I understand the frustration over the vaccine not being offered and the fact that insurance doesn't cover it. However, there is quite a bit of misinformation out there concerning HPV and the vaccine.
Most forms of HPV do not lead to cervical cancer, and most forms of cervical cancer are not caused by HPV. More importantly, the type of HPV that does lead to cervical cancer takes several years to develop into such -- and, 9 times out of 10, it goes away. If you're getting a yearly PAP smear, as every woman should, then the virus is going to be caught and taken care of long before it blossoms into cancer.
I had an abnormal PAP smear almost a year ago, and subsequently had a biopsy that came back positive for HPV. I was given the option of either having the offending cells removed or monitoring the situation through repeat PAP smears every six months. Since there was a good chance the infection would clear up on its own, and the cells were years away from becoming cancerous, I decided to monitor the situation and have the cells removed if they hadn't gone away in a year and a half. Well, guess what? The virus is already gone.
Of course that doesn't happen for everyone, and I'm not trying to minimize the fact that HPV can lead to cancer. It can, and as a result, every woman should make sure she's getting her yearly exam. The point I'm trying to make, however, is that there's already a proven way of preventing the infection from getting out of hand, and at the end of the day, it isn't quite the crisis situation that it's been made out to be. For me, when the choice is between regularly getting myself checked out by my doctor and trying a vaccine whose long-term effects are as yet unknown, I'm going to choose getting myself checked out. Especially since this vaccine will only protect me against one form of cervical cancer -- the one that's probably already the easiest to avoid, because we know exactly what virus causes it and exactly how to get rid of said virus if it's detected and isn't going away.
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I understand the frustration over the vaccine not being offered and the fact that insurance doesn't cover it. However, there is quite a bit of misinformation out there concerning HPV and the vaccine.
Most forms of HPV do not lead to cervical cancer, and most forms of cervical cancer are not caused by HPV. More importantly, the type of HPV that does lead to cervical cancer takes several years to develop into such -- and, 9 times out of 10, it goes away. If you're getting a yearly PAP smear, as every woman should, then the virus is going to be caught and taken care of long before it blossoms into cancer.
I had an abnormal PAP smear almost a year ago, and subsequently had a biopsy that came back positive for HPV. I was given the option of either having the offending cells removed or monitoring the situation through repeat PAP smears every six months. Since there was a good chance the infection would clear up on its own, and the cells were years away from becoming cancerous, I decided to monitor the situation and have the cells removed if they hadn't gone away in a year and a half. Well, guess what? The virus is already gone.
Of course that doesn't happen for everyone, and I'm not trying to minimize the fact that HPV can lead to cancer. It can, and as a result, every woman should make sure she's getting her yearly exam. The point I'm trying to make, however, is that there's already a proven way of preventing the infection from getting out of hand, and at the end of the day, it isn't quite the crisis situation that it's been made out to be. For me, when the choice is between regularly getting myself checked out by my doctor and trying a vaccine whose long-term effects are as yet unknown, I'm going to choose getting myself checked out. Especially since this vaccine will only protect me against one form of cervical cancer -- the one that's probably already the easiest to avoid, because we know exactly what virus causes it and exactly how to get rid of said virus if it's detected and isn't going away.
March 11, 2009 - 7:53pmThis Comment
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