Mar 11, 2007 - 04:06:30 CDT
As a practicing physician, I wish to take issue with the cartoon on the editorial page in the Feb. 28 issue of the Tribune showing a young woman being injected with a vaccine to prevent her from contracting the Human Papillomavirus. I think the “time bomb” should be represented by a thermometer in the young lady’s mouth and not as a syringe in the doctor’s hand. The HPV vaccine is safe. Cancer of the cervix is not.
I do not have as large a women’s practice as gynecologists in Bismarck, but I have seen the ravages of invasive cancer in at least three young women. One is dead, one has recurrent disease and the third is missing her uterus and ovaries. All these women were 40 to 45 years of age. I serve a family planning clinic where I do colposcopies on women with abnormal Pap smears. It is heartbreaking to see these young girls and women showing up with precancerous lesions of the cervix or their bottoms covered with genital warts.
One might say that these women deserve what they get. No one deserves these HPV diseases. Why not prevent it in the first place? The vaccine appears to be nearly 100 percent effective in preventing the HPV types 16 and 18 that are the major causes of cervical cancer. It is also highly (95 percent) effective in preventing genital warts. What could be wrong with such a vaccine?
We would be naive to think that abstinence is going to be the wave of the future. Sex has been around since Adam and Eve, and that may have been where the HPV spread started. I do not condone the practices that the young people do these days, but if they do not practice safe sex, let’s provide them with some protection from contracting HPV infections and its ramifications.
We know condoms do not prevent transmission of the virus. Birth control pills do not prevent it. Diaphragms do not prevent it. Even if a girl is sexually abstinent until her wedding night, that may not prevent her from contracting an HPV infection. Who knows how many women her new husband has slept with? It is said that if a woman has had six partners, she has been exposed to a minimum of 63 other people.
It is unfortunate that the women develop most of the problems. About the only consequences that a male might get is genital warts. Oftentimes they are so small they are not seen, but can still be passed to some unsuspecting woman. Hopefully, the vaccine also will be approved soon to be given to males, thereby helping stop the spread of the infection even more.
The HPV does not always disappear. It is often dependent on the individual’s immunity, as I have seen invasive cancer in an 80-year-old and even in a 98-year-old woman.
We should prevent this disease as we have wiped out smallpox and nearly many other devastating diseases. If I did not think Gardasil was safe, I would not have given it to my own girls. The only thing that hurts is the shot itself. Cancer of the cervix hurts a lot more. Perhaps this vaccine is the first step in finding the cure for other types of cancers. We should begin by protecting young women.
HPV be gone! wrote on Mar 11, 2007 11:17 AM:
hhhmmmmmmm wrote on Mar 11, 2007 10:40 AM:
hhhhmmmmmmmmI wrote on Mar 11, 2007 10:38 AM:
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