Here's the thing about the HPV vaccine, to me, though: Obviously, the company that developed it is making a big play for use as a cancer preventative tool. But cervical cancer isn't that common, and not all cases are related to HPV. I'm looking at this big PDF [link] and it's about half as common among women as cancer of the rectum.

Obviously, it's a good idea to prevent disease, but I have to believe the colossal PR push around this is just to sell the vaccine.

This report is pretty interesting. Women overall have a 1 in 3 chance of getting some kind of cancer in their lifetime. It's a 1 in 8 chance of breast cancer, 1 in 17 chance of lung and bronchus, 1 in 38 of uterine corpus, 1 in 135 of uterine cervix.

Jesse, that was part of my thinking too... but now that Hil has sent me off to Wikipedia measels, mumps, and rubella...

Turns out they're hardly ever fatal. I always assumed they were something far more grim than the chicken pox I and everyone I knew ended up having. They CAN have further effects, (particularly if pregnant women are exposed) but they're largely more distressing than dangerous.

Well, and if someone told me I should pay $800 for a chicken pox vaccine, I'd probably decline that one, too. (That's how much the HPV would be for me with my GYN.)

Yeah, my Gyn said $600. That's when we had the "insurance will likely cover more people" discussion. So far I've opted to not pay for it.

Right now if you're not a woman between, what, nine and twenty six you need to pony up $300+ dollars to get it. My ObGyn suspects that coverage limitation has more to do with available stocks than anything else and that in time it will extend to older women and then to men.

Actually from what I've been reading and hearing it's really 9 to 18 that's the most effective range. It's what the American Cancer Society is recommending for the window. The trick is the vaccine is extremely effective if you get it before your first exposure. The effectiveness drops tremendously after that. As such, the push is for it to happen before students enter middle school. Yes, there is the issue of the drug manufacturer having pushed to hard to get it mandatory, that was a stupid move on their part. However, most states that are looking at making it mandatory are doing that, in part, to make it mandatory for health insurance to cover the vaccine. Right now many insurers do not cover it. If it becomes a mandatory vaccination they will.

I'm within the age range where most insurances will cover it, but mine (the student health plan) won't. Which is just dumb, really. But the student health plan is really horrible -- they'll cover a total of $500 a year for prescriptions. (My parents have said that they'll pay for me to get the HPV vaccine if I want it. I need to talk it over with my doctor, but I probably will be getting it.)

I just checked -- the only vaccine that Chickering student health plan (which seems to be the student health plan at most colleges) will cover is TB. Which is just $15 anyway. Gardasil is three doses at $150 each, not covered by student health insurance.

Just to be clear--I think it should be mandatory, but I also think it should be free. A totally separate topic, I know.

One of the other things my ObGyn said was that there is some indication (and further studies in the works) that there can be reductions in infection in people already infected with the virus if they get the vaccine. Which is interesting.