduce transmission to their partners.
- shevy-java 9mo ago
  > Unless you plan to remain completely celibate You can get HPV without sex too. https://www.cdc.gov/sti/about/about-genital-hpv-infection.html https://www.cdc.gov/sti/about/about-genital-hpv-infection.ht... "HPV is most commonly spread during vaginal or anal sex. It also spreads through close skin-to-skin touching during sex" This focuses on sex, but any virus that can be found on skin, also has a chance to be transmitted without sex just as well. Admittedly the chance here for HPV infection is much higher with regard to sex, but not non-zero otherwise. The HeLa cells also contain a HPV virus in the genome, though this was probably transmitted via sex: "The cells are characterized to contain human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18)" HPV-18. I think HPV-18 may in general be more prevalent than HPV-16.
  - downrightmike 9mo ago
    Foot warts are HPV, like from the Gym locker room
    - odie5533 9mo ago
      But they are not HPV16/18 and so not covered by this vaccine.
      - 9mo ago
shevy-java 9mo ago
The data is IMO quite convincing. Harald zur Hausen pointed this out decades ago already; this is another data point that adds to the theory which back then he proposed was fairly new (not that viruses cause cancer, that is much older knowledge, but specifically the role of some HPV strains; Harald died about 2 years ago).
wewewedxfgdf 9mo ago
Do the conspiracy theorists believe it or not?
esafak 9mo ago
At what age can you start getting vaccinated?
- gizmo686 9mo ago
  I don't know about Denmark, but the US CDC indicates that you can get the HPV vaccine starting at 9; with a recommendation do get it at 11 or 12. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.htm...
albatross79 9mo ago
[flagged]
- CalRobert 9mo ago
  Celibacy isn’t great either. Also I’d really prefer my daughters not get cancer no matter their sex lives.
  - actionfromafar 9mo ago
    That last line is key. Not everyone thinks like that, unfortunately.
    - CalRobert 9mo ago
      The weird thing is all these people commenting who seem opposed to vaccination so that people are afraid to have sex. I mean if you support lifelong monogamy or similar sure, you do you, but I don’t think more dead people is a good thing to advocate to promote your lifestyle choice. I used to know a lot more people like that and I swear half of them left the church and had a hoe phase despite earlier professed beliefs.
- jmpman 9mo ago
  You sound like my fellow citizens who have decided to use their theocratic power to push this view across my city and school. It impacts my children and their future mates. Sure, there’s an ideal world in which every person finds their ideal partner on the first time, falls madly in love and remains forever faithful. I don’t live in a Disney fantasy world, and would prefer public health policies are based on pragmatic principles.
  - albatross79 9mo ago
    If you prefer public health policies you prefer the solution for the lowest common denominator.
AnotherGoodName 9mo ago
+$100k per man vaccinated in effective economic outcomes (less cancer, longer lives, less debilitating conditions) for those who needed to hear this. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759438/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759438/ Want to boost the economy massively at next to no cost? HPV vaccinations are incredible.
- frumenty 9mo ago
  I don't think that's what the summary is saying. My reading of the following is that the cost of each additional quality adjusted life year would be over $100,000, rather than that each vaccination prompts $100k in economic value > Including preadolescent boys in a routine vaccination programme for preadolescent girls resulted in higher costs and benefits and generally had cost effectiveness ratios that exceeded $100 000 per QALY across a range of HPV related outcomes, scenarios for cervical cancer screening, and assumptions of vaccine efficacy and duration
jmward01 9mo ago
Absolutely completely off the topic at hand here, but it seems like the bot and troll level goes up a lot on topics like this. A lot of people use HN data for training data, stats analysis, etc. Anyone out there figure out some good tools for trying to detect the bots in a thread like this? There are probably some good tells with throw-away accounts, account age, etc etc. In a world where misinformation is algorithmically generated and comments are a prime way that happens getting tools that can detect it is important. Hmm if there are good tools I wonder if they could be built into a plugin somehow.
andrewmcwatters 9mo ago
The only thing I've never understood about the HPV vaccination is that for some reason after a certain age as an adult in the United States, no primary care provider appears to recommend you get it in addition to your regular vaccination schedule. Is the idea that you're married and have a single partner and the risk factor has dropped below a certain percentage of the population where there's little reason to recommend getting it if the likelihood is that you've already acquired HPV in your lifetime thus far? Every other vaccination appears to be straightforward, besides HPV, and I don't know why. I've also never heard a clear answer from a physician. Is it just that our vaccination schedules are out of date in the United States? This seems to be the most likely culprit to me.
- icegreentea2 9mo ago
  Here's the CDC's most recent recommendations (from 2019) https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6832a3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6832a3.htm The justification for 27-45 year olds heavily references a meeting. Based on time, author and title, I think either https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/78082/cdc_78082_DS1.pdf https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/78082/cdc_78082_DS1.pdf or https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10395540/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10395540/ should be a fair summary of the meeting (I hope...). I don't really have time to read it all, but the basic idea is as you said - the cost-benefit ratio is off. Basically expanding from something like the current case, to vaccinating up to 45 year old will avert an extra 21k cases of cancer (compared to the base case of 1.4 million) - so about an extra 1.5% cases averted, while the direct vaccination costs are estimated to increase from 44 billion to 57 billion (+29%). The current guidance says "do not recommend" plus "consult your doctor". You should read that as "blanket vaccination as public policy is cost inefficient in that age range" not "you as a 45 year old should not get the vaccine categorically".
  - andrewmcwatters 9mo ago
    [dead]
- LorenPechtel 9mo ago
  It wasn't tested in those over 45, thus it is not approved over 45. Doesn't stop off-label use, but means it's not going to be on any schedules.
nullorempty 9mo ago
[flagged]
michaelcampbell 9mo ago
We got my son vaxxed for this when he was able, and the doctor doing it was quite reluctant to do it. (US; ~2001)
arjie 9mo ago
I don’t get it. Everyone online gives advice like “Ask your doctor to get the vaccine even if you’re male” but the pharmacies here in SF refused to give it to me. They said that it’s not indicated for a 35+ yo male. So I get the theory of this thing. But has anyone actually tried this? Finally I got OneMedical to prescribe it for me for some $1.2k at which point I decided I’ll just get it abroad during some planned travel. I decided years ago I’d do this because I was going to have girls and I wanted to minimize my daughters’ risk of cancer.
- ljsprague 9mo ago
  How did you know you were going to have girls?
  - arjie 9mo ago
    Carrier screening revealed a shared genetic risk so my wife and I decided to do IVF and PGT qualified our female embryos as unaffected (coincidentally, it’s autosomal recessive). If you want to read more: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF
- slackerIII 9mo ago
  Just sign up for it at costco online.
  - arjie 9mo ago
    Oh, that's much less: $300/dose and there's 3 doses. So that's $900 roughly. Thank you.
    - Faaak 9mo ago
      Holy cow. In France it's like 3 times less (https://base-donnees-publique.medicaments.gouv.fr/medicament/65017887/extrait https://base-donnees-publique.medicaments.gouv.fr/medicament...).
maerF0x0 9mo ago
Another angle of why vaccinating men is important is because gay men (or more precisely those who participate in oral-penile or penile-anal sex) are at risk for these cancers, but if we only vaccinate women then we do not protect this group of men. Also on my soapbox it's an absolute absurdity that we still do not have any HPV test for men.
nomel 9mo ago
This is one of the many reasons I think medicine is full of people who are good at memorizing but are outright stupid when it comes to problem solving and logic.
- nomel 9mo ago
  I wanted an HPV vaccine when i was younger. As a male, I was told "no", even though it causes the most common throat cancer in men, and was linked to prostate cancer. Stupid.
jrks11o 9mo ago
plagueinc
brewcejener 9mo ago
[dead]
audunf 9mo ago
Anecdote time (and some info from real life EMTs and Oncologist). I just recently “won” the cancer lottery related to this. Never had the HPV vaccine. Honestly thought it was only for young girls (didn’t spare topic a thought, zero time investigating). 80-90% of adults gets some form of HPV during lifetime. Often several strains. Each have different risks of cancer. Even if you’re married - if you or your partner experience a severely stressful period- it might reactivate. Most people’s immune systems clears HPV, and makes it dormant. (Mine likely doesn’t see HPV as a threat. Long term (10y+?) exposure to active HPV cause cancer. If you can, at least do your very best to avoid the cancer nightmare. Take the vaccine. Worst case it protects you from being a vector. It’s an imperfect insurance from 3-4 months in/out of hospitals, scans, blood work, from chronic dry mouth,all food tasting very bad, issues with energy, possible bone death (that you suddenly have to monitor every day for the test. Oh, and any alcohol or smoking after having had this increases risk of recurrence by 30-50%
strideashort 9mo ago
Title is misleading > Among the 859 unvaccinated women, HPV16/18 prevalence was 6%, 5%, and 6% and > However, about one-third of women still had HPV infection with non-vaccine high-risk HPV types, and new infections with these types were more frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated women. so… real summary is “hpv vaccination correlates with lower infection for vaccine specific HPV strain, but does not impact / potentially worsens overall high-risk HPV infections” so what exactly is solved here, supposedly? not to mention, the study does not compare helth outcomes, which is the only meaningful measure.
- icegreentea2 9mo ago
  I believe HPV16/18 were considered the highest risk (in terms of causing cancer), even amongst all the other high risk HPV strains. In the intro, they state that prior to the start of the vaccination campaign 74% of cervical cancer cases in Denmark were HPV16/18, and the other 26% from the non-vaccine HR HPV strains. Following through to the referenced paper, in their study they found 20.5% of overall patients had HR HPV, with 5.4% and 2.4% with HPV16 and/or 18. However, for cancer cases, they found that 40% of cases had HPV16, and 33% had HPV18 (note that multiple simultaneous strains are possible). There's a lot in the paper to summarize, but I think it makes a reasonable argument that HPV16/18 are especially high risk, and that "simple" replacement of the 5% HPV16/18 with another 5% of any of the other HR HPV strains would be beneficial. The linked paper suggests up to 74% (depending on your assumptions) reduction in cancer with "simple replacement".
SA128009 9mo ago
First hand experience here, 6 years ago I had tonsil cancer from HPV16. It SUUUCKED. Doing well now though thank god. I’ve had a hard time getting decent info even from my oncology team in the years since as to whether I should even consider getting the vaccine now. I am 45, married and my wife of 5 years (yes we went through all of that while engaged) has gotten her series of shots 3 years ago. I have heard from my Drs that as obviously I have already had at least the one strain, there isn’t really a point in getting the shots now. Is there any newer info regarding this semi specific situation that anyone is aware of?
lynnryann 9mo ago
[dead]

591 points by stared 9mo ago

It has really been a great success in Denmark. In the 1960s, more than 900 people were diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, corresponding to more than 40 cases per 100,000 Danes. Today, that number is below 10 per 100,000 nationwide – and among women aged 20 to 29, only 3 out of 100,000 are affected. This is below the WHO’s threshold for elimination of the disease.

garbawarb 9mo ago

> Infection with HPV types covered by the vaccine (HPV16/18) has been almost eliminated. Before vaccination, the prevalence of HPV16/18 was between 15–17%, which has decreased in vaccinated women to < 1% by 2021. However, about one-third of women still had HPV infection with non-vaccine high-risk HPV types, and new infections with these types were more frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated women. I wonder if we'll those non-vaccine strains will eventually become the most prevalent.

perlgeek 9mo ago
Sounds like in countries like Denmark, they are already on their way to becoming the most prevalent. Hope we'll develop vaccines against those too.
- IndrekR 9mo ago
  In my EU country Gardasil 9 is the most common HPV vaccine nowadays. This protects against 9 most common strains. I would assume the same is true in other countries. We have gone from HPV 16/18 -> +6/11 -> +31/33/45/52/58 protection with 2/4/9-valent vaccines. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine
- LorenPechtel 9mo ago
  The thing is there's not much incentive to develop a vaccine against something that's just a nuisance.

Traubenfuchs 9mo ago

Everyone already knows! HPV vaccination leads to massive reduction in nasopharyngeal, penile and rectal cancer in men. The focus of messaging around HPV vaccination on ovarian cancer, female fertility and the age limitations for recommendations / free vaccination in some places are nothing short of a massive public health failure and almost scandal. Just truthfully tell the boys their dicks might fall off and see how all of them quicklky flock to the vaccine.

blell 9mo ago
[flagged]
- port3000 9mo ago
  That's not what they are saying. Read it again.
  - blell 9mo ago
    [flagged]
spiderfarmer 9mo ago
[dead]
nephihaha 9mo ago
Promiscuity is not a healthy lifestyle and we need to stop presenting it as one. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s should have been enough of a warning. If people don't sleep around then HPV's spread will be much reduced and they will be much less likely to catch other STIs.
- matthewmacleod 9mo ago
  This adds nothing. It has been repeatedly shown that stupid abstinence-driven approaches to public health do not work. It’s equivalent to saying “maybe the obesity crisis would be solved if we all just ate less”. Moral crusades have zero place in public health and are actively harmful.

coreyh14444 9mo ago

Just a quick point as an American living in Denmark, one of the reasons government programs like this work so well is everything is delivered digitally. We have "e-boks" https://en.digst.dk/systems/digital-post/about-the-national-digital-post/ https://en.digst.dk/systems/digital-post/about-the-national-... official government facilitated inboxes so when they need to notify you of vaccinations or whatever else, it arrives to your inbox. And basically 100% of residents use these systems.

Muromec 9mo ago
[flagged]
- nathanaldensr 9mo ago
  In high-trust societies these things work, yes. Not all societies are high-trust. Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors.
  - emil-lp 9mo ago
    > Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors. Citation needed.
    - Forgeties79 9mo ago
      Trump rode to the White House pitching that the government is broken/corrupt and as an outsider he would fix it. A significant part of his appeal is that he was a big middle finger to the establishment and current system writ large. This is well studied, documented, and easy to see in our daily lives. How many campaign ads begin with “the system is broken” or “Washington is out of touch”? Nobody ever lost voters for saying the government isn’t doing enough for them and isn’t trustworthy. You can look at any Gallup or Pew poll or whatever sources you prefer and you will likely see that Americans have been steadily losing trust in their government. It has been in steady decline since the post-war era with some notable brief increases, but they don’t last. >citation needed I disagree as it is incredibly easy information to track down. But here you go anyway: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/12/04/public-trust-in-government-1958-2025/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/12/04/public-trust...

nextos 9mo ago

Lots of viruses are really oncogenic. The real success here is the ability of Denmark to track effectiveness. It sounds crazy but most countries do not have electronic health record capability to measure the effect of many interventions at population scale. Once good EHRs are rolled out, we will be able to double down on effective interventions, like this one, and vice versa.

spiderfarmer 9mo ago
Sadly, no matter how good the data is, some societies will value opinions of uninformed celebrities above facts and reason, leading to a resurgence of preventable diseases.
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  These celebrities should serve some jailtime. Quackery is criminal, it kills people.
  - alecco 9mo ago
    Agreed. But we should also stop enabling celebrities when they push popular agendas even if they are correct. For example, climate change.
    - shevy-java 9mo ago
      Celebrities in general are quite dubous. See a certain actor suddenly promoting Palantir spysniffing on mankind. I decided that guy won't get a dime from me for the rest of my life - when actors suddenly become lobbyists for Evil, they need to not get any money from regular people really.
      - wang_li 9mo ago
        This is just normal not supporting things you disagree with. It's not a rule of thumb you can quickly use to discount an opinion. Ignoring actors is a pretty handy rule of thumb. Their main skill is repeating someone else's words and emoting. There is no reason to consider them smart, knowledgeable, informed, or competent.

zerofor_conduct 9mo ago

[flagged]

aniviacat 9mo ago
> Despite this being clearly shown within the HPV vaccine trials, since testing before vaccination would reduce vaccine sales, it was never recommended within the prescribing guidelines (some groups even said to not test before receiving the vaccine). Citation needed. In Germany, the HPV vaccine is recommended only to below 14 year olds, so as to reduce precisely that risk. https://www.rki.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/DE/Impfen/HPV/FAQ-Liste_HPV_Impfen.html#entry_16870774 https://www.rki.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/DE/Impfen/HPV/FAQ-Liste_H...

m00dy 9mo ago

[flagged]

afarah1 9mo ago

A comment with an article citing published medical literature on risks associated with this type of vaccine was flagged and hidden. Why? I don't know the author nor am I a medical doctor to understand the topic at depth, so it's a genuine question. Was it misleading? If so, how? That's what the comment was asking, actually, if there were counter-points to the text, which was favorable to live vaccines (e.g. shingles) but critical of those developed with other methods. Is there no merit to that? I genuinely don't know, and since it seems impossible to discuss the topic, it's hard to say.

wpietri 9mo ago
I sometimes vouch for incorrectly flagged posts. You got me curious, so I took a look. What I found was a blog from an anonymous conspiracist vaccine opponent claiming to be a doctor. He's a decent writer but in my estimation a loon. So I'm fine with it being flagged and decline to vouch for it.
icegreentea2 9mo ago
It was a misleading post. For the HPV section specifically, there were at least two major omissions. First, in his table showing autoimmune adverse effects, he has chosen to crop out the next column in the table containing the control conditions - which show very similar rates of adverse effects to the vaccine condition. Secondly, when discussing negative efficacy in the case of existing persistent infection, he only quotes the data from one of three studies that the linked report covers. The linked report indeed covers the negative efficacy in study 013 as an area of concern. However, study 015 (which had roughly twice the number of total participants as study 013) showed no real evidence of negative efficacy. When all 3 studies are pooled together, the point estimate still says negative efficacy, (at ~-12%), however the error bars are quite wide. Why this is tragic, is because these two omissions do actually point to failures in public communication about the vaccine. For example, the control condition in the Merck trials were a mix of saline injections (this is the traditional placebo), as well as injections with just the adjuvant (AAHS). This is less standard, and raises legitimate questions about why Merck used an adjuvant as the control, instead of just saline. There a cynical/conspiratorial angle to this question, which I think would be directionally correct. The second omission is because I think there is a reasonable question of "are there extra risks associated with getting the HPV vaccine while having an active persistence infection", even when taking into account the different and larger study populations within the original trial data. Once again, I think the idea that both companies and public health agencies don't want to deal with a vaccine that requires testing before hand is true. I also believe that on a population level, even if there was a modest increase in risk in that specific subgroup, it makes sense to implement broad vaccination campaigns. That said, I think the unwillingness of public health agencies to engage with this tricky area of communication and education creates these types of opening for anti-vaccine messaging. If you want a sense of "conspiracy" - here's a random review study - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/ Notice that when reporting results, the groupings for HPV status at enrollment time are "naive" and "irrespective" - the "test positive" grouping isn't broken out. EDIT: The article that we're discussing is https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-perils-of-vaccinating-when-you https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-perils-of-vaccinating...

stared 9mo ago

I would like to add: - HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives. Unless you plan to remain completely celibate, you are likely to contract a strain. - Sooner is better, but vaccination can be done at any age. Guidelines often lag behind, but vaccination makes sense even if you are currently HPV-positive. While it won't clear an existing infection, it protects against different strains and reinfection (typically body removed HPV in 1-2 years). See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/ - HPV16 is responsible for a large number of throat cancers (around 50% in smokers and 80% in non-smokers!). This affects both men and women. Vaccinating men is important for their own safety and to reduce transmission to their partners.

shevy-java 9mo ago
> Unless you plan to remain completely celibate You can get HPV without sex too. https://www.cdc.gov/sti/about/about-genital-hpv-infection.html https://www.cdc.gov/sti/about/about-genital-hpv-infection.ht... "HPV is most commonly spread during vaginal or anal sex. It also spreads through close skin-to-skin touching during sex" This focuses on sex, but any virus that can be found on skin, also has a chance to be transmitted without sex just as well. Admittedly the chance here for HPV infection is much higher with regard to sex, but not non-zero otherwise. The HeLa cells also contain a HPV virus in the genome, though this was probably transmitted via sex: "The cells are characterized to contain human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18)" HPV-18. I think HPV-18 may in general be more prevalent than HPV-16.
- downrightmike 9mo ago
  Foot warts are HPV, like from the Gym locker room
  - odie5533 9mo ago
    But they are not HPV16/18 and so not covered by this vaccine.
    - 9mo ago

shevy-java 9mo ago

The data is IMO quite convincing. Harald zur Hausen pointed this out decades ago already; this is another data point that adds to the theory which back then he proposed was fairly new (not that viruses cause cancer, that is much older knowledge, but specifically the role of some HPV strains; Harald died about 2 years ago).

wewewedxfgdf 9mo ago

Do the conspiracy theorists believe it or not?

esafak 9mo ago

At what age can you start getting vaccinated?

gizmo686 9mo ago
I don't know about Denmark, but the US CDC indicates that you can get the HPV vaccine starting at 9; with a recommendation do get it at 11 or 12. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.htm...

albatross79 9mo ago

[flagged]

CalRobert 9mo ago
Celibacy isn’t great either. Also I’d really prefer my daughters not get cancer no matter their sex lives.
- actionfromafar 9mo ago
  That last line is key. Not everyone thinks like that, unfortunately.
  - CalRobert 9mo ago
    The weird thing is all these people commenting who seem opposed to vaccination so that people are afraid to have sex. I mean if you support lifelong monogamy or similar sure, you do you, but I don’t think more dead people is a good thing to advocate to promote your lifestyle choice. I used to know a lot more people like that and I swear half of them left the church and had a hoe phase despite earlier professed beliefs.
jmpman 9mo ago
You sound like my fellow citizens who have decided to use their theocratic power to push this view across my city and school. It impacts my children and their future mates. Sure, there’s an ideal world in which every person finds their ideal partner on the first time, falls madly in love and remains forever faithful. I don’t live in a Disney fantasy world, and would prefer public health policies are based on pragmatic principles.
- albatross79 9mo ago
  If you prefer public health policies you prefer the solution for the lowest common denominator.

AnotherGoodName 9mo ago

+$100k per man vaccinated in effective economic outcomes (less cancer, longer lives, less debilitating conditions) for those who needed to hear this. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759438/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759438/ Want to boost the economy massively at next to no cost? HPV vaccinations are incredible.

frumenty 9mo ago
I don't think that's what the summary is saying. My reading of the following is that the cost of each additional quality adjusted life year would be over $100,000, rather than that each vaccination prompts $100k in economic value > Including preadolescent boys in a routine vaccination programme for preadolescent girls resulted in higher costs and benefits and generally had cost effectiveness ratios that exceeded $100 000 per QALY across a range of HPV related outcomes, scenarios for cervical cancer screening, and assumptions of vaccine efficacy and duration

jmward01 9mo ago

Absolutely completely off the topic at hand here, but it seems like the bot and troll level goes up a lot on topics like this. A lot of people use HN data for training data, stats analysis, etc. Anyone out there figure out some good tools for trying to detect the bots in a thread like this? There are probably some good tells with throw-away accounts, account age, etc etc. In a world where misinformation is algorithmically generated and comments are a prime way that happens getting tools that can detect it is important. Hmm if there are good tools I wonder if they could be built into a plugin somehow.

andrewmcwatters 9mo ago

The only thing I've never understood about the HPV vaccination is that for some reason after a certain age as an adult in the United States, no primary care provider appears to recommend you get it in addition to your regular vaccination schedule. Is the idea that you're married and have a single partner and the risk factor has dropped below a certain percentage of the population where there's little reason to recommend getting it if the likelihood is that you've already acquired HPV in your lifetime thus far? Every other vaccination appears to be straightforward, besides HPV, and I don't know why. I've also never heard a clear answer from a physician. Is it just that our vaccination schedules are out of date in the United States? This seems to be the most likely culprit to me.

icegreentea2 9mo ago
Here's the CDC's most recent recommendations (from 2019) https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6832a3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6832a3.htm The justification for 27-45 year olds heavily references a meeting. Based on time, author and title, I think either https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/78082/cdc_78082_DS1.pdf https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/78082/cdc_78082_DS1.pdf or https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10395540/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10395540/ should be a fair summary of the meeting (I hope...). I don't really have time to read it all, but the basic idea is as you said - the cost-benefit ratio is off. Basically expanding from something like the current case, to vaccinating up to 45 year old will avert an extra 21k cases of cancer (compared to the base case of 1.4 million) - so about an extra 1.5% cases averted, while the direct vaccination costs are estimated to increase from 44 billion to 57 billion (+29%). The current guidance says "do not recommend" plus "consult your doctor". You should read that as "blanket vaccination as public policy is cost inefficient in that age range" not "you as a 45 year old should not get the vaccine categorically".
- andrewmcwatters 9mo ago
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LorenPechtel 9mo ago
It wasn't tested in those over 45, thus it is not approved over 45. Doesn't stop off-label use, but means it's not going to be on any schedules.

nullorempty 9mo ago

[flagged]

michaelcampbell 9mo ago

We got my son vaxxed for this when he was able, and the doctor doing it was quite reluctant to do it. (US; ~2001)

arjie 9mo ago

I don’t get it. Everyone online gives advice like “Ask your doctor to get the vaccine even if you’re male” but the pharmacies here in SF refused to give it to me. They said that it’s not indicated for a 35+ yo male. So I get the theory of this thing. But has anyone actually tried this? Finally I got OneMedical to prescribe it for me for some $1.2k at which point I decided I’ll just get it abroad during some planned travel. I decided years ago I’d do this because I was going to have girls and I wanted to minimize my daughters’ risk of cancer.

ljsprague 9mo ago
How did you know you were going to have girls?
- arjie 9mo ago
  Carrier screening revealed a shared genetic risk so my wife and I decided to do IVF and PGT qualified our female embryos as unaffected (coincidentally, it’s autosomal recessive). If you want to read more: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF
slackerIII 9mo ago
Just sign up for it at costco online.
- arjie 9mo ago
  Oh, that's much less: $300/dose and there's 3 doses. So that's $900 roughly. Thank you.
  - Faaak 9mo ago
    Holy cow. In France it's like 3 times less (https://base-donnees-publique.medicaments.gouv.fr/medicament/65017887/extrait https://base-donnees-publique.medicaments.gouv.fr/medicament...).

maerF0x0 9mo ago

Another angle of why vaccinating men is important is because gay men (or more precisely those who participate in oral-penile or penile-anal sex) are at risk for these cancers, but if we only vaccinate women then we do not protect this group of men. Also on my soapbox it's an absolute absurdity that we still do not have any HPV test for men.

nomel 9mo ago

This is one of the many reasons I think medicine is full of people who are good at memorizing but are outright stupid when it comes to problem solving and logic.

nomel 9mo ago
I wanted an HPV vaccine when i was younger. As a male, I was told "no", even though it causes the most common throat cancer in men, and was linked to prostate cancer. Stupid.

jrks11o 9mo ago

plagueinc

brewcejener 9mo ago

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audunf 9mo ago

Anecdote time (and some info from real life EMTs and Oncologist). I just recently “won” the cancer lottery related to this. Never had the HPV vaccine. Honestly thought it was only for young girls (didn’t spare topic a thought, zero time investigating). 80-90% of adults gets some form of HPV during lifetime. Often several strains. Each have different risks of cancer. Even if you’re married - if you or your partner experience a severely stressful period- it might reactivate. Most people’s immune systems clears HPV, and makes it dormant. (Mine likely doesn’t see HPV as a threat. Long term (10y+?) exposure to active HPV cause cancer. If you can, at least do your very best to avoid the cancer nightmare. Take the vaccine. Worst case it protects you from being a vector. It’s an imperfect insurance from 3-4 months in/out of hospitals, scans, blood work, from chronic dry mouth,all food tasting very bad, issues with energy, possible bone death (that you suddenly have to monitor every day for the test. Oh, and any alcohol or smoking after having had this increases risk of recurrence by 30-50%

strideashort 9mo ago

Title is misleading > Among the 859 unvaccinated women, HPV16/18 prevalence was 6%, 5%, and 6% and > However, about one-third of women still had HPV infection with non-vaccine high-risk HPV types, and new infections with these types were more frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated women. so… real summary is “hpv vaccination correlates with lower infection for vaccine specific HPV strain, but does not impact / potentially worsens overall high-risk HPV infections” so what exactly is solved here, supposedly? not to mention, the study does not compare helth outcomes, which is the only meaningful measure.

icegreentea2 9mo ago
I believe HPV16/18 were considered the highest risk (in terms of causing cancer), even amongst all the other high risk HPV strains. In the intro, they state that prior to the start of the vaccination campaign 74% of cervical cancer cases in Denmark were HPV16/18, and the other 26% from the non-vaccine HR HPV strains. Following through to the referenced paper, in their study they found 20.5% of overall patients had HR HPV, with 5.4% and 2.4% with HPV16 and/or 18. However, for cancer cases, they found that 40% of cases had HPV16, and 33% had HPV18 (note that multiple simultaneous strains are possible). There's a lot in the paper to summarize, but I think it makes a reasonable argument that HPV16/18 are especially high risk, and that "simple" replacement of the 5% HPV16/18 with another 5% of any of the other HR HPV strains would be beneficial. The linked paper suggests up to 74% (depending on your assumptions) reduction in cancer with "simple replacement".

SA128009 9mo ago

First hand experience here, 6 years ago I had tonsil cancer from HPV16. It SUUUCKED. Doing well now though thank god. I’ve had a hard time getting decent info even from my oncology team in the years since as to whether I should even consider getting the vaccine now. I am 45, married and my wife of 5 years (yes we went through all of that while engaged) has gotten her series of shots 3 years ago. I have heard from my Drs that as obviously I have already had at least the one strain, there isn’t really a point in getting the shots now. Is there any newer info regarding this semi specific situation that anyone is aware of?

lynnryann 9mo ago

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