This week a federal advisory panel unanimously voted to recommend all girls and women ages eleven to twenty-six receive a new vaccine that reduces the risk of cervical cancer by over 90%.
The vaccine, Gardasil, manufactured by Merck, thwarts cervical cancer by blocking infection by the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is spread through sexual contact. Gardasil also blocks precancerous lesions that can cause infertility.
This week's vote is a major step toward committing the federal government to spend as much as $2 billion to buy the vaccine for the nation's poorest young women.
To reach maximum effectiveness, the drug should be administered at a young age -- ideally between nine and fourteen -- to assure protection prior to sexual activity and to take advantage of the robust immune response among preteen girls.
Given that about 9,700 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually -- and some 4,000 die from it -- the approval of this drug is phenomenally good news. It is even better news for the developing world, where cervical cancer is far more common than it is here.
A potential obstacle for widespread application of this new, life-saving vaccine is concern that giving it to preteen girls will somehow be interpreted as a green light for early sexual activity.
Some religious-right groups, including Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, while not opposed to the approval of Gardasil, adamantly oppose including Gardasil on the list of mandated inoculations required for public school attendance (such as diphtheria, mumps, and pertussis).
Opponents argue the disease is not communicable like mumps and measles and should be fought through "proper behavior" (meaning postponing all sexual encounters until marriage to a similarly inexperienced and uninfected man and remaining monogamous thereafter). As a spokesman for Focus on the Family put it, "We support the widespread availability of the vaccine, but we do oppose the mandatory vaccines for entry into public schools...This is a disease that is completely sexually transmitted...We believe that parents should have the final say on whether to vaccinate their children."
But there are good arguments for mandating this vaccine: First, there is precedent for requiring vaccines for non-infectious diseases. We require tetanus shots, for example. Second, the human papillomavirus is infectious and is spread through sexual activity. (Merck hopes someday to have a comparable vaccine for boys -- protecting against two strains of virus that cause 90% of genital warts.)
The use of Gardasil is a medical matter -- not a moral one. And consumers of all political persuasions should welcome this exciting medical advance.
Elizabeth Whelan, Sc.D., MPH, is president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com). She has written before about the Gardasil-approval controversy.
