AAR reporting administration is against HPV vaccine for women...

Scientists’ advice shunted aside under Bush
SHOWCASE | March 14, 2006

By Sam Kean

Michael Specter begins his deconstruction of the Bush Administration’s science policies with a typical political plea: for the children. The human papillomavirus (HPV) has been proven to cause cervical cancer, which kills around 5,000 U.S. women each year and hundreds of thousands worldwide. Thankfully, there are two vaccines in the pipeline that could effectively eliminate HPV. Many would like to see such a vaccine included in normal childhood inoculations, like measles, mumps and rubella. Says one Nobel laureate quoted in the article, “It has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.”

Yet the odds of these vaccines receiving the final push toward FDA approval are slim. Why? Because HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, most often encountered (in mild strains) as genital warts. And conservatives in Washington argue that eliminating the threat of HPV can only promote casual sex. Specter quotes Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn, a physician, as saying: “Pre-marital sex is dangerous, even deadly. Let’s not encourage it by vaccinating ten-year-olds so they think they’re safe.” Public health has become a strictly moral issue.

The Bush Administration also opposes HPV vaccines and instead promotes abstinence-education programs, which might be fine if such programs worked. Yet, citing the best available evidence, Specter writes,

“When it came to preventing sexually transmitted diseases, students in the programs fared no better than those in the control group . The study also found that students who promised to remain virgins were less likely to use contraception when they did have sex, and they were less likely to seek S.T.D. testing.”

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