HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30
toomuchtodo · 21 days ago
15 comments
toomuchtodo · 21 days ago
15 comments
apothegm · 21 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
The BBC article had that more comparable information: 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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
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/PIIS0140-6...
apparent · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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
somenameforme · 17 days ago
It's not reasonable to use the rates from 30+ years ago because survival rates for all cancers have been sharply increasing for decades. You also need to consider years of life lost if you're going to look at things economically, because you're formulating things as if somebody who died of cervical cancer never existed.
Cervical cancer disproportionately affects older women, even moreso than other cancers. The average age of diagnosis is 50 [1] and so the years of lost life due to cervical cancer is both going to be extremely low and going to disproportionately be very late life years lost. Rates in U30 are already near zero with an extremely high survival rate for those that do get it.
[1] - https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/cervical-cancer/about/ke...
pfdietz · 17 days ago
So use the current rate, which is 2.2 per 100,000. The argument is basically the same. The cost/benefit ratio is so good that your quibbles don't change the conclusion.
somenameforme · 17 days ago
Do you understand the problem I'm describing? You are saying that women who got cervical cancer essentially died at birth. You need to look at years of life lost. Cervical cancer has a low frequency, high survivability, and disproportionately effects women in later age.
You also need to factor in the efficacy of the vaccines, which will not be 100%. The years of life lost/saved will end up most likely being in the days or weeks at most, and so the $12 million figure you pulled out of thin air, for a full lifetime, is highly inappropriate.
This also generalizes to many medical issues. For instance, contrary to what most people think, early cancer screening achieves very little in terms of life extension. Prostate cancer screening, for example, adds about 37 days to one's life expectancy. [1]
[1] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
pfdietz · 17 days ago
Let me shoot right back and ask if you understand what I was saying.
Yes, I understood what you are saying. I was making a crude argument, but the crude argument showed benefit something like 18-36x the cost. The points you are making would reduce the benefit, but not by a factor anywhere close to 18.
somenameforme · 17 days ago
I think it certainly will. We can test it fairly easily by getting some real numbers.
- Years of life lost per death = 17 [1]
- Mortality rate = 2.2/100k
- Life lost per person per year = ~3.3 hours (derived from 17 years * 2.2 cases / 100k people)
- Total change in life expectancy if completely eliminated = ~3.3 hours/year for ~50 years = 1 week
My argument is lowballing everything (or in other words working against me) since you used extreme ends for your argument, and I'm simply accepting them. I also used years of life lost data from 2000 when cancer survival rates have significantly improved since then, assumed 100% perfect efficacy and so on. It doesn't matter, because it's not even remotely close.
From these data we can see that your argument implies implies that a person would be willing to pay about $20,000 (midpoint of your 18-36 = 27 x $750 cost of vaccine) for an increase of 7 days of life expectancy. That's nonsensical, by orders of magnitude, unless you're only polling multi millionaires to determine a statistical value of life.
pfdietz · 17 days ago
That 2.2 per 100,000 is deaths PER YEAR, not PER LIFETIME. The vaccine is protecting against death each year over the person's life, not just in one year.
somenameforme · 17 days ago
That is why I multiplied the change per year by 50, exactly as you did.
pfdietz · 17 days ago
OK. If a life is worth $12M, that's $3300/week (assuming a 70 year lifespan). The shots cost $500-1000, a 3-6x ROI.
somenameforme · 16 days ago
You're again playing very fast and loose with numbers there. The average female life expectancy is 81. And the shots only matter during the window of your life where cervical cancer is remotely relevant, which is during a typical sexual window where somebody may have multiple partners. 50 was already pushing the limits there, but I accepted it because even with that exaggeration, it's not close. But at some point you've got to start being remotely reasonable. And this is again before we even get into real efficacy, side effects, and other issues which matter quite a lot with diseases that have as low an impact as cervical cancer. E.g. a quick search shows a rate of severe side effects from the vaccines at 1.8 per 100k (which you need to multiply for a multi-shot regime). That matters quite a lot when the death rate from cervical cancer is 2.2 per 100k.
And more generally, I think converting this issue into weeks starts to emphasize how broken a metric statistical value of life is. Nobody, again outside of millionaires, is paying thousands or even hundreds of dollars for one more week of life expectancy. Even if they wanted to, the overwhelming majority of people just don't have that degree of disposable wealth. It's akin to you ask people how much they'd be willing to pay to e.g. deal with climate change, and they give some ridiculously large number. But then when it comes time to really pay, and not hypothetically pay, that number suddenly becomes quite close to $0.
pfdietz · 16 days ago
> The average female life expectancy is 81.
This is a quibble that does not substantially alter the conclusion.
> And the shots only matter during the window of your life where cervical cancer is remotely relevant, which is during a typical sexual window where somebody may have multiple partners.
Already taken into account in your "save 1 week" conclusion. No double counting please.
> And this is again before we even get into real efficacy, side effects, and other issues which matter quite a lot
This argues in favor of the shots, as I have been ignoring the real cost of cancers to those who don't die of them, or who suffer before they die.
> And more generally, I think converting this issue into weeks starts to emphasize how broken a metric statistical value of life is.
You're calling it broken because it's showing you're wrong.
Something like the statistical value of a life is necessary because tradeoffs between different options must be made. If those tradeoffs are made consistently, a value of life naturally falls out.
JumpCrisscross · 17 days 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
[2] https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021...
[3] https://gco.iarc.who.int/today/en/dataviz/pie?mode=populatio... Mortality, cervix uteri, females, 0 to 29
moralestapia · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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/
[2] - hhttps://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestori...
JumpCrisscross · 17 days ago
Very fair. These are UK data, and I’m unfortunately not well versed in their sources. Our American sources don’t seem to measure by age consistently enough for me to gather an estimate. If there is a comorbidity irrelevant outside Africa and rural Southeasr Asia, that will mess up the numbers.
moralestapia · 17 days ago
>Zero deaths
It's not zero deaths though, it's "almost zero".
Arodex · 17 days ago
[flagged]
apparent · 17 days 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.
bonsai_spool · 17 days ago
Absolutely is - this is such a no-brainer of a public health intervention. We're not touching on the cost of treatment (including inability to have future children! very much something a State should be interested in avoiding).
dennis_jeeves2 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
They?
I had no idea HN had so many cookers.
eek2121 · 17 days 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...
m101 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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.
blcknight · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
Yeah, not everyone.
QuiEgo · 17 days ago
HPV spreads even when condoms are used - any skin to skin contact can spread it. So yeah, not everyone, but it’s exceptionally prevalent. Luckily most strains are relatively harmless.
apparent · 17 days ago
It is exceptionally prevalent, but that's not the same as everyone who is sexually active has it. There are plenty of people who do not put themselves at risk prior to getting married and are then faithful to their spouses.
orwin · 17 days ago
Some strain survive on toilet seats or in sauna/hammams.
kstrauser · 17 days ago
I despise that line of thinking. It completely ignores incidents of things like date rape. Jane Pristine gets assaulted by her high school boyfriend but doesn’t tell anyone because that’s how it commonly plays out. Joe Angel marries Jane and gets the HPV she got from her ex. Jane dies of cervical cancer. Joe, the widower, marries Jill Virginal and she gets HPV from him.
Not one of them did anything wrong, but all got it. Yes, not everyone who’s sexually active has HPV, but even people abiding by what I assume are the Biblical principles we’re discussing here (because abstinence is nearly only a religious thing and we’re talking about it on a heavily American website) can be affected, even without disobeying the laws they try to follow.
yieldcrv · 17 days ago
this is a reminder to do a refresher on STDs, the situation for heterosexual men who dont do anal is overpowered. scare campaigns from the early 2000s and 90s arent that full of a story
the things you can get are either
A) benign when caught early. Test 3 weeks after every partner. Take a medication for a week if positive, your next test will be negative
B) can be vaccinated against in advance
or C) condoms don't prevent at all to begin with
D) new HIV infections is faaaar more rare to a hetero man, compared to women and people doing anal. And Prep/Pep has essentially solved that too.
the landscape is different for people being receptacles and their risk profile just has to be different.
devs left this unpatched
I can understand why districts wouldn't want teenagers to know it this way. That has nothing to do with you.
blcknight · 10 days ago
No need to be defensive. If you ask an epidemiologist, they would almost certainly agree that it is essentially a marker of sexual activity at this point. It is transmissible even with condoms, it has many strains, it is widely prevalent, and the WHO states that basically everyone is sexual active will get one strain. Guardrail prevents against 9 - the ones we were able to create vaccines for and we know have negative effects.
There's also not really great tests for it, so you do not know if you have it or not.
Avshalom · 17 days ago
the reason is no one realized hpv was connected to much more than cervical cancer until fairly recently.
londons_explore · 17 days ago
I think we will eventually discover that almost all cancers are caused by viruses, and future healthcare will be all about how to stop the spread of viruses where vaccines don't work well.
ls612 · 17 days ago
This was the case a decade ago but now the US recommendation is that all children, boys and girls, get the vaccine.
chasely · 17 days ago
I was denied the vaccine by my healthcare provider as a man in my mid-20s. Their reasoning being that I was likely already exposed.
It may have been true, but would still have liked to get the vaccine since it covers many multiple strains.
59percentmore · 17 days ago
IIUC they've been slowly expanding availability over the years. Someone who was denied in their 20s might be able to get it now in their 30s.
pyuser583 · 17 days ago
I will do so when my doctor advises me to, not before.
quantified · 16 days ago
Well, it also cuts the transmission to unvaccinated women (and men, when they swing that way, too). If men got it consistently, women would be at a lot less risk.
alistairSH · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13036706/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009829972...
Arodex · 17 days ago
>the base rate for cervical cancer deaths under 30 was already near zero.
It has never been zero between 1970 and 2019. It has been completely 0 between 2020 and 2024.
apparent · 17 days ago
Not according to the age-bucked histogram in the data you linked to below.
kstrauser · 17 days ago
I don’t think that’s right. I know 2 women well enough that they shared with me having been diagnosed with cervical dysplasia, diagnosed via Pap smear, in their late 20s. Both had a procedure to freeze off the affected cells and were later declared cured.
My understanding of it is that this is extremely freaking common as far as medical issues go, because women, much more so than men, are more likely to go in for routine screening when they’re suppose to, and these these get frequently found before they become major issues.
One could reasonably argue that nearly every ablation treatment for cervical dysplasia is a cancer treatment, just a very early one that isn’t drastically life-affecting. And if so, the number of cervical cancer incidents would be ginormous higher than deaths from it.
And ask any woman who’d gone through and paid for cervical ablation, and I bet 99 of 100 would choose to have gotten a preventative shot, except for the 1 idiot in every group.
apparent · 17 days ago
The base rate of deaths is different from the base rate of diagnosed illness. Dying before 30 is obviously less common than being diagnosed before 30.
somenameforme · 17 days ago
Those are precancerous lesions, it's not the same as being diagnosed with cervical cancer. In young people these are not that uncommon, yet the majority do not progress onto cancer. This is part of the reason there's been a major shift in recommended testing timelines for cervical cancer for younger people. The treatment may be unnecessary and can cause both physical and emotional trauma.
zeristor · 17 days ago
The people that died there's the numbers for that, but the people that didn't need treatment in the first place.
Not just a reduction in trauma but freeing up Drs to treat other cancers too.
AngryData · 17 days 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.
Arodex · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
What are the numbers on that post vaccine vs pre vaccine?
pfdietz · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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-de...
durkie · 17 days ago
Why does that seem important? The “in mice” one makes sense (such results might not be the same in humans), but is there a reason to think that results achieved here in England couldn’t happen elsewhere?
tialaramex · 17 days ago
Basically it's definitely possible that you could get cervical cancer without HPV. There's a scientific disagreement about whether in some populations that's say 5% prevalent while others it's more like 0.1% prevalent, or whether they're more similar, but it clearly can happen. Outside science this can turn into "England is very, very white, so, this is basically only a study of white women" which as you observe isn't much like the mouse studies - humans just aren't that different. There are differences, but they're not big enough to suggest this study might be a "glitch" with no relevance for your population like a mouse study could be.
rzzzt · 17 days ago
This didn't even occur to me. The title in the submission is cut short; most outlets including this article includes a "close to zero", "near zero" at the end, which has this overly cheery feeling (at least to me) that we can pat ourselves on the back, it's not just done but done-done, on to the next disease, huzzah. Whereas this whole thing is the result of a systematic nation-wide vaccination program that has been going on for quite a while (2008) and a study looked into its effectiveness and found that yes, this concerted campaign may have moved the needle on that population-level gauge.
It can happen elsewhere but it hasn't happened yet! Or who knows!
tmach32 · 17 days ago
I don’t think one can sensationalise the HPV vaccine enough. Cervical cancer is too common and it’s crazy that a vaccine can greatly reduce it.
If you know any women (which is obviously not a given for HN) then you know multiple women who have had cervical cancer scares or worse.
runako · 17 days ago
“We estimate that since its introduction, HPV vaccination has prevented nearly 200 young women from dying from cervical cancer in England.”
Given that the youngest vaccinated women are ~31 now, we would expect rates in that cohort to remain lower than in prior cohorts. But, crucially, we have to wait for this cohort to age to know for sure.
Treat this as a check-in as part of a 50-year longitudinal study that will keep yielding new data for another 40 years or so. (I don't know if it will be the same actual study, but the data will be there.)
kelipso · 17 days ago
I remember this vaccine being part of political discourse, so I everyone should be extremely skeptical of any news about it.
seattle_spring · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
Completely agree.
If kids are getting HPV before their teens, the solution is not vaccination ...
toomuchtodo · 17 days 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)
apparent · 17 days ago
> As a parent, you cannot control when your child becomes sexually active
It's not entirely out of your control, even though you can't control it entirely.
Also, giving your kid vaccines that are only relevant for sexually active people sends a message, which is that you expect that they may be sexually active. That's not a message that some people want to send to their tweens.
edit: when people downvote this, is it because they think it is untrue, or they just don't like it?
toomuchtodo · 16 days ago
> It's not entirely out of your control, even though you can't control it entirely.
--
> "Unfortunately, the modern-day parental rights movement is predicated on a belief that children are the property of their parents, and therefore parents, “should be able to do anything they want to them."
is a quote I read today in https://www.404media.co/are-public-libraries-becoming-childr... that perfectly encapsulated this problem space, which linked to
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
https://archive.org/details/hfvemhgahusmfvqxur73qccoumjmqg6z...
> The illusion of control is obviously not working and will have devastating consequences for the rest of us, which people do not want and vehemently reject. This means the answer likely lies somewhere between meeting your kids where they’re at, even when where they’re at bears no resemblance to the Devil You Know. Which is scary and sucks, but that’s also what parenting is, and which a lot of parents don’t seem to get. “We talk about parents’ rights, but what we really need is parent remedial education,” Magnussun added.
(while in the context of parents prohibiting access to library materials a parent may disagree with, I believe the concept transfers and holds to this situation as well)
> Also, giving your kid vaccines that are only relevant for sexually active people sends a message, which is that you expect that they may be sexually active. That's not a message that some people want to send to their tweens.
Various studies show this to be false. If you think this is the message it sends, this is not borne out in the data. Update your priors.
HPV vaccination status is not associated with increased risky sexual behavior - https://www.hpvworld.com/articles/hpv-vaccination-status-is-...
> The consistent, replicated findings across the 20 studies examined in our systematic review provide strong evidence refuting the proposed association between HPV vaccination and risky sexual behavior. The 20 studies, which utilizing at least four distinct study designs and included a total of 521,879 participants, found no evidence for increased numbers of sexual partners, younger age of sexual initiation, decreased use of contraception (including both condoms and hormonal contraceptives), increased STI diagnoses, increased pregnancy rates, or increased history of abortion among those vaccinated against HPV. In fact, some studies found that vaccinated women engaged in fewer risky behaviors than unvaccinated women. The findings from our systematic review should alleviate any parental concerns that HPV vaccination will lead to risky sexual behaviors.
Kasting, M. L., Shapiro, G. K., Rosberger, Z., Kahn, J. A., & Zimet, G. D. (2016). Tempest in a teapot: A systematic review of HPV vaccination and risk compensation research. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, 12(6), 1435–1450. https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2016.1141158
HPV Vaccine Doesn't Make Teens More Promiscuous, Says Study - https://www.christianpost.com/news/hpv-vaccine-doesnt-make-t... - October 15th, 2012
> "The takeaway here is that this vaccine is safe and effective, and it's not associated with any risk of … outcomes related to sexual activity," Benarczyk explained. "This is reassuring to physicians and the parents that the concern doesn't need to be there."
pyuser583 · 17 days ago
What age do you recommend they be vaccinated?
toomuchtodo · 17 days ago
Lower age bound for Gardasil 9 is nine years old. That is when I had my kids vaccinated for it at their pediatrician.
toomuchtodo · 17 days ago
Additional resource:
wolvoleo · 17 days ago
HPV is not exclusively transmitted by sexual activity.
root_axis · 17 days ago
What age do you recommend and why?
> I'd rather my child wait until their immune system is more developed
At what age is the immune system fully developed?
wolvoleo · 17 days ago
HPV can be transmitted sexually and it is the most common way, but it's definitely not the only way. Once you've contracted one of the variants the vaccine prevents it is too late for that one so that's why they want to do it as early as possible. The most common vaccine Gardasil 9 protects against 9 variants. Of course it's best to take advantage of the best protection it can offer, so why not do it early?
Also, it takes 3 jabs and about 8 months (increasing intervals) so it's important to do it early for that reason too.
shirro · 17 days ago
There is a medical recommendation for ages 9-25 in my country though the public funded mass vaccination program is for 12-13 as the most effective age.
The thought that a 9yo would need protection from STDs is very upsetting which I would guess makes it a talking point. It is better to mass vaccinate at whatever age is publicly acceptable than not at all so I would concede that to critics.
Anyone exposed to sexual activity at such an age is clearly a victim of abuse. Penalising victims of abuse, whether it be forcing them to attempt to carry a baby to term, against medical advice, or forcing them to deal with the consequences of STDs is a very peculiar and nasty attitude. When societies start justifying denial of care and treatment along lines of class, politics, age, race, religion, gender or perceptions of "morality" there's a bigger problem.
smackeyacky · 17 days ago
Men raping children is why they wanted to start at 9.
discordance · 17 days ago
Source?
I thought it was because the vaccine is most effective for people before sexual activity begins.
smackeyacky · 17 days ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6114142/
Recommended for victims of sexual assault. Rather revoltingly one conservative objection to giving it to 9 years olds was that it would “increase risky behaviour” in that cohort, despite knowing that the biggest risk of sexually transmitted disease to children that age is rape by family member.
Supermancho · 17 days ago
Why is a this news headline using the slang "jabs"?
graeme · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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?
Supermancho · 17 days ago
> Yes, the person I responded to asked, and yes, I was the only person who answered. You're welcome?
I don't think you understand what's happening. I accepted that I lacked the proper context. You want to keep arguing about related details.
> Edit: and the politicalization of it continues... sigh
You felt the need to politicize it by intentionally phrasing that it was "inflicted" to get an optional vaccination because there were consequence to opting out. This is not adding to the discussion, so here you are. Hope this helps.
kstrauser · 17 days ago
Yep, often accompanied by an idiotic fake distinction between "jab/shot" and "vaccine", like "it's not a vaccine, it's a shot!"
True: There are shots which aren't vaccines, and vaccines which aren't shots.
False: "The COVID 'vaccine' isn't actually a vaccine! It's a jab!"
smelendez · 17 days ago
In the UK, I believe jab has long been equivalent to shot in the US (complete with nonviolent connotation despite the word meaning something violent in other contexts).
jhbadger · 17 days ago
Maybe, but it's a bit weird to complain about connotations for "jab" when the US word is "shot" which surely has even more violent connotations,
dfc · 17 days ago
A shot of tequila? Or my team having a shot at winning world series? There are lots of shots.
verall · 17 days ago
Don't brits use the same way, i.e. "Take a jab at it"?
- not a brit so idk
smelendez · 17 days ago
Interestingly Greene’s Dictionary of Slang cites more than a century of US use of “jab” for injection. Seems like it must have died out in the US and revived a bit lately.
globular-toast · 17 days ago
Not sure about that, you may be thinking of "take a stab at it".
redwall_hp · 17 days ago
Commonwealth countries say "jab" instead of "shot."
cmrdporcupine · 17 days ago
Canada is a Commonwealth country but we say shot.
arjie · 17 days 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?
ggm · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
Yes I got Gardasil 9 for free in San Francisco.
toomuchtodo · 17 days 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-vac...
naturalmovement · 17 days ago
Are you a divorced dad dipping your wick left and right or did you get it merely for the sake of doing so?
The reason insurance does not pay for it at that age is because it makes no sense.
toomuchtodo · 17 days ago
Married ~20 years and ethically non monogamous. My partner and I date women together and solo. ~$1k to protect other people is cheap and is looked upon favorably by potential partners (I am able to provide vaccination and most recent STI test results on demand when asked).
Even if you’re monogamous, life is long and divorce common. I walk through cheap optionality doors whenever possible, and recommend others do to. YMMV.
8 facts about divorce in the United States - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/16/8-facts-a... - October 16th, 2025
> Divorce is an important aspect of family life in the United States that shapes living arrangements, financial well-being and parenting. In 2023, over 1.8 million Americans divorced. Additionally, a third of Americans who have ever been married have also experienced divorce.
> Many adults who divorce go on to form new families through cohabitation, remarriage or having more children. For instance, most adults who have divorced (66%) have gone on to remarry. And among those who have divorced and are currently remarried, 46% have had a child with their new spouse.
naturalmovement · 17 days ago
Fair enough. I don't judge you.
But know that your lifestyle is outside the norm (I had to Google your description to make sure I understood aka open marriage) so your assumptions are slanted through that lens.
A lot of posters here and their families live very different lives and their choices likewise represent that, so their opinions are equally valid. Their needs are different.
toomuchtodo · 17 days ago
No offense intended, I wouldn’t care if judged, in any setting. Data has value, nothing else does. An opinion will mean nothing when faced with a cancer diagnosis, either self or child, and I’m not here to change hearts or minds (mental models are rigid, humans are emotion vs data driven); only to share data, and consume data. Go where the data takes you, assuming valid data.
If you’ve made a good choice based on the data, you win, well done. If you haven’t, “we win or we learn.” Better luck next time. Try to win more than you learn. Reality and outcomes are the test. They do not concern themselves with opinions and feelings importantly. And so, decision fully informed from a place of logic and rationality.
apparent · 17 days ago
I thought it was not effective if you had previously been exposed. Did you make it into your 40s as a non monogamous person without any exposure?
toomuchtodo · 17 days ago
https://www.acog.org/womens-health/experts-and-stories/the-l...
> The vaccine is still helpful even if you have already tested positive for HPV or have been sexually active for a while. Most HPV transmission happens when people first become sexually active. But women who have already tested positive for HPV usually aren’t positive for all nine types that we vaccinate for. So in some cases, we’ll recommend those patients get the vaccine if they haven’t already. And if you’re older – midlife age, and new on the dating scene and sexually active – you should ask your doctor about the vaccine too.
>[Note: The HPV vaccine can also be an important part of treatment for the cell changes caused by HPV infection. After the abnormal cells have been removed or destroyed, the HPV vaccine may help prevent abnormal cells from coming back. Read Human Papillomavirus (HPV): Infection and Vaccination for more information.]
cmrdporcupine · 17 days ago
Here in Ontario it's just offered to all grade 7s, boy or girls.
jrgoff · 17 days ago
I got it in the US in my late 30s or early 40s - I think it was even at One Medical (though I assume One Medical may be fairly different now after Amazon took it over). It was covered by my insurance.
wolvoleo · 17 days ago
It cost me 600€ privately in Europe because it's not available for people my age.
nikolay · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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?
qsera · 17 days ago
I have seen a "highly trained specialist" declare that a baby can easily accommodate thousands of vaccines a day (advocating for the then existing vaccine schedule), because the immune system encounter that many pathogens per day!
I hope I don't have to explain the fallacy in that to the crowd here.
ropable · 17 days ago
There exists a possibility that they were correct and you are not.
qsera · 17 days ago
But the larger possibility is that it is the other way around...
ourmandave · 17 days ago
When you got the shot didn't they tell you about the possible side effects and what to watch for?
I know for the Covid vaccine I had to sit for an hour to make sure of something not happening.
wolvoleo · 17 days ago
When I got it they didn't, no. Didn't have to stay either. But I was fine.
nikolay · 17 days ago
We forgot to get another vaccine shot. On the form, they ask if we want Gardasil. We declined. Then they took our daughter to administer the shots. They brought her back and started to apologize: "We're sorry, we didn't see that you declined, and we gave her the shot anyway." We could've sued them, especially with the adverse effects, but we're coming from a culture that's not overly litigious.
And this is not the first time doctors in leading Southern California medical groups have completely ignored what's on the form! My son was going to have a minor surgery, so they asked me: "Oh, we give an anesthetic before we actually administer the actual one, because some kids are afraid of shots." I told them he's one of those kids and always liked, actually, even watching when they administer the shot, and never cries. This is given he's already on IV! Another doctor came a minute later and started changing the IV. I asked him, "What are you doing?" He said he was administering the pre-anesthetic. And I said that we declined it on the form, but it was too late. Then another doctor came and started to apologize - they don't read, they assume what people want! And this was at CHOC, the most prestigious children's hospital! Of course, as I said, we didn't sue.
So, I know that you should double-check and ask exactly what they are doing. Unfortunately, you can do this only if you're present. And you should always require them to repeat what they plan to do to your kids if they are taking them away from you. And... you should sue, as commercial entities, just like people, learn best when it hurts.
naturalmovement · 17 days ago
I find it extremely troubling that this comment detailing your very personal experience was flagged because it went against a prescribed narrative.
nikolay · 17 days ago
Except that HPV vaccines are not mandatory in most states [0].
[0]: https://www.immunize.org/official-guidance/state-policies/va...
moralestapia · 17 days 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.
WorkerBee28474 · 17 days ago
Looking at 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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
economistbob · 17 days 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
2. https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(23)00478-8/full...
asgraham · 17 days 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).
economistbob · 17 days ago
Controlling for age would bias the sample.
Here's an a pair of articles on the mental model called inversion, which is about avoiding stupidity. [2] [3]
An example of inversion "If going down Route A in the dark in the rain is correlated with traffic accidents, take Route B, regardless of the fact that one's super tires or eagle eyesight might supposedly negate causation."
The same reality holds up at scale, and not just at the one university clinic, but they retracted it for political reasons. [4]
That is a very serious math situation if one wants more babies. Most parents would simply tell the young driver to stay off Route A in the dark or rain.
I did misread the ages between the two, and I have removed the age references.
3. https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/invert-always-i...
wolvoleo · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days ago
Can we stop calling vaccines jabs?
pyuser583 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 17 days 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 · 16 days 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.
pyuser583 · 13 days ago
I was initially going to “educate myself” about this but my doctors said “stop.”
For a man above 45 the answer is simply, “no.” Very few people understand why. It’s complicated, requires lots of math, and most doctors don’t care.
You trust them or don’t. Take it or leave it. Yes or no.
This was long before COVID.
seattle_spring · 12 days ago
I see one single comment from a person who self-identifies themselves as a 50yo male. Nothing in his comment could be reasonably interpreted as "bragging."
Where are you seeing "a ton of old guys bragging"?
orwin · 17 days 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.