I would like to add:<p>- HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives. Unless you plan to remain completely celibate, you are likely to contract a strain.<p>- Sooner is better, but vaccination can be done at any age. Guidelines often lag behind, but vaccination makes sense even if you are currently HPV-positive. While it won't clear an existing infection, it protects against different strains and reinfection (typically body removed HPV in 1-2 years). See: <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/</a><p>- HPV16 is responsible for a large number of throat cancers (around 50% in smokers and 80% in non-smokers!). This affects both men and women. Vaccinating men is important for their own safety and to reduce transmission to their partners.
> Unless you plan to remain completely celibate<p>You can get HPV without sex too.<p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/sti/about/about-genital-hpv-infection.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/sti/about/about-genital-hpv-infection.ht...</a><p>"HPV is most commonly spread during vaginal or anal sex. It also spreads through close skin-to-skin touching during sex"<p>This focuses on sex, but any virus that can be found on skin, also has a chance to be transmitted without sex just as well. Admittedly the chance here for HPV infection is much higher with regard to sex, but not non-zero otherwise. The HeLa cells also contain a HPV virus in the genome, though this was probably transmitted via sex:<p>"The cells are characterized to contain human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18)"<p>HPV-18. I think HPV-18 may in general be more prevalent than HPV-16.
> also has a chance to be transmitted without sex just as well. Admittedly the chance here for HPV infection is much higher with regard to sex, but not non-zero otherwise<p>So, NOT in fact “just as well”.
Foot warts are HPV, like from the Gym locker room
Armpit skin tags also seem to be related to some HPV strains: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_tag" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_tag</a>
But they are not HPV16/18 and so not covered by this vaccine.
I successfully treated a persistent hand / feet / knee warts infection with 3 shots of Gardasil-9. The common warts are supposed to clear on their own within 2 years, but it was not the case for me. They all cleared out about a 1 year after the first shot, never to return. Including a deep plantar one that was completely immune to cryotherapy<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772707624001577" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277270762...</a>
There is some clinical evidence of other strain effect. See pediatric dermatology article from a year or two ago.
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>> HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives.<p>This statistic seems to be used by some people to avoid the vaccine - they figure they've already had it at some point. The biggest problem with that logic is that not all strains are as dangerous and they probably have not contracted 16 or 18 specifically. The other problem is there's still a good number of people who have never had it and shouldn't assume they have because its common.
But this misunderstands how HPV works. First, there are many strains. Typical tests for oncogenic variants measure around 30 types. The vaccine I received (Gardasil-9, which I took as a male at age 35) protects against nine specific strains.<p>Second, the body normally clears HPV naturally after 1-2 years. However, natural infection often does not provide immunity, so reinfection can easily occur (even from the same partner or a different part of your own body).<p>People often assume that HPV is either a lifetime infection or that recovery guarantees immunity - neither is the case!
> This statistic seems to be used by some people to avoid the vaccine<p>The FDA itself restricted access to the vaccine on the basis of age. Given that virions aren't even involved in the production process, its safety should have been deemed good enough for the entire population early on.
The reason it's not recommended for all ages is money. Not safety concerns.<p>Same reason you can't get Shingrix under a certain age.
I think the main reason it isn't recommended for all ages is that it wears off. If you get it before 50, when your immune system starts declining, you might end up getting shingles when you're 60 or 70.<p>Insurance companies used to only pay for the vaccine at 60. They've reduced it to 50 now because people (like me) were getting it in their 50's. I got it in my left eye and because my immune system is kinda shit, I still have it, though it doesn't give me too much grief now. But it did trash my cornea in that eye, so it's messed my vision up pretty good. And since there's still an active infection (after 8 years), I can't get a cornea transplant.<p><a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/two-dose-shingles-vaccine-is-still-highly-effective-after-four-years" rel="nofollow">https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/two-dose-shin...</a>
Beg for forgiveness, don't ask permission. I got Shingrix when I was under the age of 40, and at no cost to myself even, simply by scheduling a Shingrix vaccine at CVS. It wasn't until I went back for the booster shot months later that the nurse was like "Wait, aren't you too young for this?", but they nevertheless gave me the second dose to complete the vaccine course. You can just so things.
If by “money” you mean “spending limited health dollars on treatments where the benefit justifies the amount spent” then you’d be correct.
I would happily pay for Shingrix.
They also did it by gender in the US when I was in college. Boys could not get it. At the same time that Europe was vaccinating everyone.
That’s not how drug approvals work. You don’t make assumptions about safety, you make decisions based on data.<p>The original trials were for a specific population - no prior HPV infection, young women. Hence the approval was for that population.<p>Additional trials have been run expanding the population, but the decision was based on data not “yeah, I’ll bet this is safe/works for this other group”
>>>>> HPVs are extremely common: 80% of men and 90% of women will have at least one strain in their lives.
>> This statistic seems to be used by some people to avoid the vaccine - they figure they've already had it at some point. The biggest problem with that logic is that not all strains are as dangerous and they probably have not contracted 16 or 18 specifically. The other problem is there's still a good number of people who have never had it and shouldn't assume they have because its common.<p>As people cite these statistics, it would be useful to distinguish exposure to HPV causing foot warts, etc from the much more dangerous variants. I rarely see any statistics do this sort of segmentation.
> I rarely see any statistics do this sort of segmentation.<p>There are multiple publications. THe easiest way to find is Gemini 3 Pro or ChatGPT Thinking + find for publications (go to link, not just rely on summary).<p>They differ by population and methodology. For example, here is "Age-specific and genotype-specific carcinogenic human papillomavirus prevalence in a country with a high cervical cancer burden: results of a cross-sectional study in Estonia", 2023,
<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10255022/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10255022/</a>
I mostly hear this from healthcare-fatalists arguing against people in their 40s+ getting the vaccine later in life.
What about the people who know they have 16 or 18? Should they still get it?
Yes. It would still protect you from the other strains and reduce risks of reinfection by the strains you already have, which is the main issue preventing your immune system from clearing the infection up by itself<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X23009908#:~:text=Abstract,not%20benefit%20from%20prophylactic%20vaccines." rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2...</a>
Yeah, I only read the abstract and looked at the plots, but this is what I hate about public health papers:<p>They say the prevalence of virus is down. They don't say that the cancer rate is down (granted too early to tell), nor do they talk about any adverse events or all cause mortality differences (again, probably too early to tell)<p>The only thing they can conclude is that the treatment given to stop the virus, stops the virus. But they don't mention any tradeoffs.<p>Not trying to be an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist, but good science needs to talk about the whole picture.
This is <i>one</i> research paper reporting on particular results.<p>It is DEFINITELY not too early to tell. Cervical cancer rates in Australia, which adopted the vaccine widely and early have decreased, and it has been widely reported ( <a href="https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/cancer-types/cervical-cancer/cervical-cancer-australia-statistics" rel="nofollow">https://www.canceraustralia.gov.au/cancer-types/cervical-can...</a> )
Research papers are not literature reviews. This paper reports on the results of this study. And that study only investigated what it investigated.<p>In the case of public health, there are a bunch of organizations that keep on top of the research and maintain a more comprehensive view of their perception of the current consensus.<p>For day to day guidance, individuals should be referring to either those sources, or healthcare professionals.<p>If people are looking at individual studies like this to make decisions, something has gone very wrong.
You can’t talk about the whole picture unless you have all the parts. There’s no reason all of those parts have to come from the same study.<p>The first thing on your list of complaints is something that by your own admission cannot yet be determined. If you’re not trying to be an anti-vaxxer, you’re doing a bad job of it.
For those men wondering whether they should get vaccinated:<p>- HPV causes genital warts, HPV is permanent, doctors won't test you for HPV unless you demand it, and the tests aren't reliable, which is why they literally won't diagnose you unless you already have genital warts.<p>- Once you are confirmed HPV positive (again, you won't be confirmed without getting genital warts), you need to inform your partners, as it causes cancer in both men and women (but mostly women).
You are giving some honestly really bad and dangerous info.<p>The HPV strains that cause cancer and the ones that cause genital warts are different. The strains that cause cancer do not cause warts.<p>So you can very much have HPV without genital warts.<p>And conversely, while having genital warts tells you you are infected with the low risk strains, it does not guarantee you that it is the only strain you are carrying.<p>Thus you cannot rely on the presence of genital warts to know if you are or are not infected with the high risk strains, they are completely uncorellated.<p>The cancer-causing strains cause no symptoms and can only be detected by getting tested for them.
You're putting words and assumptions in my mouth that I never said in my comment. My comment includes different facts about different strains, in one comment, which some people might misinterpret. Your reply is re-stating the facts in more detail, so that's fine, I am happy for anyone to clarify information. However, the assigning of bad faith and action to me just because you don't like the way I presented the facts, is pretty rude. If you want to get really specific, we should probably clarify to the readers these statements you made:<p>> The cancer-causing strains cause no symptoms and can only be detected by getting tested for them<p>Cancer-causing strains can still cause the following symptoms: persistent sore throat, lumps, pain when swallowing, earaches (one-sided), swollen lymph nodes in the neck (painless lump), painful/difficult urination or bowel movements, unusual lumps or sores, or unexplained weight loss, in addition to others I have not listed here. However, early cancers often do not present symptoms.<p>> and can only be detected by getting tested for them<p>There is no test that covers all strains. You would need to get penile brushing, urethral brushing, semen samples, and anal pap smear. So "getting tested" is not the only solution, and getting regular scans for cancer is the best detection method. Therefore there is more involved than you have indicated, making your own comment as ;really bad and dangerous' as mine.<p>Perhaps we should trust people to do their own research and ask their doctor, rather than only listen to randos on the internet?
Which words am I putting in your mouth?<p>> HPV causes genital warts<p>False. Not all do. And more importantly, the ones that cause cancer do not!<p>> Once you are confirmed HPV positive (again, you won't be confirmed without getting genital warts)<p>Again false. You can be tested without genital warts and be positive to a strand of HPV that simply does not cause wart. You might have had (or heard about) a bad experience with a health professional that refused to test without warts, but the presence or absence of warts has absolutely nothing to do with the strands that matter.<p>> you need to inform your partners, as it causes cancer in both men and women (but mostly women).<p>False again. Since you were specifically talking about the strands of HPV causing warts, then it does not cause cancer. You can still inform them if you care about no propagating warts, but the fact that you have wart-strand HPV does not make you more at risk of getting/causing cancer than someone with no symptoms whatsoever.<p>Your comment clearly says that someone with cancer-causing HPV will have warts, thus someone reading this might feel confident they are not carrying a cancer-causing strand since they do not have warts, which is dangerous because again, it is 100% false. It might also needlessly worry someone that recently noticed genital warts on themselves into thinking they might have gotten/propagated a dangerous disease, while the wart causing strand are in fact harmless and are just unpleasant aesthetically.<p>So tl;dr, you should get vaccinated if you can, and if you want to be sure you do not have a cancer causing strand, you need to get tested for it, that's the only way. Warts or no warts is completly unrelated.<p>> Perhaps we should trust people to do their own research and ask their doctor, rather than only listen to randos on the internet?<p>On that we agree!
You missed three very important caveats that complicate the story you’re trying to tell:<p>1) not every strain of HPV causes cancer (iirc, the bad ones are rare).<p>2) many people (in fact, most people) who are active in the world have been infected with at least one strain of HPV.<p>3) it’s common to have asymptomatic HPV infections. you probably have one now.<p>one more:<p>4) the vaccines likely have little effect on anything unless you were vaccinated as a child (and are a biological woman).<p>Overall, it’s a situation where you’re asking that sexual partners “disclose”
something that the partner probably already has, if they bothered to be tested for it to begin with. Moreover, nobody <i>does</i> these tests (in men, at least), because there’s no point to doing them, other than creating anxiety.<p>I will leave the nuances of bioethics to other people, but it’s not as clear a situation as you’re making it out to be.<p>One final thing: these infections aren’t “permanent”. They generally clear naturally in a few years.
> 4) the vaccines likely have little effect on anything unless you were vaccinated as a child (and are a biological woman).<p>This guidance is changing. Vaccinating men protects women. Also just because you were infected with one strain, that doesn't mean you can't contract another, possibly oncogenic one. Get vaccinated, it protects against the most common cancer-causing strains. I did, why would I want to unknowingly give someone cancer?
>> 4) the vaccines likely have little effect on anything unless you were vaccinated as a child (and are a biological woman).<p>> This guidance is changing. Vaccinating men protects women.<p>Yeah, it was fucking like pulling teeth getting my HPV vaccine as an adult male. "It's for teenage girls" comments from multiple health care professionals.<p>I only took the first fucking dose in the regime, and none of my health care providers now offer low cost or covered options. I had to spend Covid money when I had it. I still need the rest of the regime.<p>Thank you thread for the reminder.
It’s “like pulling teeth” because the guidance <i>isn’t</i> changing (at least not because of evidence).<p>There seems to be a very motivated contingency who want to spin a story that male vaccination for HPV has benefits for women. The problems with this story are:<p>1) Efficacy of the current vaccines for women are incredibly high. Vaccinating young women, alone, is basically enough. Whatever benefits you're imagining <i>must</i> therefore be marginal.<p>2) Efficacy of current vaccines for men are (surprisingly) low [1], so it’s hard to claim secondary benefits for <i>other people</i> without substantial additional evidence.<p>It’s perfectly OK to acknowledge that the HPV vaccine is an overall good, should be on the schedule for young women, and yet <i>does not</i> need to be administered to men. Giving it to men (particularly older men) is not supported by data at this time, which is why your doctors don’t make it easy for you to get it.<p>[1] Again, refer to <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/</a><p>See table 4. In a naive population of men, the efficacy against DNA detection of HPV runs around 50%, and in men who may or may not have the virus, the number is lower. Efficacy against persistent infection is similar. Compare to tables 1-3 for women, where efficacy nears 100% in some populations.
It's a relatively new vaccine, this commonly happens for a few reasons:<p>1. They start with a cautious roll out to the highest lifetime risk population (teenage girls in this case)<p>2. They may be limited by vaccine stocks as it does take time to build up product. There's an entire world to vaccinate, billions of doses needed<p>3. They need time to prove that it will be useful to give to other populations - in this case, adults<p>There's no conspiracy here, you had to push to get it because you were going against the existing recommendations, which were reasonable. Not because of your gender.<p>Those recommendations have likely changed recently because when I went in for shots last month (male, 40s) they immediately recommended that me and my partner both get it.
Does it not prevent cancer in the throat in men? Not sure why that would be women only.
The situation is pretty clear when you're a woman who got cancer from her boyfriend who knew he had HPV and didn't tell her, or didn't get vaccinated because he didn't feel like it. I think most people would want to avoid that situation. The genital warts thing is just embarrassing but another good-enough reason to get vaccinated early.<p>On Permanence: 10-20% of HPV infections either don't go away, or go dormant and recur throughout your lifetime. These strains are the ones likely to cause cancer. Low-risk ones cause genital warts that continue causing warts throughout your lifetime. High-risk ones may cause cancer.<p>The vaccine is available up until 45 years old. Worst case it does nothing, best case it prevents genital warts and cancer.
> The situation is pretty clear when you're a woman who got cancer from her boyfriend who knew he had HPV and didn't tell her<p>You can make up “just so” stories to justify anything.<p>The point is, the story you’re telling isn’t likely to occur if the woman is vaccinated.<p>The vaccine is incredibly effective in young women, and only borderline effective if administered in older men and women who have never been infected. Long-term efficacy in young men is less certain than for young women.<p>> Low-risk ones cause genital warts that continue causing warts throughout your lifetime.<p>Again, no. Most infections clear on their own. You are correct that <i>rarely</i> some infections are persistent or dormant, and that these sometimes lead to cancer. But these are <i>the minority</i>.
#4, anything that reduces cancer risk is a plus in my book, regardless to time and gender
I, a male, got vaccinated with the Gardasil 9 vaccine shortly before turning 40. Convincing my doctor to prescribe it wasn't terribly difficult, I told them a few things about my sexual history and explained some of my sexual plans, and that was that.<p>I wish more people would get vaccinated.
That is terribly difficult. Why the hell do I have to make an appointment weeks in advance, then take time out of my day just to get permission from some asshole who asks about my sexual history? Why can't I just walk up to the counter, say "I'll take one HPV vaccine please" and pay the money? If you want me to get vaccinated make it easy.
You can make an appointment at eg Walgreens (and probably also CVS) and pay out of pocket for the Gardasil-9 HPV vaccination without any consultation with or referral from a GP (General Practitioner) or a Specialist.<p>Gardasil <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardasil" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardasil</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=gardasil+shot+cost" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=gardasil+shot+cost</a><p><a href="https://www.goodrx.com/gardasil-9/how-much-is-gardasil-without-insurance" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodrx.com/gardasil-9/how-much-is-gardasil-witho...</a> :<p>> When you have your first shot is the main factor that determines whether you will need 2 doses or 3 doses<p>> Without insurance, the average price of 1 dose of Gardasil is $368.82. But you could pay as little as $169.50 with a GoodRx coupon at certain pharmacies<p>A prescription is only required for insurance reimbursement fwiu
You’re not kidding! I read your comment and literally just went and got the vaccine. Thank you! I had no idea.
Insurance, if it covers it, will cover it at CVS, no doctor needed.<p>Many insurances do. I asked if the pharmacist could check last time I was at CVS, and it did. I'm turning 46 before I can sneak in the 3rd dose, but 2 doses seems to be all that's needed for most of the benefit.
Because we over-rely on insurance for routine medical care, when really insurance should just be reserved for the catastrophic and everything else out of pocket (and/or directly subsidized).
My GP just offered it during my physical along with the flu and COVID booster. I declined the COVID booster since I had just gotten a mild case a couple months back. Got two shots in the left arm, was sore for a day and that was that.
This is why you have to go to the grey market for medical stuff in the USA anymore. Every rich celebrety, and women with body dysmorphia knows how easy it is to get GLP-1s right now. Good and thank goodness for it.<p>Deregulating medical systems regarding patient choice and access to drugs is good, but you'll eventually get some bootlicker claiming that "we can't do that because SOMEONE WITH A VIRUS MIGHT USE AN ANTIBIOTIC INCORRECTLY" while ignoring the mass consumption of antibiotics by farm animals as a vector for super bugs.
Antibiotics are actually an exception to my general opinion that all medications should be available without prescription. Unlike most drugs, their use has major externalities which means there is a role for larger societal regulation of their use.<p>Also, are farms actually the major vector for antibiotic resistance in the human population? I was under the impression that the majority of antibiotic resistant infections occur in places like hospitals rather than among farm workers, which would seem to indicate farm animals are not the main problem (I 100% support banning the practice anyway).
Not to mention farm animals being the source of most if not all flu strains.
I did the same at 34. There's a dermatology/STI clinic in Budapest where I live that gives the shot at cost (about 130 euros) because they think people should get it.
How much did it cost? I've considered it but it seems the only option for me is to pay for it out of pocket (~$1000 for the full course), which seems kind of not worth it at this point.
I feel very uncomfortable trying to talk my doctor into doing something they don't recommend. I know too many people who buy into fake medical stuff.<p>Why is this different? Why is pestering a doctor to give me a medicine they don't recommend a good idea?
Your own doctor is as likely to be a quack/have quack-like beliefs as you are. Unironically this is true! Better learn to start reading Pubmed!<p>Doctors/medical associations don't agree with each other on much, even at the very highest levels. For example, the USA and EU have totally different recommendations related to digital rectal exams for aging men. One believes that finding cancer in old men is important, the other claims it's bad because most of those cancers are benign and sticking a finger up an old mans butt often causes its own complications.
Doctors don't have the time or capacity to know their patients well enough to make personalized recommendations in most cases. If you show up with symptoms of X they can recommend Y and will probably ask you whether you have Z which can impact the treatment. But virtually no doctor is going to ring you up proactively and say "hey, I noticed you haven't had a HPV vaccine yet, and I think it might make sense for you because I know this and that about your risk profile".<p>Doctors are not all knowing, infallible oracles. They are human beings you can have a conversation with about your health. If you think something makes sense for you, you can run it past them. No one is suggesting randomly asking doctors to prescribe random shit.
Because doctors are human and fallible operating in suboptimal systems. Don't want to provide me with a low risk, potentially high reward, low cost intervention? I'll shop until I find a doctor who will, or source it myself. Suboptimal systems and practitioners of various quality require advocating for one's self. I had to twist Planned Parenthood's arm to get Gardasil before it was approved for older adults, even though I was paying cash out of pocket, but had no problem with a trusted PCP providing me Metformin, GLP-1 prescriptions, etc simply by arguing my case and meeting sufficient criteria it would not come back to bite them.
The doctor likely didn't recommend it because GP is 40 years old. Most people's sex lives is comparatively... boring at that age.
The bigger issue is that someone who is 40 has likely already been exposed. I know women who had to ask to get it in their late 20's, and only succeeded after convincing the doctor they had been celibate up to that point. Apparently such a thing is relatively rare.
Yeah that’s the way I take it - “you’re probably not going to convince many people to sleep with you.”<p>Kind of hurts my pride, but seeing as I'm older than 40, and my wife and I are pretty freaking boring, the vaccine is better spent on someone with more opportunities ahead of them.<p>I really hate these vaccine specific awareness campaigns. Not only do they hurt my vanity, but I know too many people who are anti-vaxers, or into weird fake medicines.<p>I just go with what my doctor says. If social media says something different, social media is wrong.<p>But really, don’t get your vaccine schedule from Hacker News.<p>The activists on these threads should probably be pushing folks to get their kids vaccinated.
You need to be your own advocate.
I am believe me. And I’m always told the same thing by different doctors. So that’s that.<p>Even when I live in Europe, which I do occasionally, I’m told to follow the vaccine schedule of my home country.<p>My kids have all received all recommended vaccines, including the one discussed. So I’m not in any way opposed.<p>It’s just not appropriate to go around vaccines not recommended.
Best of luck, the reason it took so long for males to be approved for Gardasil use and they slowly keep pushing it up by age is two fold:<p>1) if you've ever been exposed to HPV already, then the vaccine is useless<p>2) there is no test to determine if a male has been exposed, although there is one for females<p>so they just push the ages up by probability, over time. As the probability of a man being with an older and therefore unvaccinated woman decreases - since with women is the most probable - the age can rise
> 1) if you've ever been exposed to HPV already, then the vaccine is useless<p>This is patently incorrect. The vaccine protects against 9 variants. Having been exposed to all 9 before vaccination sounds like really bad luck.<p>> 2) there is no test to determine if a male has been exposed, although there is one for females<p>The female HPV tests, as I understand, only test for the presence of HPV in the cervix. It can be present in many other areas. No one is testing women for the presence of HPV on their hands or in their throats.<p>Most places now offer HPV vaccines to young boys as well. People over 40 more or less missed the boat, but they can still get vaccinated. How useful it is depends entirely on their personal circumstances and risk profiles.
> 2) there is no test to determine if a male has been exposed, although there is one for females<p>It is incorrect. I had it tested multiple times. It is done less routinely, usually under assumption that since it is women who are mostly at risk, why bother testing men. Which is horrible mindset in anything related to epidemiology.<p>See:<p>- <a href="https://www.droracle.ai/articles/607248/what-methods-are-used-to-test-males-for-human" rel="nofollow">https://www.droracle.ai/articles/607248/what-methods-are-use...</a><p>- <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12256477/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12256477/</a><p>- <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2024.2313848" rel="nofollow">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2024.2...</a><p>> 1) if you've ever been exposed to HPV already, then the vaccine is useless<p>Also no. See other comments.
> It is done less routinely, usually under assumption that since it is women who are mostly at risk, why bother testing men. Which is horrible mindset in anything related to epidemiology.<p>No. The general reason that people don't do the test for men is that DNA testing is extremely sensitive, and produces a lot of false positives for a virus that is widespread.<p>It's also not actionable. You can't treat an asymptomatic infection, and a positive leads to the same outcome they would give anyway: use physical barriers and abstinence.<p>(Edit: hilariously, your first link <i>says exactly what I just wrote</i>, at the very top of the page. Did you read it?)
The claim I refuted is that there are no test for men (there are). Not sure why you want to get needlessly argumentative here, repeating things I already linked (sic!).<p>Sure, test from penis has lower specificity and sensitivity that for cervix, but it is not binary "works or not" (as side note, just measuring from urethra is rarely enough [1]). Life is probability, and it is a huge fallacy to believe that things work 100% or 0%, nothing in between (rarely the case in medicine).<p>Results are actionable on many ways. Most important, screening for female partners, informed risk for partners or your on safety <i>for ones partners</i> (condoms BTW reduce infection rates, but do not fully protect, as HPV can be on other parts of skin).<p>[1]<p>> The overall prevalence of HPV was 65.4%. HPV detection was highest at the penile shaft (49.9% for the full cohort and 47.9% for the subcohort of men with complete sampling), followed by the glans penis/coronal sulcus (35.8% and 32.8%) and scrotum (34.2% and 32.8%). Detection was lowest in urethra (10.1% and 10.2%) and semen (5.3% and 4.8%) samples. Exclusion of urethra, semen, and either perianal, scrotal, or anal samples resulted in a <5% reduction in prevalence.<p><a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3904649/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3904649/</a>
I quoted you, and responded specifically to the quote. The reason doctors don’t offer the test is <i>not</i> because of some straw man arguments (“a horrible mindset…”) involving their diminished judgment of importance of the virus in men, as you assert.<p>You keep saying things in these sub threads that are factually incorrect in some important way that hides nuance, or otherwise seems calculated to provoke outrage. This was another example, which I why I replied here.
no <i>reliable</i> test for men, then<p>and even if it is reliable, its utility is limited<p>all leads to focusing solely on probability of exposure(s)
so far the comments are adding more vectors to understanding the situation, but nothing that fundamentally changes the user experience<p>I think the most insightful thing is that there are 9 HPV variants some of which someone wouldn't have exposure to so its worthwhile to get the vaccine anyway<p>but other than that, the situation is the same. for men's age the utility of the vaccine is based on probability alone, as its a waste of resources to even attempt checking for prior/current exposure
this is what I don't understand, why is it useless? there're multiple variants, vaccination could create reaction to a different part of the virus, etc.
Europe approved it for males at the same time as for females.
I’m confused why it won’t clear an existing infection while still working on future infections.<p>Here is what I know (which may be limited, I’m not a biologist) and also what I’m assuming:<p>1) The body apparently doesn’t eliminate the virus on its own when it picks up the virus unvaccinated. I’m assuming that this is because it isn’t registered by the immune system as being harmful, for whatever reason.<p>2) The attenuated virus in the vaccine would not produce an immune response without the adjuvant, because even viruses that are registered as harmful are not reliably registered as harmful when attenuated. This is where the adjuvant packaged with the attenuated virus comes in - it is registered by the body as harmful, and in its confusion the immune system also adds the virus to the registry.<p>So, naively, if the immune system previously didn’t register the natural infection as harmful, and if it does register the virus in the vaccine as harmful, why doesn’t the registry entry for the vaccine also get applied to the natural infection, the same way as it does for a person who wasn’t previously infected?<p>Is there some kind of specificity hierarchy, along with a “not harmful” registry alongside the “harmful” registry, such that the natural infection continues to get its previous classification of “not harmful” because the “not harmful” registry entry is more specific than the “harmful” registry entry? That’s the only explanation I can (naively) think of.<p>And if that’s the case, could we first wipe out the registry by infecting the person with measles, and then give them the HPV vaccine? Just kidding about this part!
> - Sooner is better, but vaccination can be done at any age. Guidelines often lag behind, but vaccination makes sense even if you are currently HPV-positive.<p>However, the vaccination is expensive (~1k) and it is difficult to find doctors who will do non-recommended vaccinations for self-payers.<p>YCMV
> However, the vaccination is expensive (~1k)<p>Depends entirely on where you are and what your healthcare situation is. Mine cost me ~100eur.
Are there insurance plans that won't cover it? I know that a lot of plans love not paying for things but vaccines seem to be the one thing that they all at least seem fairly good at (at least in my experience).<p>I am currently getting the HPV series and I only had to pay my copay for the first appointment have nothing for the second one (I am assuming it will be the same for the third)
Yeah I just did it at 50. Only got 2 gardasil shots though. They're so expensive because only young people get them subsidized.<p>I heard 1 shots already conveys a lot of protection so I'm wondering whether to take the third. I'm a bit late with it too
> Unless you plan to remain completely celibate,<p>Or you (and your future partner) practice abstinence until you're ready to commit to a lifelong monogamous relationship.
Yeah, one downside to giving this vaccine to your kids is you're basically telling them you expect they won't do this, even if they plan to (and you planned to, and in fact did). But pediatricians talk about how you really have to do it young, before they're going to be sexually active, and how it's hard to get later (not entirely true, as demonstrated by the comments here).
Is there any issue for adult males vaccinating ? I seem to remember some mention of risk by my doctor when I asked about it, but I might be misremembering.
No vaccine is without risk, but the vaccine approach is based on that risk being so low (but not zero) in comparison to the risk of not vaccinating that it is vastly the better choice.
There is currently no vaccine that is zero risk
and in the same breathe, the risk is closer to zero than not.
Life is generally not zero risk :)
What's the risk of a vaccine? What could happen?
Any infection risks sensitizing the immune system against some aspect of the human body. More likely with more severe infections, but not even a pseudo-infection is completely immune from it as it's a property of the immune system, not of the vaccine. The risk is very low, not zero.<p>(And dengue fever has the nasty property of making subsequent infections worse--and the vaccine does the same thing. Thus you get the really weird risk balance of only vaccinating those who have already had it. Also, Covid is prone to causing myocarditis--and the vaccine carries a small risk of doing the same thing. AFIAK no vaccine caused case is serious, though.)
> While it won't clear an existing infection, it protects against different strains and reinfection (typically body removed HPV in 1-2 years). See: <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38137661/</a><p>The study you've quoted here is <i>not</i> definitive evidence of the claim you're making, and that claim is...let's just say that it's controversial. Conventional wisdom is that you're unlikely to benefit from HPV vaccination unless you have not already seroconverted for at least one of the 9 strains (6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52, 58) in the current vaccine.<p>There's not much hard evidence to suggest that vaccination for HPV has strong ability to protect you from a strain <i>after you've already been infected with that strain</i> [1], as the best available data shows a substantial decline in efficacy for women over age 26 and for women of any age who had prior documented infection [2]. This study is small, unrandomized, and the measured primary outcome (anti-HPV IgG) doesn't really tell you anything about relative effectiveness at clearing an infection. The only real evidence they advance for this claim is:<p>> Persistent HPV infection after vaccination was significantly less frequent in the nine-valent vaccinated group (23.5%) compared to the control group (88.9%; p < 0.001).<p>...but again, this is a small, unrandomized trial. We don't know how these 60 people differ from the typical HPV-positive case. You can't rely on this kind of observational data to claim causality.<p>Vaccination is great, but let's not exaggerate or spread inaccurate claims in a fit of pro-vaccine exuberance. The HPV vaccine has age range recommendations [3] for a reason.<p>[1] For the somewhat obvious reason that your immune system has already seen the virus.<p>[2] See tables 2 and 3 here: <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/</a><p>It's also worth calling out table 4, which shows the (IMO bad) efficacy data for <i>biological men</i>, which is why I only talk about <i>women</i>, above, and why anyone who recommends vaccination without mentioning this factor is not being entirely forthright. Few people are rushing to give older men the HPV vaccine because it's not really supported by data!<p>[3] I believe the current guideline is under age 45 in the USA.
I understand why it wouldn't be recommended in policy but individually, provided you are rich enough to waste a hundred bucks, worse case is it's useless, best case you are 1-5% likely to spread a bad strain dangerous to yourself or to your partners, right ?
It's your body, and you can do whatever you want (assuming someone will consent to give it to you), but the <i>worst</i> case is that you have a bad reaction. It's rare, but not impossible, and things like GBS do happen -- though it must be emphasized that these vaccines are extremely safe by any reliable form of measurement [1].<p>But that's the general response to any question of this form. Medical treatments carry risk, however small. There is no free lunch.<p>> best case you are 1-5% likely to spread a bad strain dangerous to yourself or to your partners, right ?<p>I don't know where you're getting this number. I don't think anyone knows the actual answer to this question.<p>[1] <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4964727/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4964727/</a>
The age 45 bit isn't actually a guideline. Rather, finding naive but at risk individuals over 45 is quite difficult. They did not test it on anyone over 45, thus the FDA approval cuts off at 45.
That’s definitely true, but if you look at the RCT data, there’s also a question of efficacy in older recipients.<p>For whatever reason the vaccine just doesn’t seem to work as well when administered to adults, even if they’re naive to the viruses.
What are the chances that you develop cancer if you get infected by the worst HPV strain?
I would like to add:<p>Weaknesses / Counters:<p>1) Surrogate endpoint only — HPV PCR positivity is not a clinical outcome; no CIN2/3, no cancer, no mortality measured<p>2) Correlation ≠ causation — HPV-cancer link is epidemiological association; Koch's postulates not fulfilled in traditional sense; detecting DNA doesn't prove pathogenic activity<p>3) PCR detection ≠ disease — Transient HPV infections are common and clear spontaneously; most HPV-positive women never develop lesions or cancer<p>4) Type replacement signal ignored — 66% higher incidence of non-vaccine HR types in vaccinated group is dismissed rather than investigated as potential clinical concern<p>5) No long-term clinical follow-up — Cervical cancer takes 15-30 years to develop; this 7-year study cannot assess actual cancer prevention<p>6) Confounding in vaxxed vs unvaxxed comparison — Unvaccinated group is small (n=859), likely differs in health behaviors, screening adherence, socioeconomic factors<p>7) Circular reasoning — Vaccine "works" because it reduces detection of the types it targets; says nothing about whether those types were actually causing disease in this population<p>8) Assumes HPV16/18 reduction = cancer reduction — Untested assumption; clinical benefit must be demonstrated, not inferred from PCR<p>9) High baseline HR-HPV in vaccinated group unexplained — 32% prevalence of other HR types suggests substantial ongoing oncogenic exposure despite vaccination<p>10) Genome validity unestablished — HPV reference genomes are in-silico constructs assembled computationally; never validated by sequencing purified, isolated viral particles; PCR/sequencing performed on mixed clinical samples where true origin of amplified fragments is indeterminate
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Venereal diseases have been a significant cause of human mortality for <i>ages</i>. The first outbreak of Syphilis in Europe killed ~7% of the population. The only thing that broke up that state of affairs was the advent of antibiotics.
And if it turns out you weren’t a perfect judge of character and your partner cheats on you, then fuck you, right? I guess you deserved to die from cancer because you couldn’t read your fiancé’s mind. Or maybe it’s your fault for not being a good enough spouse.
You're replying on a post that shows a literal >16x reduction in prevalence, with "just don't be a slut, worked for thousands of years".<p>I'd invite you to look up the prevalence of STDs during the most puritanical eras and places, maybe you'd change that stupid take.
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Why is a marginal benefit bad?
Chastity is 100% effective at preventing STDs exactly like living in a plastic bubble is 100% effective at preventing the flu (incidentally, it's also 100% effective at preventing humanity from existing within 80 years...). The fact that people throughout history, even in the most repressive times when "adulterers" were stoned or forced to marry rapists, have had much higher rates of STDs than we do today, shows that <i>reality</i>, rather than an abstract ideal case, is what matters in terms of public health.<p>Put another way: a "slut" practicing safe sex today will have fewer chances to contract an STD than a regular married woman in Victorian times.<p>> stupid man without any arguments<p>Seriously? Your argument is "damn those slut whores" and you're pretending to have an intellectual high ground...? Have a good weekend.
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"I know no-one who died from hunger, therefore hunger does not exist, famine is a scam."<p>A quick find: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deaths_from_throat_cancer" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deaths_from_throat_ca...</a>
Almost zero? So you have seen throat cancer cases? And you don’t think it would have been good for those people not to have had throat cancer? Did they seem to enjoy the experience or something?
Who is feeding you this? Vaccines are some of the most unambiguously positive things ever developed, they're an easy win.
> Unless you plan to remain completely celibate<p>Uh, monogamy of both partners is also an option, not just celibacy. Not common in these times, I know, but you don't have to completely abstain from sex to be safe.
It has really been a great success in Denmark.<p>In the 1960s, more than 900 people were diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, corresponding to more than 40 cases per 100,000 Danes.<p>Today, that number is below 10 per 100,000 nationwide – and among women aged 20 to 29, only 3 out of 100,000 are affected. This is below the WHO’s threshold for elimination of the disease.
Just a quick point as an American living in Denmark, one of the reasons government programs like this work so well is everything is delivered digitally. We have "e-boks" <a href="https://en.digst.dk/systems/digital-post/about-the-national-digital-post/" rel="nofollow">https://en.digst.dk/systems/digital-post/about-the-national-...</a> official government facilitated inboxes so when they need to notify you of vaccinations or whatever else, it arrives to your inbox. And basically 100% of residents use these systems.
This HPV vaccine was part of the children vaccination program (børnevaccinationsprogram) which kindly asks the parents to vaccinate their children.<p>While we have some anivaxxers here in DK, most people (90%, I believe) are sane and follow the recommendations.<p>The vaccinations start while the children are small and continue while they grow up .. the last one is when they are 12.5 years old.<p>The notifications are delivered in eboks or by mail if you don't want to use eboks. Everything from the state is delivered like this. There is nothing special about how the information is delivered. The SMS/e-mail notifications are just about hwo sent you something and not about what it is. At least for me.<p>I don't see how the use of eboks makes this work better. It would work just as well without eboks. People listen to doctors and the MAGA like shitheads we do have don't have a lot of influence.
This is why I posted it from the perspective as an American. We don't have anything remotely comparable. Vaccinations are delivered by private doctors and public schools often require vaccinations or exemptions but the system works entirely differently. If you homeschooled your kids and if your doctor didn't mention it, you'd never even know that vaccinations were available.
I fail to see how e-boks makes this work. Younger people check their e-boks less frequently than average, so sending a physical letter to their address would work just as well if not better.<p>What makes it work is the public registers.
e-boks sends a text message to the phone, so I see it much faster than a paper mail.<p>e-boks is like gmail (and others) in that it keeps your old mail. So you can easily find old stuff, a great improvement on paper mail.<p>I don't even check my physical mailbox once a week.<p>Denmark is one of the very most digital countries. Physical mail is very much on the way out. We no longer has mailboxes to send mail, you have to go to a shop to send letters, which now cost at last $6 per letter due to the low amount of mail sent.<p>It is only a matter of less than 10 years before letters will be fully gone.
Didn't Danish postal service just ended operations?
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/world/europe/denmark-letter-delivery-postnord-mailboxes.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/world/europe/denmark-lett...</a>
Thats all besides the point. Which was that e-boks is not making vaccine programs possible or successful.
6€ for a letter that's ridiculous.. wow
Okay, well Ireland has similar vaccination rates, broader childhood vaccination coverage, and no central medical records at all, so while e-boks may assist administration, it's certainly not necessary.
> no central medical records at all<p>Which is bad, we definitely should have them. Referral data appears to be managed through Healthlink, which may just be a privatised not always used medical record system.
I'm a proponent of EHRs but not necessarily of centralised medical records, which have not been shown to improve outcomes and which do impose serious privacy risks on patients.<p>HealthLink is a messaging system and stores no EHRs at all. eHealth is the National EHR programme aiming to roll out EHRs by 2030 nationwide.<p>It will be a no-opt-out centralised EHR and combined social care record.
> HealthLink is a messaging system and stores no EHRs at all. eHealth is the National EHR programme aiming to roll out EHRs by 2030 nationwide.<p>This is bad (from my perspective, as someone who's moved a lot and thus has medical records scattered all over).<p>> It will be a no-opt-out centralised EHR and combined social care record.<p>This is probably the right approach, even though I'm sceptical that it will be delivered effectively.
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So should a desire for privacy preclude access to routine vaccination?
In high-trust societies these things work, yes. Not all societies are high-trust. Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors.
Funny, how the unreasonable cycle of alternating votes for establishment parties is broken by voting for even more untrustworthy right wing parties.<p>We all need something like ranked/list voting and incorporate invalid votes into the result so urgently.
I do think people put too much stock in how many things RCV would fix in the US, but I am a big fan of it and it would certainly be a big first step improving representation in this country. Unfortunately, multiple states (all Republican dominated) have already outlawed RCV as an option. So in order to do it you would have to overturn the existing ban as well. It’s ridiculous.
High trust societies generally don't need centralisation to provide positive outcomes.
> Often, they once were high-trust but are no longer thanks to sociopathic, non-empathetic actors.<p>Citation needed.
Trump rode to the White House pitching that the government is broken/corrupt and as an outsider he would fix it. A significant part of his appeal is that he was a big middle finger to the establishment and current system writ large. This is well studied, documented, and easy to see in our daily lives. How many campaign ads begin with “the system is broken” or “Washington is out of touch”? Nobody ever lost voters for saying the government isn’t doing enough for them and isn’t trustworthy.<p>You can look at any Gallup or Pew poll or whatever sources you prefer and you will likely see that Americans have been steadily losing trust in their government. It has been in steady decline since the post-war era with some notable brief increases, but they don’t last.<p>>citation needed<p>I disagree as it is incredibly easy information to track down. But here you go anyway:<p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/12/04/public-trust-in-government-1958-2025/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/12/04/public-trust...</a>
Obviously social trust in the US has declined and Trump benefited from that. But this is not evidence that the primary cause is sociopathic, non-empathetic actors. Theoretically it could also be things such as increased diversity, loss of shared identity, people acting in good faith but failing to adapt to social media.
That’s fair. I focused on the broader question for some reason. I’ll blame it on morning brain.<p>I’ll ask you this: Do you think Donald Trump is a socially adjusted, empathetic person? A lot of people like him currently because he is a bully.<p>Edit: I think Nixon is another person whose character deserves scrutiny. His decisions shattered a lot of people‘s perception of the US government.
Go and look around in former high-trust societies where this trust has broken down or is breaking down - my points of reference are the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and to a lesser extent the UK - and you'll get your citations. What you'll probably find is that in 'marginalised areas' people have trust in governmental institutions - those which provide social welfare, healthcare, schools and such - while they have little trust in 'other (groups of) people'. In other words they trust the state but distrust their neighbours, especially those from different ethnic groups. If you look in more well-to-do areas you'll find the opposite: people mostly trust their neighbours but they have lost trust in the higher echelons of the state which in their eyes has been instrumental in the dissolution of their former high-trust society. They'll still mostly trust their local police and fire brigade but they see academia and the social workers and soft-on-crime judicial institutions it produces as part of the problem. Any articles produced by academia which claim to provide proof of the opposite are seen in the light of the severe political bias in those institutions - sociology as a discipline has lost nearly all trust due to this - so citing those only feeds the fire.
I don’t get it. Everyone online gives advice like “Ask your doctor to get the vaccine even if you’re male” but the pharmacies here in SF refused to give it to me. They said that it’s not indicated for a 35+ yo male.<p>So I get the theory of this thing. But has anyone actually tried this? Finally I got OneMedical to prescribe it for me for some $1.2k at which point I decided I’ll just get it abroad during some planned travel.<p>I decided years ago I’d do this because I was going to have girls and I wanted to minimize my daughters’ risk of cancer.
Try Planned Parenthood.<p>Over a decade ago I tried getting the HPV vaccine in my early 20s, but the doctor told me it wasn't recommended for men and that insurance won't cover it. I was young and didn't have the money to pay out of pocket.<p>I went to Planned Parenthood and got the vaccine last year. At some point they changed the recommendation to men under 45 now and I got all 3 shots free.<p>Honestly, though I'm glad to have finally got the vaccine it's been a pretty frustrating experience.
The FDA has approved it for men up to age 45. I myself got it in my late thirties at a pharmacy. For one of the shots, the pharmacist hassled me a little, asking if I was high risk, but acquiesced when I told them I was. For the other two, they just gave me the shot. It was also covered by my insurance.
I'm over 30 and got it from CVS. No questions asked, and my insurance fully covered all the doses.
Just sign up for it at costco online.
> I decided years ago I’d do this because I was going to have girls and I wanted to minimize my daughters’ risk of cancer.<p>I don't understand: how would your daughters be more/less likely to get cancer based on whether you were vaccinated? There's obviously the (hopefully extremely) roundabout way in which there is a direct path of sexual partners leading from you to your future daughters, but is there something else I'm missing?<p>And if you don't have it by age 35 (and married, per your comment below), how likely are you to even get it at this point? Are you thinking you could hypothetically pass it to them by kissing your babies on the mouth, after contracting it in the future?
How did you know you were going to have girls?
Carrier screening revealed a shared genetic risk so my wife and I decided to do IVF and PGT qualified our female embryos as unaffected (coincidentally, it’s autosomal recessive).<p>If you want to read more: <a href="https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/IVF</a>
+$100k per man vaccinated in effective economic outcomes (less cancer, longer lives, less debilitating conditions) for those who needed to hear this.<p><a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759438/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759438/</a><p>Want to boost the economy massively at next to no cost? HPV vaccinations are incredible.
I don't think that's what the summary is saying.<p>My reading of the following is that the cost of each additional quality adjusted life year would be over $100,000, rather than that each vaccination prompts $100k in economic value<p>> Including preadolescent boys in a routine vaccination programme for preadolescent girls resulted in higher costs and benefits and generally had cost effectiveness ratios that exceeded $100 000 per QALY across a range of HPV related outcomes, scenarios for cervical cancer screening, and assumptions of vaccine efficacy and duration
Lots of viruses are really oncogenic. The real success here is the ability of Denmark to track effectiveness. It sounds crazy but most countries do not have electronic health record capability to measure the effect of many interventions at population scale. Once good EHRs are rolled out, we will be able to double down on effective interventions, like this one, and vice versa.
"Lots of viruses are really oncogenic."<p>Hmm. Compared to what measurement? Most viruses are actually not oncogenic.<p>From cancer causes, oncogenic viruses are thought to be responsible for about 12% of human cancers worldwide:<p><a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/14/7/797" rel="nofollow">https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/14/7/797</a><p>From what I remember, most viruses are not oncogenic in nature, so I am unsure whether the statement made is correct.
15-20% cancers are caused by viral infections, probably more.<p>E.g. EBV is strongly associated with several lymphomas.<p>There are other significant clinical associations for HPV, HBV, HCV, HTLV-1, HHV-8, and many others.
A lot of viruses insert themselves into your DNA, they may mess up the 3D structure, or during DNA repair result in misrepair / duplications, or simply insert somewhere and break something important. All of these are ways that can contribute to kickstarting or accelerating cancerous growth.
EHRs are definitely not necessary for health surveillance and many countries perform equally or better without centralised records.<p>I'm a proponent of EHRs, but the key value is at patient-level, not population level where other approaches perform equally well.
Sadly, no matter how good the data is, some societies will value opinions of uninformed celebrities above facts and reason, leading to a resurgence of preventable diseases.
I mean the issue in this case is not celebrities, the health services in most countries will not give you the vaccine as a man, full stop.
These celebrities should serve some jailtime. Quackery is criminal, it kills people.
Idk the Danish approach of opennnes seems to be working for them. They acknowledge it isn't fully effective. They acknowledge that there may be a small risk of side effects. And they tell people it's worth it and to go take it.<p>"Since HPV vaccination was implemented in the Danish childhood vaccination programme in 2009, we have received 2,320 reports of suspected adverse reactions from HPV vaccines up to and including 2016. 1,023 of the reported adverse reactions have been categorised as serious. In the same period, 1,724,916 vaccine doses were sold. The reports related to HPV vaccination that we have classified as serious include reports of the condition Postural Orthostatic Tachycardi Syndrome (POTS), fainting, neurological symptoms and a number of diffuse symptoms, such as long-term headache, fatigue and stomach ache."<p>"The risk of cervical changes at an early stage was reduced by 73% among women born in 1993 and 1994, who had been vaccinated with the HPV vaccine compared with those who had not been vaccinated."<p>"The Danish Health Authority recommends that all girls are vaccinated against HPV at the age of 12. The Danish Health Authori-
ty still estimates that the benefits of vaccination by far outweigh any possible adverse reactions from the vaccine."<p><a href="https://laegemiddelstyrelsen.dk/en/sideeffects/side-effects-from-medicines/childhood-vaccines/hpv-vaccination/~/media/4DCEFB530117489AB2AE35A871DE3805.ashx" rel="nofollow">https://laegemiddelstyrelsen.dk/en/sideeffects/side-effects-...</a>
Its not like it wasn't without issues. You had the documentary from a state funded tv station that uncritically let people claim all kind of issues after getting the vaccine. It drastically lowered the uptake of the vaccine.<p><a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6288961/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6288961/</a>
> They acknowledge it isn't fully effective. They acknowledge that there may be a small risk of side effects. And they tell people it's worth it and to go take it.<p>Those are basic bits of knowledge that apply to most vaccinations.<p>The problem is that the quacks diminish the positive effects, exaggerate the negatives and engage in a campaign of fear mongering that costs some people (and in some cases lots of people, see COVID) their lives. They are not only clueless, they are malicious.<p>From Gwyneth Paltrow, JFK Jr, all the way to Donald Trump and a whole raft of others the damage is immense. I have a close family member who now is fully convinced of the healing power of crystals and there isn't a thing you can do to reason with people that have fallen into a trap like that.
You probably mean Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., not John. JFK Jr. died in 1999, and was not anti-vaccine, as far as I know.
But maybe you have fallen into a trap? Maybe believing in crystals is their own damn fault rather that jailing “influencers” for inducing wrong-think.
As bad as many celebrities/politicians are (I'm waiting/fantasizing for "cheeto in chief" to sit in the same jail cell as "bubba"), the real quacks are organized groups like Chiropractors, "Naturopaths", Multi-level-marketers, etc.<p>My medical insurance will pay for several literally fake/quack treatments because of this crap. If you want to wage war against Quackery I better see you going after "big Chiropractor" first.
Telling lies should never be criminalized, because there is no single trustworthy arbiter of truth.<p>This has nothing to do with vaccines. There is a very good reason that misinformation is, <i>and should remain</i> legal. This simply allows the person or group who gets to define what is or is not misinformation to arbitrarily imprison anyone doing publishing they don’t like.<p>You really need to think through the implications and consequences of censorship laws before advocating for them.
Exhibit a: “not quackery”
Yeah, we should have a Ministry of Truth that declares things "quackery" or "misinformation" and then jails people for saying it. I can't see how this could possibly go wrong.
Agreed. But we should also stop enabling celebrities when they push popular agendas even if they are correct. For example, climate change.
The numbers are quite solid. People who don't want to accept the numbers, need to come up with an explanation why the data can not be trusted. With regard to oncogenic HPV, I think the data is very convincing. To me it was a lot more convincing than the SARS covid datapoints (e. g. the media constantly shifted; I noticed this with regard to Sweden, which had a bad early data due to barely any protection of the elderly, but lateron it still had better data than e. g. Austria which went into lockdown - so Austria had worse data points than Sweden overall. Japan or Taiwan had excellent data points, so the respective governments were much better than either Sweden or Austria. The most incompetent politicans acted in Austria during that time, replacing facts with promo and propaganda. The data points, though, were always solid. I remember I compared this about weekly and it was interesting to me when Austria suddenly surpassed Sweden negatively; the media here in Austria critisized Sweden early on, but once Sweden outperformed Austria in a better, more positive manner, suddenly the media no longer reported that. Private media simply can not be trusted.)
Anecdote time (and some info from real life EMTs and Oncologist). I just recently “won” the cancer lottery related to this.
Never had the HPV vaccine. Honestly thought it was only for young girls (didn’t spare topic a thought, zero time investigating).<p>80-90% of adults gets some form of HPV during lifetime. Often several strains. Each have different risks of cancer. Even if you’re married - if you or your partner experience a severely stressful period- it might reactivate.
Most people’s immune systems clears HPV, and makes it dormant. (Mine likely doesn’t see HPV as a threat.
Long term (10y+?) exposure to active HPV cause cancer.<p>If you can, at least do your very best to avoid the cancer nightmare. Take the vaccine. Worst case it protects you from being a vector.
It’s an imperfect insurance from 3-4 months in/out of hospitals, scans, blood work, from chronic dry mouth,all food tasting very bad, issues with energy, possible bone death (that you suddenly have to monitor every day for the test. Oh, and any alcohol or smoking after having had this increases risk of recurrence by 30-50%
A comment with an article citing published medical literature on risks associated with this type of vaccine was flagged and hidden. Why? I don't know the author nor am I a medical doctor to understand the topic at depth, so it's a genuine question. Was it misleading? If so, how? That's what the comment was asking, actually, if there were counter-points to the text, which was favorable to live vaccines (e.g. shingles) but critical of those developed with other methods. Is there no merit to that? I genuinely don't know, and since it seems impossible to discuss the topic, it's hard to say.
I sometimes vouch for incorrectly flagged posts. You got me curious, so I took a look. What I found was a blog from an anonymous conspiracist vaccine opponent claiming to be a doctor. He's a decent writer but in my estimation a loon.<p>So I'm fine with it being flagged and decline to vouch for it.
It was a misleading post.<p>For the HPV section specifically, there were at least two major omissions.<p>First, in his table showing autoimmune adverse effects, he has chosen to crop out the next column in the table containing the control conditions - which show very similar rates of adverse effects to the vaccine condition.<p>Secondly, when discussing negative efficacy in the case of existing persistent infection, he only quotes the data from one of three studies that the linked report covers. The linked report indeed covers the negative efficacy in study 013 as an area of concern. However, study 015 (which had roughly twice the number of total participants as study 013) showed no real evidence of negative efficacy. When all 3 studies are pooled together, the point estimate still says negative efficacy, (at ~-12%), however the error bars are quite wide.<p>Why this is tragic, is because these two omissions do actually point to failures in public communication about the vaccine. For example, the control condition in the Merck trials were a mix of saline injections (this is the traditional placebo), as well as injections with just the adjuvant (AAHS). This is less standard, and raises legitimate questions about why Merck used an adjuvant as the control, instead of just saline. There a cynical/conspiratorial angle to this question, which I think would be directionally correct.<p>The second omission is because I think there is a reasonable question of "are there extra risks associated with getting the HPV vaccine while having an active persistence infection", even when taking into account the different and larger study populations within the original trial data. Once again, I think the idea that both companies and public health agencies don't want to deal with a vaccine that requires testing before hand is true. I also believe that on a population level, even if there was a modest increase in risk in that specific subgroup, it makes sense to implement broad vaccination campaigns.<p>That said, I think the unwillingness of public health agencies to engage with this tricky area of communication and education creates these types of opening for anti-vaccine messaging. If you want a sense of "conspiracy" - here's a random review study - <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/</a><p>Notice that when reporting results, the groupings for HPV status at enrollment time are "naive" and "irrespective" - the "test positive" grouping isn't broken out.<p>EDIT: The article that we're discussing is <a href="https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-perils-of-vaccinating-when-you" rel="nofollow">https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-perils-of-vaccinating...</a>
You see, my lad…<p>In this house we believe
Love is love
Black Lives Matter
Science is real
Feminism is for everyone
No human is illegal
Kindness is everything<p>Signaling your alignment to the public-facing opinions of your social betters is the modern ersatz religion for atheists. The television is the temple, the pundits the priests. Apostates and heretics are not welcome here. Now, my child, you would not want your words to inadvertently cause the faithful to stray. Would you? Just think of what the late night comedians would say if they could hear you cast doubt on their sponsor Pfizer? Perhaps you would rather join our hate session on the pagans in flyover country?
First hand experience here, 6 years ago I had tonsil cancer from HPV16. It SUUUCKED. Doing well now though thank god. I’ve had a hard time getting decent info even from my oncology team in the years since as to whether I should even consider getting the vaccine now. I am 45, married and my wife of 5 years (yes we went through all of that while engaged) has gotten her series of shots 3 years ago.
I have heard from my Drs that as obviously I have already had at least the one strain, there isn’t really a point in getting the shots now. Is there any newer info regarding this semi specific situation that anyone is aware of?
The data is IMO quite convincing. Harald zur Hausen pointed this out decades ago already; this is another data point that adds to the theory which back then he proposed was fairly new (not that viruses cause cancer, that is much older knowledge, but specifically the role of some HPV strains; Harald died about 2 years ago).
Everyone already knows!<p>HPV vaccination leads to massive reduction in nasopharyngeal, penile and rectal cancer in men.<p>The focus of messaging around HPV vaccination on ovarian cancer, female fertility and the age limitations for recommendations / free vaccination in some places are nothing short of a massive public health failure and almost scandal.<p>Just truthfully tell the boys their dicks might fall off and see how all of them quicklky flock to the vaccine.
> Just truthfully tell the boys their dicks might fall off and see how all of them quicklky flock to the vaccine.<p>Every male above the age of 26 is locked out of the vaccine unless you pay out of pocket, which will be €300-€500 (or even higher).<p>It's led to this really weird situation, where HPV vaccination for men is now <i>recommended</i> up to 40s but only <i>covered</i> up to 26yr old, and that recommendation upgrade happened relatively recently. Which means there's a whole generation of men who are told they should get the vaccine, who would have had covered access to the vaccine in the past, but are now expected to go out of pocket.
Yep, I paid for mine. male/43/Spain. Almost €400. Two shots of the nonavalent vaccine, ~€190 each.<p>For younger people it's three shots (second after two months, third after 6 months of the first one), now for older (over 30s or 40s, I can't remember exactly) it's recommended to get two shots (second after six months).
This seems to be changing in some areas. I am in the US, in my 30's, Male and I only had my $30 copay for the first visit (nothing for my second shot)
I'm in the US and have wanted to get it but perpetually have been older than the recommended cutoff. They have raised the age over and over again but I've always been older than it. I'm not sure why they don't just get rid of the age limit recommendations altogether.
I am over 26, a man, and my insurance (Cigna) in the US covered it.
How 40s?
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Promiscuity is not a healthy lifestyle and we need to stop presenting it as one. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s should have been enough of a warning. If people don't sleep around then HPV's spread will be much reduced and they will be much less likely to catch other STIs.
This adds nothing. It has been repeatedly shown that stupid abstinence-driven approaches to public health do not work. It’s equivalent to saying “maybe the obesity crisis would be solved if we all just ate less”.<p>Moral crusades have zero place in public health and are actively harmful.
If people stopped driving, we would have zero car crashes.
The AIDS crisis happened because it was unknown and very stealthy--nobody knew there was a risk to be guarded against. And it certainly didn't help that because of the association with gays the government response was slow-rolled. Same thing we saw with Covid--the US response was slow-rolled because at first it looked like it was selecting for blue areas.<p>Without the gays it might have gone a long time as a blood vector without being identified. When it was a "gay" disease it was busy killing old people who got transfusions but were never identified as having AIDS.
You could probably have gotten away with it a decade ago but that is a very poor plan in the far more critical of public health world of today.<p>Statistically nobody even knows a guy who knows a guy who's dick fell off. Serious HPV problems for men are not even common enough to be viable urban legend. You have less to back up your DARE messaging than DARE did. It's just not gonna work. The nanosecond someone who took your bait shows up to be interviewed by some Youtube talking head about side effects the already severely damaged (compared to, IDK a decade ago) credibility of the medical establishment will go up in flames.<p>You need to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and let people make their own decisions. People don't "trust the experts" anymore at the scale you need for stuff like vaccination campaigns so you have to operate based on that reality.
Apparently HPV is responsible for some ~70% of throat cancers and ~30% of penile cancers in men. Seems pretty significant to me.<p>If nobody knows a guy who knows a guy who had penile cancer, that's probably because people are very bad about talking about genital health. I'm sure some of the men in my life have issues with erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostates, hemmorrhoids, etc. But no one is talking about those issues.
70% of throat cancers? In a world with cigarettes and chewing tobacco? I find that a <i>very</i> surprising number - so surprising it's almost unbelievable.<p>Got a source?
Think of it as shared responsibility. The tobacco and the virus are <i>both</i> reasons why you got cancer and died, prizes for all.<p>So maybe 70% of throat cancer victims have HPV, and like 70% smoked - and if those were independent facts you'd expect that about 49% both smoked <i>and</i> had HPV, but it's actually <i>more</i> than half 'cos it turns out that if you have HPV then smoking is even worse. So that's nice.
"Currently, the estimated proportion of oropharyngeal cancers testing positive for HPV within the United States is 68%–70%"[0]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.asha.org/practice-portal/clinical-topics/head-and-neck-cancer/#collapse_8" rel="nofollow">https://www.asha.org/practice-portal/clinical-topics/head-an...</a>
And how many men get throat and penile cancers vs other cancers and health issues? There's a reason old men crack jokes about prostate health, erectile dysfunction and incontinence rather than their dicks falling off and are way more worried about colon cancer than rectal cancer.<p>I didn't say it wasn't a significant source of cancer. I said that nobody knows a guy who knows a guy who's dick fell off or some other extreme outcome. Without enough of that to back up your messaging it just won't work. You need to be honest with people, not try and scare them like you're trying to keep school kids from smoking weed in 1990.<p>The public messaging you're trying to engage in could perhaps have skated by in a less critical time but in the current environment it will be counterproductive.<p>I don't want my kid or my grandkid to get measles or some other "of immediate consequence" disease because they go to school with a bunch of unvaccinated kids because you people sullied the reputation of public health via "just push the truth a little, it'll make them take the vaccine" type endeavors.
HPV is also responsible for very unsightly genital warts. I'd think people would want to avoid that if possible.
Title is misleading<p>> Among the 859 unvaccinated women, HPV16/18 prevalence was 6%, 5%, and 6%<p>and<p>> However, about one-third of women still had HPV infection with non-vaccine high-risk HPV types, and new infections with these types were more frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated women.<p>so… real summary is “hpv vaccination correlates with lower infection for vaccine specific HPV strain, but does not impact / potentially worsens overall high-risk HPV infections”<p>so what exactly is solved here, supposedly?<p>not to mention, the study does not compare helth outcomes, which is the only meaningful measure.
I believe HPV16/18 were considered the highest risk (in terms of causing cancer), even amongst all the other high risk HPV strains. In the intro, they state that prior to the start of the vaccination campaign 74% of cervical cancer cases in Denmark were HPV16/18, and the other 26% from the non-vaccine HR HPV strains. Following through to the referenced paper, in their study they found 20.5% of overall patients had HR HPV, with 5.4% and 2.4% with HPV16 and/or 18. However, for cancer cases, they found that 40% of cases had HPV16, and 33% had HPV18 (note that multiple simultaneous strains are possible).<p>There's a lot in the paper to summarize, but I think it makes a reasonable argument that HPV16/18 are especially high risk, and that "simple" replacement of the 5% HPV16/18 with another 5% of any of the other HR HPV strains would be beneficial. The linked paper suggests up to 74% (depending on your assumptions) reduction in cancer with "simple replacement".
> Infection with HPV types covered by the vaccine (HPV16/18) has been almost eliminated. Before vaccination, the prevalence of HPV16/18 was between 15–17%, which has decreased in vaccinated women to < 1% by 2021. However, about one-third of women still had HPV infection with non-vaccine high-risk HPV types, and new infections with these types were more frequent in vaccinated than in unvaccinated women.<p>I wonder if we'll those non-vaccine strains will eventually become the most prevalent.
We got my son vaxxed for this when he was able, and the doctor doing it was quite reluctant to do it. (US; ~2001)
At what age can you start getting vaccinated?
I don't know about Denmark, but the US CDC indicates that you can get the HPV vaccine starting at 9; with a recommendation do get it at 11 or 12.<p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.htm...</a>
Absolutely completely off the topic at hand here, but it seems like the bot and troll level goes up a lot on topics like this. A lot of people use HN data for training data, stats analysis, etc. Anyone out there figure out some good tools for trying to detect the bots in a thread like this? There are probably some good tells with throw-away accounts, account age, etc etc. In a world where misinformation is algorithmically generated and comments are a prime way that happens getting tools that can detect it is important. Hmm if there are good tools I wonder if they could be built into a plugin somehow.
Another angle of why vaccinating men is important is because gay men (or more precisely those who participate in oral-penile or penile-anal sex) are at risk for these cancers, but if we only vaccinate women then we do not protect this group of men.<p>Also on my soapbox it's an absolute absurdity that we still do not have any HPV test for men.
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The only thing I've never understood about the HPV vaccination is that for some reason after a certain age as an adult in the United States, no primary care provider appears to recommend you get it in addition to your regular vaccination schedule.<p>Is the idea that you're married and have a single partner and the risk factor has dropped below a certain percentage of the population where there's little reason to recommend getting it if the likelihood is that you've already acquired HPV in your lifetime thus far?<p>Every other vaccination appears to be straightforward, besides HPV, and I don't know why. I've also never heard a clear answer from a physician.<p>Is it just that our vaccination schedules are out of date in the United States? This seems to be the most likely culprit to me.
Here's the CDC's most recent recommendations (from 2019) <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6832a3.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6832a3.htm</a><p>The justification for 27-45 year olds heavily references a meeting. Based on time, author and title, I think either <a href="https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/78082/cdc_78082_DS1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/78082/cdc_78082_DS1.pdf</a> or <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10395540/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10395540/</a> should be a fair summary of the meeting (I hope...).<p>I don't really have time to read it all, but the basic idea is as you said - the cost-benefit ratio is off. Basically expanding from something like the current case, to vaccinating up to 45 year old will avert an extra 21k cases of cancer (compared to the base case of 1.4 million) - so about an extra 1.5% cases averted, while the direct vaccination costs are estimated to increase from 44 billion to 57 billion (+29%).<p>The current guidance says "do not recommend" plus "consult your doctor". You should read that as "blanket vaccination as public policy is cost inefficient in that age range" not "you as a 45 year old should not get the vaccine categorically".
It wasn't tested in those over 45, thus it is not approved over 45. Doesn't stop off-label use, but means it's not going to be on any schedules.
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Celibacy isn’t great either.<p>Also I’d really prefer my daughters not get cancer no matter their sex lives.
You sound like my fellow citizens who have decided to use their theocratic power to push this view across my city and school. It impacts my children and their future mates. Sure, there’s an ideal world in which every person finds their ideal partner on the first time, falls madly in love and remains forever faithful. I don’t live in a Disney fantasy world, and would prefer public health policies are based on pragmatic principles.
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> Despite this being clearly shown within the HPV vaccine trials, since testing before vaccination would reduce vaccine sales, it was never recommended within the prescribing guidelines (some groups even said to not test before receiving the vaccine).<p>Citation needed. In Germany, the HPV vaccine is recommended only to below 14 year olds, so as to reduce precisely that risk.<p><a href="https://www.rki.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/DE/Impfen/HPV/FAQ-Liste_HPV_Impfen.html#entry_16870774" rel="nofollow">https://www.rki.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/DE/Impfen/HPV/FAQ-Liste_H...</a>
plagueinc
Do the conspiracy theorists believe it or not?
This is one of the many reasons I think medicine is full of people who are good at memorizing but are outright stupid when it comes to problem solving and logic.
I wanted an HPV vaccine when i was younger. As a male, I was told "no", even though it causes the most common throat cancer in men, and was linked to prostate cancer. Stupid.