7 ms·

HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30

246 points by toomuchtodo 5mo ago

apothegm 5mo ago
From what risk level without them? How many people actually die of cervical cancer before age 30?? I mean, vaccinations and cancer prevention are both great, but this headline is ridiculous.
- comrade1234 5mo ago
  Your questions are sort-of answered in the article. 3300 die each year of cervical cancer in the uk. So at 0% it saves 3300 lives per year. However the vaccination is fairly new so they have to wait longer to see if it applies 20-years, 30-years, etc later. I assume it would though.
  - lithocarpus 5mo ago
    Parent's question isn't answered in the article - no figure is given for how many deaths under 30 there are as a baseline. From the article: “We estimate that since its introduction [in 2008], HPV vaccination has prevented nearly 200 young women from dying from cervical cancer in England.” This is an estimate of 200 total of any age total across 18 years. The article doesn't say 3300 die each year, 3300 are diagnosed each year.
    - estebank 5mo ago
      The BBC article had that more comparable information: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c621z28z138o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c621z28z138o > Between 2020 and 2024, no cervical cancer deaths were recorded in women aged 20 to 24 - the first time that had happened over a five-year period. > Without vaccination, around 23 deaths would have been expected. Note the first chart in the link showing the historical trend for the 20-24 cohort since 2000 plumetting from 25 to 0.
      - apparent 5mo ago
        Out of curiosity, have there been any other advances in medicine that would make it less likely that women would die from cervical cancer before hitting 30? I don't keep up on oncology developments, but I assume that this particular shot is not the only thing that has reduced cervical cancer deaths in women under 30. If they were looking at rates of acquiring cancer, that would be more focused on this intervention.
        estebank 5mo ago
        I'm not a doctor and certainly not an oncologist. The CDC mentions that not smoking and wearing condoms also lower the risk. https://www.cdc.gov/cervical-cancer/prevention/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/cervical-cancer/prevention/index.html Anecdotally people smoke less thant they uses to. Don't know what condom usage rates have done in the past quarter century. > I assume that this particular shot is not the only thing that has reduced cervical cancer deaths in women under 30. Why would you assume that when presented with a study that tracks with long standing belief in the medical community that the HPV vaccine works? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00918-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
        apparent 5mo ago
        > Why would you assume that when presented with a study that tracks with long standing belief in the medical community that the HPV vaccine works? Because cancer interventions have moved forward in general?
- pfdietz 5mo ago
  The estimated number of deaths from cervical cancer in the US in 2026 is 4,200. The death rate is 2.2 per 100,000 people down from 3.1 per 100,000 in 1992. If we multiply 3.1e-5 by 50 years that's about a 0.15% chance of dying of this cancer. The HPV shots cost $500-1000 for the three shots, so the cost per life saved is about $650K. With the statistical value of a human life being about $12M this is quite cost effective. I'm assuming the reduction in death continues to later in life after 30, but that's a reasonable assumption, IMO.
  - Gigachad 5mo ago
    Even if you just consider all of those 4000 + survivors would have got treatment for the cancer after getting it which costs far more than a vaccine.
    - cma 5mo ago
      Yep and significantly more than the death count would have needed expensive treatment and be out of the workforce for a time or permanently. Also the charged price isn't real cost to the economy. If they have a big margin on it after fixed research/approval expenses lots of it feeds back into the economy through taxes and dividends/reinvestment in other drug development. Beyond death, it can also cause sterility and people may end up with extremely expensive IVF surrogacy pregnancies etc.
  - TZubiri 5mo ago
    Good calc, here's some other benefits. herd immunity: Vaccines benefit even those that don't take the vaccine now. eradication effects: vaccines benefit those that don't take the vaccine in the future. fertility increase: non lethal cervical cancer can cause inability to get pregnant or carry a pregnancy to term. I don't know if it can cause birth defects. Life Years: Early deaths save more Life Years than diseases that protect against later disease. Quality Adjusted Life Years: Very nuanced, and I don't know how HPV cancers compare against the baseline of QALY. But being a vaccine that prevents, the Quality of life gained should be 100%, which would compare positively to treatments that do not cure completely
  - 5mo ago
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > From what risk level without them? “Approximately 0.6 percent of women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer at some point during their lifetime, based on 2021–2023 data” [1]. Given “reports of serious health issues after HPV vaccination were consistently rare—around 1.8 per 100,000 HPV vaccine doses, or 0.0018%” [2], a woman suffers a 300x higher hazard (assuming we measure a serious vaccine reaction as being equivalent to cancer, which is silly) from going unvaccinated. > How many people actually die of cervical cancer before age 30? 4,462 young women under the age of 30 died of cervical cancer in 2022 worldwide [3]. [1] https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cervix.html https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cervix.html [2] https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/hpv-vaccine-parents-safety-concerns https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021... [3] https://gco.iarc.who.int/today/en/dataviz/pie?mode=population&group_populations=0&types=1&sexes=2&age_end=5 https://gco.iarc.who.int/today/en/dataviz/pie?mode=populatio... Mortality, cervix uteri, females, 0 to 29
  - moralestapia 5mo ago
    Thanks for the data. 4,462 out of the whole population (of women etc.). Would you subjectively describe that number as "almost zero"?
    - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
      > Would you subjectively describe that number as "almost zero"? Sure. If the only effect were on under-30s, this wouldn’t be a great vaccine. What 5,000 people is good for, however, is confidently measuring decline in a cohort. Zero deaths, even against a baseline of tens, strongly implies this should cross into the tend or hundreds of thousands over the next decades in populations that keep vaccination rates up.
      - somenameforme 5mo ago
        Looking at healthcare stuff globally is misleading because of Africa. The ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic there makes death rates for anything that HIV/AIDS can contribute to highly malinformative. For instance in southern Africa, more than 60% of women with cervical cancer also have HIV. [1] Oddly enough I can't find exact death rates from cervical cancer paired amongst those who had HIV/AIDS but this [2] hints at it, with 90% of all cervical cancer deaths coming in low/middle income countries, and with the "highest burden" (plurality I guess?) coming from sub-Saharan Africa where rates of HIV are the highest. [2] [1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7815633/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7815633/ [2] - hhttps://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2019/may/20190531_cervical-cancer-hiv https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestori...
- Arodex 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - apparent 5mo ago
    So 5 deaths across 3 years? Doesn't seem worth a headline, especially since it could literally just be noise in the data. Also, no need to post snarkily about LMGTFY. TFA should have included the base rate, and the fact that it didn't signals that it's not much of a reduction. It also signals that the journalist who wrote it is more in it for clicks than conveying accurate information.
    - Arodex 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - apparent 5mo ago
        The linked chart shows that there were none in the 20-24 age range during the during the recent few years. Is the entire population vaccinated? If not (the article doesn't claim this), then the fact that no one in that age range died (and only 5 in the entire under-30 cohort) tends to indicate that it was not a very high base rate. Are there other sources that show data going back to the 1970s? Probably! I didn't go searching for them. I looked at what was linked above and saw there were very few. As I said, the Guardian journalist didn't include a base rate, which surely would have been included if it bolstered the argument. EDIT: I just scrolled down further and saw that even the chart that shows trends over time (which I hadn't seen before, having stopped scrolling earlier) doesn't support your point. It shows there were roughly .2 deaths per year per 100k. Not having any deaths in 20-24 for 3 years is not a statistically significant difference, I would imagine, than the .2 figure. Also, there are undoubtedly other cancer-related advances that have made it less likely that a young woman would die of any kind of cancer. And the data regarding under-30 deaths is muddled because the next bucket up is 25-34, and we don't know what it is up to 29. Lastly, at the bottom there's this disclaimer, which makes it even harder to tell what's going on with small numbers: > Note: Non-zero counts of 5 or less are suppressed and presented as 5. If you have another source, please feel free to share. What we've seen so far (nothing in TFA, nothing of import in the commenter's linked data) isn't remotely compelling.
- dennis_jeeves2 5mo ago
  >From what risk level without them? How many people actually die of cervical cancer before age 30?? They will downplay that number or exaggerate it.
  - Ardren 5mo ago
    They? I had no idea HN had so many cookers.
eek2121 5mo ago
Just a note: the article focuses on the ladies, but men should absolutely get it as well because it cuts risk for other types of cancers. I was looking for a better link, however this is the only one I found (I had an older one saved, however I can't find it): https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/health/hpv-men-vaccine-cancer-wellness https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/health/hpv-men-vaccine-cancer...
- m101 5mo ago
  yes! Apparently the rate of penile and throat cancer occurs at only half the rate in men as it does as cervical cancer in women, but the harm caused by the male versions of the cancer are worse, so in actual fact it may overall cause more harm in the male population.
  - TZubiri 5mo ago
    My bet is that it has to do with the mechanics of receptive vaginal and oral sex, the penis just reaches deeper and causes more lesions. Compared to insertive vaginal sex and oral vaginal performance, those lesions would be less frequent and on more distal parts of the body. If the rate is 50%, I'd also expect MSM to be overrepresented there, which would make the difference of risk between heterosexual sex even more imbalanced.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- stbenjam 5mo ago
  For some reason not really talked about in mainstream medicine for straight men. It makes no sense. Very safe vaccine and you're eligible into your 40's to get it. Everyone sexually active probably has some strains but not all.
  - apparent 5mo ago
    Yeah, not everyone.
alistairSH 5mo ago
Reducing deaths is great, but shouldn’t they also mention the reduction in treatment (which is usually surgical or chemo, both of which are massively expensive, traumatic, and life altering in negative ways).
- apparent 5mo ago
  They could do that, but given how low the base rate is, the reduction in number of procedures (and the resulting negative impacts on the women) would be incredibly low. It seems the base rate for cervical cancer deaths under 30 was already near zero.
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > given how low the base rate is, the reduction in number of procedures (and the resulting negative impacts on the women) would be incredibly low Correct. These data are more a preview of what we can expect to see as the vaccinated cohort (in countries that aren’t pro-disease) advances in age.
    - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
      Indeed, Australia will be one of the first countries to eliminate cervical cancer (by 2035) due to their HPV vaccine vaccination uptake rates. Two decades to get here, one to go. https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp/media/australia-on-track-to-eliminate-cervical-cancer-by-2035 https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13036706/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13036706/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0098299725000871 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009829972... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6w15vgp7lo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6w15vgp7lo
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
  - Arodex 5mo ago
AngryData 5mo ago
Glad to see it, except it is still a sensationalist headline IMO because HPV deaths, and specifically below 30 years old, is already extremely low.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- Arodex 5mo ago
  As mentioned already several times in the comments, there is also a long tail of people who survive but after a grueling and costly treatment that disrupt their lives.
  - giantg2 5mo ago
    What are the numbers on that post vaccine vs pre vaccine?
- pfdietz 5mo ago
  The vaccine presumably also protects those getting it when they are older, but the data doesn't show that yet. Still, if it does (as seems reasonable) then the benefit is even larger.
- mixdup 5mo ago
  Whether it was low or not, the fact that we've been able to effectively cure a certain kind of cancer with a vaccine is a pretty big deal
- perching_aix 5mo ago
  > except it is still a sensationalist headline If you take it in terms of absolute risk rather than relative risk, even though it's very clearly the latter as always, sure. Sometimes it's not on the writer, but the reader. Important context, sure, but it was plenty clear what was being meant.
- rzzzt 5mo ago
  My issue with it is a missing "in mice"-style qualifier, but this time it is of the geographical nature. The study is focusing on England: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/news/latest-news/2026/medicine-and-dentistry/fmd/cervical-cancer-deaths-plummet-to-record-low-thanks-to-hpv-vaccine.html https://www.qmul.ac.uk/news/latest-news/2026/medicine-and-de...
kelipso 5mo ago
I remember this vaccine being part of political discourse, so I everyone should be extremely skeptical of any news about it.
- seattle_spring 5mo ago
  The only ones making the HPV vaccine "political" are the morons who think it shouldn't be administered because it increases promiscuity, or the ones who mistakenly think vaccines cause more harm than they help.
  - pyuser583 5mo ago
    No the 60+ men who drug search for it against medical advice are virtue signaling. I really wish the left would respond to the rights idiocy with by actually following science. Science like: “not recommended for men over … whatever it is now.”
- zulux 5mo ago
  At one point, it was encouraged that 9-year-olds get the vaccine. As a parent, I'd rather my child wait until their immune system is more developed, with the idea being that if they're getting STDs at age 9, then there's a bigger problem.
  - moralestapia 5mo ago
    Completely agree. If kids are getting HPV before their teens, the solution is not vaccination ...
    - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
      As a parent, you cannot control when your child becomes sexually active and potentially exposed to HPV (at which point vaccination is less effective based on HPV strain). Therefore, it behooves you to protect them with a vaccine before potential exposure, as the vaccine risk is very low, based on all available data. I cannot imagine what it would feel like to face your child who experiences cancer that could’ve been prevented with a vaccine a parent chooses to delay or even skip. Luckily, this conversation and pain is easily avoided. I completely understand there are some parents who will ignore this idea out of ideology or other non data and risk driven mental models, but am confident this cohort continues to shrink generation over generation. The cost of this will be cancer incidents that could’ve been avoided, but humans will human, so it is what it is. “Better luck next generational cohort.” (day job is risk management, I get paid to assess and quantify risk, this is just another risk exposure to quantify and manage; my kids get all of their vaccines as soon as they’re eligible for them, no hesitation, no regrets)
Supermancho 5mo ago
Why is a this news headline using the slang "jabs"?
- graeme 5mo ago
  In the UK it's commonly said, and the Guardian is a UK paper. Though you've noticed a real thing: for some reason during and after the pandemic publications outside of the UK started saying it too and I don't know why.
  - rationalist 5mo ago
    > outside of the UK > I don't know why My guess is because it has a negative connotation (the pre-2020 definition of jabbing someone was to hit someone, not inject someone).
    - Supermancho 5mo ago
      > UK during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2021, when public health campaigns urged people to "get the jab." Asked and answered, ty. The term was popularized the US during the pandemic as well. It seemed like it was used by conservative media in the US to try to further politicize vaccination as something being inflicted on them.
      - rationalist 5mo ago
        I got the covid vaccine (Pfizer) and I still get other vaccines, but it was 100% "inflicted" on everyone (especially with the Federal government requiring civil servants to get it). To believe otherwise is to succumb to the politicalization of it (from everyone other than the conservative media). The rush job was sketchy, which is why I went with the established brand when I volunteered with CERT at our vaccination POD to distribute vaccines to the public. Edit: and the politicalization of it continues... sigh > Asked and answered, ty. Yes, the person I responded to asked, and yes, I was the only person who answered. You're welcome?
arjie 5mo ago
Every time HPV comes up, someone says “guys should get the vaccine too” but I’ve never managed to succeed. Even after last time someone mentioned it I tried and I got the absolutely worst result where they recorded me as being given it but then said it wasn’t meant for men my age. Had to get it removed from the record by the One Medical people I saw next. And when I saw them, they said it wouldn’t be covered under insurance and would be like $1.2k. I intended to just get it on my next visit to India but ended up not traveling. I don’t get it. Is this like those Internet memes “don’t mess with the postal police” and stuff or is it a real thing? Any guy in their late 30s in the US who managed to get it?
- cmrdporcupine 5mo ago
  Here in Ontario it's just offered to all grade 7s, boy or girls.
- ggm 5mo ago
  American experience. It's free in Australia for people aged 12-25 and men who have sex with men (increased risks) and nothing like that price for private script.
- iknowstuff 5mo ago
  Yes I got Gardasil 9 for free in San Francisco.
- toomuchtodo 5mo ago
  I (male, 40s) paid Planned Parenthood in Florida for the three Gardasil doses out of pocket after the male age limit was raised to 45 circa October 2018 (as I wanted to ensure I was vaccinated before exiting the permitted age limit). Insurance covered it for my kids with no cost at their pediatrician. Ask your doctor, get a quote, if you’re unsure what the cost might be. Your insurance may cover it with no cost to you. https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2018posts/fda-approves-hpv-vaccine.html https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2018posts/fda-approves-hpv-vac...
  - naturalmovement 5mo ago
nikolay 5mo ago
My oldest daughter almost died from the first Gardasil, so you may not die from cervical cancer, but die from something else. I am not against vaccines; my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months, and so am I, but the HPV vaccine was not mandatory, so, given the experience and the similar genetics, we didn't do it for the other two kids. Yeah, there's a risk of cancer, which might be curable 5-10-15 years from now, but the risk of side effects is here now... for some. So, it's not always a win-win, and we've got no interest from health authorities in assessing the risk for my other two kids, so they also seem very risk-averse and want us to assume all the negatives.
- moralestapia 5mo ago
  My condolences and a hug. Please forgive others who are insensible in this community and downvote you in spite of the terrible situation you had to deal with.
- apparent 5mo ago
  Yeah I thought about mentioning the fairly rare but awful cases that seem pretty clearly linked to the shot. It may be not very common, but it is a thing, and it's worth considering in the cost-benefit analysis.
- mullingitover 5mo ago
  Anaphylaxis is going to happen something like 3 per million Gardasil doses. The math doesn’t math on the decision not to get the vaccine unless you know for a fact that you’re going to have an anaphylactic reaction. The risk of cancer is far higher if you choose to take the alternative risk.
- bluedevil2k 5mo ago
  > my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months Why? At what point did you say “I know a better vaccine schedule than highly trained specialist doctors who have done decades of research on hundreds of thousand of children”? You don’t find this incredibly naive to think you know better than them?
moralestapia 5mo ago
What's the rate for the unvaccinated group? So a comparison can be made vs. the vaccinated one. The fact that they leave this out is a bit weird, sloppy journalism I guess.
- apparent 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- SanjayMehta 5mo ago
  [flagged]
- WorkerBee28474 5mo ago
  Looking at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11733696/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11733696/ it seems like the base rate was 0.04 per 100,000. So ~70 female deaths per year in a population the size of the USA. That link suggests the mortality rate was reduced by a factor of 2-4, so vaccinating 2 million (?) girls per year saves 30-50 lives. Some back-of-the-napkin math puts the price tag per life saved in the 8 digit range.
  - mikeyouse 5mo ago
    The problem with armchair back of the napkin math is that you make elementary mistakes like comparing the cost of a vaccine that provides decades of protection to the mortality statistics from a single year.
- Taniwha 5mo ago
  This is a vaccine that does contribute to herd immunity, if enough people get it then transmission goes to 0 and it dies out, even unvaccinated people wont get it, because of the vaccine. The article says "0 cases" in the entire population, in this case the people who get vaccinated are carrying the unvaccinated
- dennis_jeeves2 5mo ago
  [flagged]
TZubiri 5mo ago
[flagged]
- mullingitover 5mo ago
  > I fear that we have a risk budget, so when STD risk is reduced via a cure or prophylaxis, humans increase the amount of sex they have until the STD rate stabilizes again. Nope. Gen Z rather famously is not having a lot of sex despite all the scary STDs not being as scary as they’ve been historically.
  - TZubiri 5mo ago
    Granted they also do less alcohol and drugs I hear. But it's still very early in that cohort's life, and there's also going to be other next cohorts. The expected timespan for the benefit of this cure to dissipate would be in the decades.
    - mullingitover 5mo ago
      Is your expectation that Gen Z is going to do something no other generation has done and start having more sex as they get older? For most policymakers, if curing STDs is what it takes to coax people into having more sex (and thus hopefully adding net positive numbers to their labor force) they'd put Manhattan Project-level funding into the effort. Meanwhile cervical cancer was never really a thing that people associated with STDs, up until the point that the vaccine knocked out the strain of HPV that was causing it.
      - TZubiri 5mo ago
        I don't know, I definitely wouldn't discount it. My claim is about a specific phenomenon of human behaviour which has acted upon humanity for milenia. Not a specific generation. There's variance and other factors involved, porn being a major one. If one generated is behaviourally castrated by Virtual Reality headsets and AI girlfriends, then I'd venture a guess that those that do reproduce will have children that tend towards inheriting an inmunity against the event that wiped out their competing genes. So yeah, this might take more than one generation, might not, maybe this generation is economically dominated and does not have chidlren or even go out due to debt, work, and poverty, but who knows, maybe something something happens and that generation finds wealth and figures out that going out, travelling, spending money, having a house to invite people over to leads to that cool thing people called sex, and they start doing it. Who knows
SanjayMehta 5mo ago
[flagged]
polnurfer 5mo ago
[flagged]
yamillove 5mo ago
[flagged]
economistbob 5mo ago
Death risk was already low in many places. Over a period of 30 years, approximately 400 women died of the disease under age 25 in the USA. [1] So many women's deaths were reported to VAERS in relationship to the HPV vaccination that it exceeded the death rate of the disease itself in the United States after approval. In the safety systems setup in 1986 in exchange for immunity for the vaccine manufacturers, the death rate from the HPV vaccine itself exceeds the death rates of cervical cancer, and that says nothing about the tens of thousands of other adverse events. Dr. Harper was responsible for the phase 2 and phase 3 safety and effectiveness studies and made a speech and said she was making it so she could "clear her conscience so she could sleep at night" On October 2, 2009 in Reston Virginia at the 4th International Conference on Vaccination. She specifically said that the vaccination was unlikely to have any effect upon the rate of cervical cancer in the United States. If it would not reduce in the United States, why would it reduce it elsewhere? Most reportage since that time frame relates to total cancer cancers and treats the injections as risk free. The approved vaccination received approval for 4 strains out of more than 40 known. And while studies are retracted related to fertility -- the hard data from fertility services providers is not. Gravidity (the number of times one is pregnant) is about halved for the HPV vaccinated vs the unvaccinated. There have also been large scale studies indicating the same, but when politics retracts something, many believe that one should ignore that document. The raw gravidity counts on the other hand, are a observable fact. The vaccinated patients were even older, which makes it even worse, because those are older women who have had more time to be pregnant. [2] Gravidity is a fact. So is cutting it by half via HPV correlation Read link two. Look at those gravidity numbers for vaccinated women and unvaccinated women. HPV vaccination may not be caused by eugenics but it is certainly correlated with it. 1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2827212 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2827212 2. https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(23)00478-8/fulltext https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(23)00478-8/full...
- asgraham 5mo ago
  To be clarify for everyone: both of the cited articles argue in favor of HPV vaccination. I assumed they would be arguing against since the comment is arguing against, but that is not the case. In particular, you've mistaken the result of the second study. > The vaccinated patients were even older, which makes it even worse, because those are older women who have had more time to be pregnant. ^ this is incorrect. Indeed according to the study, the vaccinated patients are younger (33.1) than the unvaccinated patients (37.4), which could easily explain the difference in gravidity. The authors do not report having controlled for age when computing the gravidity effect. Note also that the entire study was conducted with a population of patients seeking fertility care, so the study can't support the general claim "gravidity is halved for the HPV vaccinated" even were the significance level to survive age-controlling statistics (which it likely would not).
wolvoleo 5mo ago
I wasn't allowed to have it from the official health service because I'm already 50 even though I've not been very active in earlier years. But I paid for it myself (600€ for the 3 shots, quite expensive). I'm glad I did, when reading stuff like this. They don't usually give it to older people because the more you have been exposed to the virus the less effective the vaccine is. But it protects against 9 variants and I think it is very unlikely I've encountered them all.
- yieldcrv 5mo ago
  It was $600 13 years ago when I got it too I paid for it out of pocket as well with a cursory understanding of the data and why it wasn’t given to men at all at the time, and then not to men in my age range before expanding to far beyond my age range This affected it being covered by insurance Even to help protect women was good enough, but I had predicted the throat cancer link as well On the self serving side, it was also a supporting reason to pursue relations with younger women going forward since they would have received the vaccine and older would more likely be carriers. The situation with men being that there is no test for men to tell if exposure occurred already and like the above person said, the vaccine doesnt work if youve already been exposed. I didnt really need a reason to date specific age range its a timeless tale, but now I can adapt it to herd immunity.
  - wolvoleo 5mo ago
    Yeah I wish I'd known about it before I got more active sexually. But I'm glad I got the vaccine eventually, I'm sure I would not have seen all variants.
photochemsyn 5mo ago
This is such a ridiculously complicated subject, there are people who spend ten years in training just so they can handle the complexities of individual instances of this kind of health issue. Why would a corporate media outlet try to weigh in? A crossover between the pharma marketing and the news division seems most likely. Someone said I used AI in my posts recently, and no, I write all my words by hand. But I do use things like this: Role: You are an expert in the clinical detection and medical treatment of cervical cancer in human females over the course of the 20th century. Objective: Review the totality of evidence for the cause of these cancers, including but not limited to environmental exposure, viral infection, or any other factor whatsoever that has been reputably liked to the incidence of cervical cancer in human females over the 20th century timeline as reflected in the reputable medical literature.
Escapade5160 5mo ago
Can we stop calling vaccines jabs?
pyuser583 5mo ago
Every-time the HPV vaccine stuff comes up there’s a ton of old guys bragging about how they got it AMA. This doesn’t make you seem like a good person. It makes you seem like you don’t trust public health officials. I had this conversation with my doc. He said dont get it. Going around that doesn’t make me a good person, it makes me dumb. Don’t listen to what a forum says. Listen to your doctor.
- lolc 5mo ago
  I was lucky my pharmacist didn't listen to my doctor when I showed up with a prescription for a misdiagnosed disease. Would have delayed getting effective treatment for a life threatening disease. If I'd read forums I could've spotted it too. Don't just listen to your doctor.
  - pyuser583 5mo ago
    Was your doctor following clearly and rigorously established medical guidelines? If you think your doctor has screwed up talk to another doctor or the pharmacist. That’s legit. But deciding you need a vaccine the guidelines say you don’t is a different matter. That’s just drug seeking. People close to me have died from cervical cancer, so I’d love to be part of abolishing it. And by following vaccine guidelines that’s exactly what I’m doing. I encourage everyone else to follow the guidelines too - don’t home brew this shit!
- Krssst 5mo ago
  I'd be curious to see how much the decision to not recommend it in older people is "cost / benefit" ratio (the vaccine is expensive and if you say it may be slightly useful you might be putting pressure on yourself (as a government agency) to reimburse it even if the money would be better spent elsewhere) and how much is "actual risk (including getting hit by a truck on your way to the doctor) / benefit" ratio. I don't know of significant side-effects of the HPV vaccine, though my understanding was that there was some misinformation going around when the first vaccine became available which may have made governments more cautious regarding rollout. I don't know much at all about this topic however so this comment is likely full of mistakes.
orwin 5mo ago
For information (for men who think this doesn't apply for them especially), some strains of HPV have very inconvenient dermatological effects that can leave scars on your thighs, bother you when walking and make masses that are quite ugly and might bother your partner. I had those effects for ~3 years. If you are a young man not vaccinated yet and sexually active, you should get the vaccine if you can.

246 points by toomuchtodo 5mo ago

From what risk level without them? How many people actually die of cervical cancer before age 30?? I mean, vaccinations and cancer prevention are both great, but this headline is ridiculous.

comrade1234 5mo ago
Your questions are sort-of answered in the article. 3300 die each year of cervical cancer in the uk. So at 0% it saves 3300 lives per year. However the vaccination is fairly new so they have to wait longer to see if it applies 20-years, 30-years, etc later. I assume it would though.
- lithocarpus 5mo ago
  Parent's question isn't answered in the article - no figure is given for how many deaths under 30 there are as a baseline. From the article: “We estimate that since its introduction [in 2008], HPV vaccination has prevented nearly 200 young women from dying from cervical cancer in England.” This is an estimate of 200 total of any age total across 18 years. The article doesn't say 3300 die each year, 3300 are diagnosed each year.
  - estebank 5mo ago
    The BBC article had that more comparable information: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c621z28z138o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c621z28z138o > Between 2020 and 2024, no cervical cancer deaths were recorded in women aged 20 to 24 - the first time that had happened over a five-year period. > Without vaccination, around 23 deaths would have been expected. Note the first chart in the link showing the historical trend for the 20-24 cohort since 2000 plumetting from 25 to 0.
    - apparent 5mo ago
      Out of curiosity, have there been any other advances in medicine that would make it less likely that women would die from cervical cancer before hitting 30? I don't keep up on oncology developments, but I assume that this particular shot is not the only thing that has reduced cervical cancer deaths in women under 30. If they were looking at rates of acquiring cancer, that would be more focused on this intervention.
      - estebank 5mo ago
        I'm not a doctor and certainly not an oncologist. The CDC mentions that not smoking and wearing condoms also lower the risk. https://www.cdc.gov/cervical-cancer/prevention/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/cervical-cancer/prevention/index.html Anecdotally people smoke less thant they uses to. Don't know what condom usage rates have done in the past quarter century. > I assume that this particular shot is not the only thing that has reduced cervical cancer deaths in women under 30. Why would you assume that when presented with a study that tracks with long standing belief in the medical community that the HPV vaccine works? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00918-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
        apparent 5mo ago
        > Why would you assume that when presented with a study that tracks with long standing belief in the medical community that the HPV vaccine works? Because cancer interventions have moved forward in general?
pfdietz 5mo ago
The estimated number of deaths from cervical cancer in the US in 2026 is 4,200. The death rate is 2.2 per 100,000 people down from 3.1 per 100,000 in 1992. If we multiply 3.1e-5 by 50 years that's about a 0.15% chance of dying of this cancer. The HPV shots cost $500-1000 for the three shots, so the cost per life saved is about $650K. With the statistical value of a human life being about $12M this is quite cost effective. I'm assuming the reduction in death continues to later in life after 30, but that's a reasonable assumption, IMO.
- Gigachad 5mo ago
  Even if you just consider all of those 4000 + survivors would have got treatment for the cancer after getting it which costs far more than a vaccine.
  - cma 5mo ago
    Yep and significantly more than the death count would have needed expensive treatment and be out of the workforce for a time or permanently. Also the charged price isn't real cost to the economy. If they have a big margin on it after fixed research/approval expenses lots of it feeds back into the economy through taxes and dividends/reinvestment in other drug development. Beyond death, it can also cause sterility and people may end up with extremely expensive IVF surrogacy pregnancies etc.
- TZubiri 5mo ago
  Good calc, here's some other benefits. herd immunity: Vaccines benefit even those that don't take the vaccine now. eradication effects: vaccines benefit those that don't take the vaccine in the future. fertility increase: non lethal cervical cancer can cause inability to get pregnant or carry a pregnancy to term. I don't know if it can cause birth defects. Life Years: Early deaths save more Life Years than diseases that protect against later disease. Quality Adjusted Life Years: Very nuanced, and I don't know how HPV cancers compare against the baseline of QALY. But being a vaccine that prevents, the Quality of life gained should be 100%, which would compare positively to treatments that do not cure completely
- 5mo ago
JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
> From what risk level without them? “Approximately 0.6 percent of women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer at some point during their lifetime, based on 2021–2023 data” [1]. Given “reports of serious health issues after HPV vaccination were consistently rare—around 1.8 per 100,000 HPV vaccine doses, or 0.0018%” [2], a woman suffers a 300x higher hazard (assuming we measure a serious vaccine reaction as being equivalent to cancer, which is silly) from going unvaccinated. > How many people actually die of cervical cancer before age 30? 4,462 young women under the age of 30 died of cervical cancer in 2022 worldwide [3]. [1] https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cervix.html https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cervix.html [2] https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/hpv-vaccine-parents-safety-concerns https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021... [3] https://gco.iarc.who.int/today/en/dataviz/pie?mode=population&group_populations=0&types=1&sexes=2&age_end=5 https://gco.iarc.who.int/today/en/dataviz/pie?mode=populatio... Mortality, cervix uteri, females, 0 to 29
- moralestapia 5mo ago
  Thanks for the data. 4,462 out of the whole population (of women etc.). Would you subjectively describe that number as "almost zero"?
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > Would you subjectively describe that number as "almost zero"? Sure. If the only effect were on under-30s, this wouldn’t be a great vaccine. What 5,000 people is good for, however, is confidently measuring decline in a cohort. Zero deaths, even against a baseline of tens, strongly implies this should cross into the tend or hundreds of thousands over the next decades in populations that keep vaccination rates up.
    - somenameforme 5mo ago
      Looking at healthcare stuff globally is misleading because of Africa. The ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic there makes death rates for anything that HIV/AIDS can contribute to highly malinformative. For instance in southern Africa, more than 60% of women with cervical cancer also have HIV. [1] Oddly enough I can't find exact death rates from cervical cancer paired amongst those who had HIV/AIDS but this [2] hints at it, with 90% of all cervical cancer deaths coming in low/middle income countries, and with the "highest burden" (plurality I guess?) coming from sub-Saharan Africa where rates of HIV are the highest. [2] [1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7815633/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7815633/ [2] - hhttps://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2019/may/20190531_cervical-cancer-hiv https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestori...
Arodex 5mo ago
[flagged]
- apparent 5mo ago
  So 5 deaths across 3 years? Doesn't seem worth a headline, especially since it could literally just be noise in the data. Also, no need to post snarkily about LMGTFY. TFA should have included the base rate, and the fact that it didn't signals that it's not much of a reduction. It also signals that the journalist who wrote it is more in it for clicks than conveying accurate information.
  - Arodex 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - apparent 5mo ago
      The linked chart shows that there were none in the 20-24 age range during the during the recent few years. Is the entire population vaccinated? If not (the article doesn't claim this), then the fact that no one in that age range died (and only 5 in the entire under-30 cohort) tends to indicate that it was not a very high base rate. Are there other sources that show data going back to the 1970s? Probably! I didn't go searching for them. I looked at what was linked above and saw there were very few. As I said, the Guardian journalist didn't include a base rate, which surely would have been included if it bolstered the argument. EDIT: I just scrolled down further and saw that even the chart that shows trends over time (which I hadn't seen before, having stopped scrolling earlier) doesn't support your point. It shows there were roughly .2 deaths per year per 100k. Not having any deaths in 20-24 for 3 years is not a statistically significant difference, I would imagine, than the .2 figure. Also, there are undoubtedly other cancer-related advances that have made it less likely that a young woman would die of any kind of cancer. And the data regarding under-30 deaths is muddled because the next bucket up is 25-34, and we don't know what it is up to 29. Lastly, at the bottom there's this disclaimer, which makes it even harder to tell what's going on with small numbers: > Note: Non-zero counts of 5 or less are suppressed and presented as 5. If you have another source, please feel free to share. What we've seen so far (nothing in TFA, nothing of import in the commenter's linked data) isn't remotely compelling.
dennis_jeeves2 5mo ago
>From what risk level without them? How many people actually die of cervical cancer before age 30?? They will downplay that number or exaggerate it.
- Ardren 5mo ago
  They? I had no idea HN had so many cookers.

eek2121 5mo ago

Just a note: the article focuses on the ladies, but men should absolutely get it as well because it cuts risk for other types of cancers. I was looking for a better link, however this is the only one I found (I had an older one saved, however I can't find it): https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/health/hpv-men-vaccine-cancer-wellness https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/health/hpv-men-vaccine-cancer...

m101 5mo ago
yes! Apparently the rate of penile and throat cancer occurs at only half the rate in men as it does as cervical cancer in women, but the harm caused by the male versions of the cancer are worse, so in actual fact it may overall cause more harm in the male population.
- TZubiri 5mo ago
  My bet is that it has to do with the mechanics of receptive vaginal and oral sex, the penis just reaches deeper and causes more lesions. Compared to insertive vaginal sex and oral vaginal performance, those lesions would be less frequent and on more distal parts of the body. If the rate is 50%, I'd also expect MSM to be overrepresented there, which would make the difference of risk between heterosexual sex even more imbalanced.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
stbenjam 5mo ago
For some reason not really talked about in mainstream medicine for straight men. It makes no sense. Very safe vaccine and you're eligible into your 40's to get it. Everyone sexually active probably has some strains but not all.
- apparent 5mo ago
  Yeah, not everyone.

alistairSH 5mo ago

Reducing deaths is great, but shouldn’t they also mention the reduction in treatment (which is usually surgical or chemo, both of which are massively expensive, traumatic, and life altering in negative ways).

apparent 5mo ago
They could do that, but given how low the base rate is, the reduction in number of procedures (and the resulting negative impacts on the women) would be incredibly low. It seems the base rate for cervical cancer deaths under 30 was already near zero.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > given how low the base rate is, the reduction in number of procedures (and the resulting negative impacts on the women) would be incredibly low Correct. These data are more a preview of what we can expect to see as the vaccinated cohort (in countries that aren’t pro-disease) advances in age.
  - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
    Indeed, Australia will be one of the first countries to eliminate cervical cancer (by 2035) due to their HPV vaccine vaccination uptake rates. Two decades to get here, one to go. https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp/media/australia-on-track-to-eliminate-cervical-cancer-by-2035 https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13036706/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13036706/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0098299725000871 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009829972... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6w15vgp7lo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6w15vgp7lo
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
- Arodex 5mo ago

AngryData 5mo ago

Glad to see it, except it is still a sensationalist headline IMO because HPV deaths, and specifically below 30 years old, is already extremely low.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
Arodex 5mo ago
As mentioned already several times in the comments, there is also a long tail of people who survive but after a grueling and costly treatment that disrupt their lives.
- giantg2 5mo ago
  What are the numbers on that post vaccine vs pre vaccine?
pfdietz 5mo ago
The vaccine presumably also protects those getting it when they are older, but the data doesn't show that yet. Still, if it does (as seems reasonable) then the benefit is even larger.
mixdup 5mo ago
Whether it was low or not, the fact that we've been able to effectively cure a certain kind of cancer with a vaccine is a pretty big deal
perching_aix 5mo ago
> except it is still a sensationalist headline If you take it in terms of absolute risk rather than relative risk, even though it's very clearly the latter as always, sure. Sometimes it's not on the writer, but the reader. Important context, sure, but it was plenty clear what was being meant.
rzzzt 5mo ago
My issue with it is a missing "in mice"-style qualifier, but this time it is of the geographical nature. The study is focusing on England: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/news/latest-news/2026/medicine-and-dentistry/fmd/cervical-cancer-deaths-plummet-to-record-low-thanks-to-hpv-vaccine.html https://www.qmul.ac.uk/news/latest-news/2026/medicine-and-de...

kelipso 5mo ago

I remember this vaccine being part of political discourse, so I everyone should be extremely skeptical of any news about it.

seattle_spring 5mo ago
The only ones making the HPV vaccine "political" are the morons who think it shouldn't be administered because it increases promiscuity, or the ones who mistakenly think vaccines cause more harm than they help.
- pyuser583 5mo ago
  No the 60+ men who drug search for it against medical advice are virtue signaling. I really wish the left would respond to the rights idiocy with by actually following science. Science like: “not recommended for men over … whatever it is now.”
zulux 5mo ago
At one point, it was encouraged that 9-year-olds get the vaccine. As a parent, I'd rather my child wait until their immune system is more developed, with the idea being that if they're getting STDs at age 9, then there's a bigger problem.
- moralestapia 5mo ago
  Completely agree. If kids are getting HPV before their teens, the solution is not vaccination ...
  - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
    As a parent, you cannot control when your child becomes sexually active and potentially exposed to HPV (at which point vaccination is less effective based on HPV strain). Therefore, it behooves you to protect them with a vaccine before potential exposure, as the vaccine risk is very low, based on all available data. I cannot imagine what it would feel like to face your child who experiences cancer that could’ve been prevented with a vaccine a parent chooses to delay or even skip. Luckily, this conversation and pain is easily avoided. I completely understand there are some parents who will ignore this idea out of ideology or other non data and risk driven mental models, but am confident this cohort continues to shrink generation over generation. The cost of this will be cancer incidents that could’ve been avoided, but humans will human, so it is what it is. “Better luck next generational cohort.” (day job is risk management, I get paid to assess and quantify risk, this is just another risk exposure to quantify and manage; my kids get all of their vaccines as soon as they’re eligible for them, no hesitation, no regrets)

Supermancho 5mo ago

Why is a this news headline using the slang "jabs"?

graeme 5mo ago
In the UK it's commonly said, and the Guardian is a UK paper. Though you've noticed a real thing: for some reason during and after the pandemic publications outside of the UK started saying it too and I don't know why.
- rationalist 5mo ago
  > outside of the UK > I don't know why My guess is because it has a negative connotation (the pre-2020 definition of jabbing someone was to hit someone, not inject someone).
  - Supermancho 5mo ago
    > UK during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2021, when public health campaigns urged people to "get the jab." Asked and answered, ty. The term was popularized the US during the pandemic as well. It seemed like it was used by conservative media in the US to try to further politicize vaccination as something being inflicted on them.
    - rationalist 5mo ago
      I got the covid vaccine (Pfizer) and I still get other vaccines, but it was 100% "inflicted" on everyone (especially with the Federal government requiring civil servants to get it). To believe otherwise is to succumb to the politicalization of it (from everyone other than the conservative media). The rush job was sketchy, which is why I went with the established brand when I volunteered with CERT at our vaccination POD to distribute vaccines to the public. Edit: and the politicalization of it continues... sigh > Asked and answered, ty. Yes, the person I responded to asked, and yes, I was the only person who answered. You're welcome?

arjie 5mo ago

Every time HPV comes up, someone says “guys should get the vaccine too” but I’ve never managed to succeed. Even after last time someone mentioned it I tried and I got the absolutely worst result where they recorded me as being given it but then said it wasn’t meant for men my age. Had to get it removed from the record by the One Medical people I saw next. And when I saw them, they said it wouldn’t be covered under insurance and would be like $1.2k. I intended to just get it on my next visit to India but ended up not traveling. I don’t get it. Is this like those Internet memes “don’t mess with the postal police” and stuff or is it a real thing? Any guy in their late 30s in the US who managed to get it?

cmrdporcupine 5mo ago
Here in Ontario it's just offered to all grade 7s, boy or girls.
ggm 5mo ago
American experience. It's free in Australia for people aged 12-25 and men who have sex with men (increased risks) and nothing like that price for private script.
iknowstuff 5mo ago
Yes I got Gardasil 9 for free in San Francisco.
toomuchtodo 5mo ago
I (male, 40s) paid Planned Parenthood in Florida for the three Gardasil doses out of pocket after the male age limit was raised to 45 circa October 2018 (as I wanted to ensure I was vaccinated before exiting the permitted age limit). Insurance covered it for my kids with no cost at their pediatrician. Ask your doctor, get a quote, if you’re unsure what the cost might be. Your insurance may cover it with no cost to you. https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2018posts/fda-approves-hpv-vaccine.html https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2018posts/fda-approves-hpv-vac...
- naturalmovement 5mo ago

nikolay 5mo ago

My oldest daughter almost died from the first Gardasil, so you may not die from cervical cancer, but die from something else. I am not against vaccines; my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months, and so am I, but the HPV vaccine was not mandatory, so, given the experience and the similar genetics, we didn't do it for the other two kids. Yeah, there's a risk of cancer, which might be curable 5-10-15 years from now, but the risk of side effects is here now... for some. So, it's not always a win-win, and we've got no interest from health authorities in assessing the risk for my other two kids, so they also seem very risk-averse and want us to assume all the negatives.

moralestapia 5mo ago
My condolences and a hug. Please forgive others who are insensible in this community and downvote you in spite of the terrible situation you had to deal with.
apparent 5mo ago
Yeah I thought about mentioning the fairly rare but awful cases that seem pretty clearly linked to the shot. It may be not very common, but it is a thing, and it's worth considering in the cost-benefit analysis.
mullingitover 5mo ago
Anaphylaxis is going to happen something like 3 per million Gardasil doses. The math doesn’t math on the decision not to get the vaccine unless you know for a fact that you’re going to have an anaphylactic reaction. The risk of cancer is far higher if you choose to take the alternative risk.
bluedevil2k 5mo ago
> my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months Why? At what point did you say “I know a better vaccine schedule than highly trained specialist doctors who have done decades of research on hundreds of thousand of children”? You don’t find this incredibly naive to think you know better than them?

moralestapia 5mo ago

What's the rate for the unvaccinated group? So a comparison can be made vs. the vaccinated one. The fact that they leave this out is a bit weird, sloppy journalism I guess.

apparent 5mo ago
[flagged]
SanjayMehta 5mo ago
[flagged]
WorkerBee28474 5mo ago
Looking at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11733696/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11733696/ it seems like the base rate was 0.04 per 100,000. So ~70 female deaths per year in a population the size of the USA. That link suggests the mortality rate was reduced by a factor of 2-4, so vaccinating 2 million (?) girls per year saves 30-50 lives. Some back-of-the-napkin math puts the price tag per life saved in the 8 digit range.
- mikeyouse 5mo ago
  The problem with armchair back of the napkin math is that you make elementary mistakes like comparing the cost of a vaccine that provides decades of protection to the mortality statistics from a single year.
Taniwha 5mo ago
This is a vaccine that does contribute to herd immunity, if enough people get it then transmission goes to 0 and it dies out, even unvaccinated people wont get it, because of the vaccine. The article says "0 cases" in the entire population, in this case the people who get vaccinated are carrying the unvaccinated
dennis_jeeves2 5mo ago
[flagged]

TZubiri 5mo ago

[flagged]

mullingitover 5mo ago
> I fear that we have a risk budget, so when STD risk is reduced via a cure or prophylaxis, humans increase the amount of sex they have until the STD rate stabilizes again. Nope. Gen Z rather famously is not having a lot of sex despite all the scary STDs not being as scary as they’ve been historically.
- TZubiri 5mo ago
  Granted they also do less alcohol and drugs I hear. But it's still very early in that cohort's life, and there's also going to be other next cohorts. The expected timespan for the benefit of this cure to dissipate would be in the decades.
  - mullingitover 5mo ago
    Is your expectation that Gen Z is going to do something no other generation has done and start having more sex as they get older? For most policymakers, if curing STDs is what it takes to coax people into having more sex (and thus hopefully adding net positive numbers to their labor force) they'd put Manhattan Project-level funding into the effort. Meanwhile cervical cancer was never really a thing that people associated with STDs, up until the point that the vaccine knocked out the strain of HPV that was causing it.
    - TZubiri 5mo ago
      I don't know, I definitely wouldn't discount it. My claim is about a specific phenomenon of human behaviour which has acted upon humanity for milenia. Not a specific generation. There's variance and other factors involved, porn being a major one. If one generated is behaviourally castrated by Virtual Reality headsets and AI girlfriends, then I'd venture a guess that those that do reproduce will have children that tend towards inheriting an inmunity against the event that wiped out their competing genes. So yeah, this might take more than one generation, might not, maybe this generation is economically dominated and does not have chidlren or even go out due to debt, work, and poverty, but who knows, maybe something something happens and that generation finds wealth and figures out that going out, travelling, spending money, having a house to invite people over to leads to that cool thing people called sex, and they start doing it. Who knows

SanjayMehta 5mo ago

[flagged]

polnurfer 5mo ago

[flagged]

yamillove 5mo ago

[flagged]

economistbob 5mo ago

Death risk was already low in many places. Over a period of 30 years, approximately 400 women died of the disease under age 25 in the USA. [1] So many women's deaths were reported to VAERS in relationship to the HPV vaccination that it exceeded the death rate of the disease itself in the United States after approval. In the safety systems setup in 1986 in exchange for immunity for the vaccine manufacturers, the death rate from the HPV vaccine itself exceeds the death rates of cervical cancer, and that says nothing about the tens of thousands of other adverse events. Dr. Harper was responsible for the phase 2 and phase 3 safety and effectiveness studies and made a speech and said she was making it so she could "clear her conscience so she could sleep at night" On October 2, 2009 in Reston Virginia at the 4th International Conference on Vaccination. She specifically said that the vaccination was unlikely to have any effect upon the rate of cervical cancer in the United States. If it would not reduce in the United States, why would it reduce it elsewhere? Most reportage since that time frame relates to total cancer cancers and treats the injections as risk free. The approved vaccination received approval for 4 strains out of more than 40 known. And while studies are retracted related to fertility -- the hard data from fertility services providers is not. Gravidity (the number of times one is pregnant) is about halved for the HPV vaccinated vs the unvaccinated. There have also been large scale studies indicating the same, but when politics retracts something, many believe that one should ignore that document. The raw gravidity counts on the other hand, are a observable fact. The vaccinated patients were even older, which makes it even worse, because those are older women who have had more time to be pregnant. [2] Gravidity is a fact. So is cutting it by half via HPV correlation Read link two. Look at those gravidity numbers for vaccinated women and unvaccinated women. HPV vaccination may not be caused by eugenics but it is certainly correlated with it. 1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2827212 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2827212 2. https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(23)00478-8/fulltext https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(23)00478-8/full...

asgraham 5mo ago
To be clarify for everyone: both of the cited articles argue in favor of HPV vaccination. I assumed they would be arguing against since the comment is arguing against, but that is not the case. In particular, you've mistaken the result of the second study. > The vaccinated patients were even older, which makes it even worse, because those are older women who have had more time to be pregnant. ^ this is incorrect. Indeed according to the study, the vaccinated patients are younger (33.1) than the unvaccinated patients (37.4), which could easily explain the difference in gravidity. The authors do not report having controlled for age when computing the gravidity effect. Note also that the entire study was conducted with a population of patients seeking fertility care, so the study can't support the general claim "gravidity is halved for the HPV vaccinated" even were the significance level to survive age-controlling statistics (which it likely would not).

wolvoleo 5mo ago

I wasn't allowed to have it from the official health service because I'm already 50 even though I've not been very active in earlier years. But I paid for it myself (600€ for the 3 shots, quite expensive). I'm glad I did, when reading stuff like this. They don't usually give it to older people because the more you have been exposed to the virus the less effective the vaccine is. But it protects against 9 variants and I think it is very unlikely I've encountered them all.

yieldcrv 5mo ago
It was $600 13 years ago when I got it too I paid for it out of pocket as well with a cursory understanding of the data and why it wasn’t given to men at all at the time, and then not to men in my age range before expanding to far beyond my age range This affected it being covered by insurance Even to help protect women was good enough, but I had predicted the throat cancer link as well On the self serving side, it was also a supporting reason to pursue relations with younger women going forward since they would have received the vaccine and older would more likely be carriers. The situation with men being that there is no test for men to tell if exposure occurred already and like the above person said, the vaccine doesnt work if youve already been exposed. I didnt really need a reason to date specific age range its a timeless tale, but now I can adapt it to herd immunity.
- wolvoleo 5mo ago
  Yeah I wish I'd known about it before I got more active sexually. But I'm glad I got the vaccine eventually, I'm sure I would not have seen all variants.

photochemsyn 5mo ago

This is such a ridiculously complicated subject, there are people who spend ten years in training just so they can handle the complexities of individual instances of this kind of health issue. Why would a corporate media outlet try to weigh in? A crossover between the pharma marketing and the news division seems most likely. Someone said I used AI in my posts recently, and no, I write all my words by hand. But I do use things like this: Role: You are an expert in the clinical detection and medical treatment of cervical cancer in human females over the course of the 20th century. Objective: Review the totality of evidence for the cause of these cancers, including but not limited to environmental exposure, viral infection, or any other factor whatsoever that has been reputably liked to the incidence of cervical cancer in human females over the 20th century timeline as reflected in the reputable medical literature.

Escapade5160 5mo ago

Can we stop calling vaccines jabs?

pyuser583 5mo ago

Every-time the HPV vaccine stuff comes up there’s a ton of old guys bragging about how they got it AMA. This doesn’t make you seem like a good person. It makes you seem like you don’t trust public health officials. I had this conversation with my doc. He said dont get it. Going around that doesn’t make me a good person, it makes me dumb. Don’t listen to what a forum says. Listen to your doctor.

lolc 5mo ago
I was lucky my pharmacist didn't listen to my doctor when I showed up with a prescription for a misdiagnosed disease. Would have delayed getting effective treatment for a life threatening disease. If I'd read forums I could've spotted it too. Don't just listen to your doctor.
- pyuser583 5mo ago
  Was your doctor following clearly and rigorously established medical guidelines? If you think your doctor has screwed up talk to another doctor or the pharmacist. That’s legit. But deciding you need a vaccine the guidelines say you don’t is a different matter. That’s just drug seeking. People close to me have died from cervical cancer, so I’d love to be part of abolishing it. And by following vaccine guidelines that’s exactly what I’m doing. I encourage everyone else to follow the guidelines too - don’t home brew this shit!
Krssst 5mo ago
I'd be curious to see how much the decision to not recommend it in older people is "cost / benefit" ratio (the vaccine is expensive and if you say it may be slightly useful you might be putting pressure on yourself (as a government agency) to reimburse it even if the money would be better spent elsewhere) and how much is "actual risk (including getting hit by a truck on your way to the doctor) / benefit" ratio. I don't know of significant side-effects of the HPV vaccine, though my understanding was that there was some misinformation going around when the first vaccine became available which may have made governments more cautious regarding rollout. I don't know much at all about this topic however so this comment is likely full of mistakes.

orwin 5mo ago

For information (for men who think this doesn't apply for them especially), some strains of HPV have very inconvenient dermatological effects that can leave scars on your thighs, bother you when walking and make masses that are quite ugly and might bother your partner. I had those effects for ~3 years. If you are a young man not vaccinated yet and sexually active, you should get the vaccine if you can.