HPV Vaccination — More Answers, More Questions

Abstract

The availability of a “cancer vaccine” has elicited enormous enthusiasm from the medical community and the public, culminating in advocacy for mandatory vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) and a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that 30 million girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26 years in the United States be vaccinated.¹ Previous reports^2,3 showed a remarkable 100% efficacy of a quadrivalent vaccine targeting HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 on outcomes related to vaccine HPV types in women with no evidence of previous exposure to those types. Since HPV types 16 and 18 are implicated in 70% of cervical cancers,⁴ these types are ideal targets for a new vaccine.