Protect your children -girls & boys - with HPV vaccine
The human papillomavirus is sexually transmitted. And as a recent report noted, genital strains of that virus “are so ubiquitous that almost all sexually active people — not just promiscuous ones — will be infected at some point.”
Nearly 80 million people — about one in four adults — now are infected with HPV in the U.S.
Professor Amy Leader has some advice for parents weighing whether to have their children vaccinated against HPV: Get the vaccine. “Don’t think about preventing a sexually transmitted disease now. Think about preventing cancer in 20 or 30 years.”
We need to start thinking of the HPV vaccine as an anti-cancer vaccine, says Leader, a researcher at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health and an associate professor in the division of population science, department of medical oncology, at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
Why wouldn’t you want to spare your child from developing a preventable cancer in adulthood?
Unfortunately, Leader says, the anti-vaccine movement has “done a very good job of promulgating misinformation about vaccines.”
Sadly, we know this to be true. We’ve been railing against the movement for years because of the harm it’s done in scaring parents away from immunizations that can protect children from serious and sometimes deadly illnesses.
As Leader notes, antivaccine messages, often disseminated on social media, tend to be narrative-based. “Look what happened to poor Susie ... poor Susie.”
The public health community, on the other hand, speaks in data rather than narrative, preferring hard scientific facts to anecdote. The result?
“We get tuned out,” Leader says.
We implore our readers to tune in, to consider these facts, reported by the Phiadelphia Inquirer:
— While it’s true that most HPV infections are eliminated by the immune system, high-risk strains “can persist and initiate cancer of the cervix, vagina, anus, vulva, penis, mouth and throat.”
— “Worldwide, that translates to more than 600,000 cancers a year — nearly 5 percent of all cancers.”
— The current version of the HPV vaccine, Gardasil 9, protects against seven high-risk types of the virus “that cause 90 percent of cervical cancers, as well as the two wart types.”
— Precancerous lesions caused by HPV “can progress to cancer and oral infections — the kind that have fueled an explosion in head and neck cancers in recent decades, particularly in men.”
These are subjects we hope pediatricians are discussing with parents and kids. But as parents, too, we know they can be difficult to broach.
Just typing the words — “cancer of the cervix, vagina, anus, vulva, penis, mouth and throat” — made us want to close the laptop screen and walk away.
But if we think of those terms not in terms of sexual activity but in terms of cancer risk, we might get over our squeamishness and feel more urgency to discuss the subject with our kids and their pediatricians.
The HPV vaccine is not a one-shot-and-done deal. Kids 11 or 12 should get “two shots of HPV vaccine six to twelve months apart,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Adolescents who receive their two shots less than five months apart will require a third dose of HPV vaccine.”
Is that inconvenient? Yes. But it’s not nearly as taxing as cancer.
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Even if we start thinking, as we should, of the HPV vaccine as the anticancer vaccine it is, some parents still may worry about its associations with sex.
Most of us like to think that our 11- and 12-yearolds are light-years away from sexual activity. But half of all 15-year-olds are engaged in some form of sexual activity, Leader says.
The HPV vaccine is not a get-out-of-sex-free-from consequences card. It won’t guard against other sexually transmitted diseases — just the most common one. It won’t guard against pregnancy.
The reason it’s given to adolescents as young as 11 is not to encourage them to have sex, but because the vaccine is best administered while their immune response is at its best and before they are exposed to HPV.
“It’s the same reason we get flu shots in October — we want to get our flu shots before flu season hits, so we’re protected if we come in contact with the virus,” Leader says. “Once someone has the flu, the flu vaccine is totally useless. Vaccinate before exposure!”
The HPV vaccine should be viewed as insurance for the future, a way to protect your kids when they make the decision — hopefully years down the road — to have sex.
And when we say kids, we mean boys as well as girls.
As the CDC points out, women undergo Pap tests to screen for cervical cancer. But “there are no recommended cancer screening tests to detect the other five types of cancers caused by HPV.”
“Every year in the United States, HPV causes 33,700 cancers in men and women,” the CDC states. “HPV vaccination can prevent most of the cancers (about 31,200) from ever developing.”
This anti-cancer vaccine is a gift that more of us should be giving our children. It’s a gift we wish had been available to us.
There are so many worries that come with adulthood. For our kids, vaccine-preventable HPV doesn’t have to be among them.
“The HPV vaccine should be viewed as insurance for the future, a way to protect your kids when they make the decision — hopefully years down the road — to have sex.”