Another HPV story, these just make me mad – basically HPV has been identified as a major cancer-causing agent for a number of different types of cancer, but efforts have only focused on protecting women, not men. Women have screening tests and a vaccine. Men have… nothing.
According to the article, when asked about making a vaccine and test for men, makers of the vaccine said “cervical cancer is really the focus.” In other words, “we don’t really care about male health.”
What does the CDC have to say to men concerned about HPV? Here’s what they say on their website:
“There is currently no vaccine licensed to prevent HPV-related diseases in men.” and “There is also no approved screening test…” and “HPV is very common.” Ah, yes. Very helpful.
So basically what they are saying is there is a virus that causes cancer, and lots of people probably have it, but men have no way of telling if they have it, and only women should be protected from it anyway. Very nice. Very proactive. Fuckers!
They don’t even have important information about throat cancer (like HPV is a 10x greater risk than SMOKING!) on their site – apparently the CDC doesn’t have time to be current on, you know, Disease. Certainly not Control (the only advice they offer men is “not having sex is the only sure way to avoid HPV” — so clever of them, guess they can cancel skin cancer research and just tell people to live underground out of the sun). Maybe they should just be called “Center“.
Overall the CDC, drug companies, and medical industry’s response to HPV show that they learned NOTHING from the outbreak of AIDS. Imagine if they found a vaccine for AIDS, but decided to only test it and release it for women. Well, that’s what they’ve done with HPV.
Thing is, the current vaccine for women would *probably* work fine on men, too. But no one has bothered to do a study to find out. Because apparently no one cares.
Back in 2006, Bradley Monk, a professor at University of California-Irvine published an article in a medical journal where he recommended using the vaccine on men as well as women, saying: “To have a vaccine that prevents cancer and not use it would be one of the greatest tragedies.”
Guess no one listened to him. Two years later, still no work on testing it on men.
Sigh.