4 ms·

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, b

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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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
- 4mo ago
JumpCrisscross 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
[flagged]
- apparent 4mo 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 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - apparent 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
  They? I had no idea HN had so many cookers.

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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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
4mo ago

JumpCrisscross 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago

[flagged]

apparent 4mo 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 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - apparent 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
They? I had no idea HN had so many cookers.