The following article (excerpt by Jamie Cohen of ABCNews.com) is another example of how the mainstream media is distorting and misleading the public on HPV and cervical cancer. The information is entirely based in scientific fraud and false conclusions. Read The HPV Vaccine: Prevention We Just Don't Need


Is a new vaccine the beginning of the end of cervical cancer?The results of a new study have cancer specialists excited about a vaccine that was 100 percent effective in preventing one type of human papillomavirus, or HPV, the leading cause of cervical cancer.

This discovery opens a new door in the battle against cancer, offering proof that it is possible to prevent the cause of a cancer before it ever develops.

There were nearly 13,000 cases of cervical cancer in the United States last year that claimed 4,400 lives.

With this breakthrough, there is reason to hope that "we could in our lifetime see the gradual but progressive dismantling of the barriers to preventing cervical cancer," said an editorial by Dr. Christopher P. Crum, the director of the Women's and Perinatal Pathology Division of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

The buzz from the medical community surrounding the study is overwhelmingly optimistic. "It is thrilling, flat out thrilling," says Dr. Marc Lippman, professor and chair of the department of internal medicine at the University of Michigan in Lansing.

The bell now tolls for HPV and the terrible toll it has taken on women will become a thing of the past — in one generation," says Dr. Gregory A. Poland, chief of the Mayo Clinic vaccine research group and the president of the International Society for Vaccines.

The Link Between HPV and Cervical Cancer

But how can a virus vaccine prevent cancer? Unlike many other cancers, which are linked to genetic defects or other hereditary factors, cervical cancer is caused primarily by HPV infection, the world's leading sexually transmitted disease. In fact, 99 percent of the 470,000 cervical cancer cases worldwide are due to this highly contagious yet little known infection.

Half of all sexually active adults will be infected with HPV in their lifetime. Spread via intimate skin-to-skin contact, this highly infectious disease can even be contracted while using a condom. People who are exposed to the disease may not show symptoms for years and many may never even know they carry it.

The primary means of HPV detection is a trip to the gynecologist for a routine Pap smear which test the cells on the cervix for abnormalities. An abnormal smear result or the presence of genital warts indicates that a woman has been infected.

New research, however, indicates that a vaccine may someday be able to prevent the infection before it is even detectable in the cervix with a Pap smear. In time, scientists hope to do what even safe sex cannot: protect and prevent human papillomavirus altogether.

The Cervical Cancer Vaccine

A study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed more than 2,000 women ages 16 to 23 for approximately a year-and-a-half.

The results demonstrate that of those immunized against the most common cancer-causing strain of human papilloma virus, called HPV type-16, "there was not a single vaccinated patient that developed HPV-16 infection," said Dr. Robert Young, director of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, and past president of the American Cancer Society. "Zero is a powerful number and a very strong positive."

These results suggest the possibility of developing a vaccine that prevents at least one type of human papilloma virus infection. And, "the link between infection with HPV-16 and cervical cancer is strong, such that a vaccination that prevents infection almost certainly will decrease the rate of cervical cancer in women," comments Dr. Bert Jacobs, a professor in the department of microbiology at Arizona State University in Tempe.

And vaccine experts also were enthusiastic about the implications of the study: "While there have been other vaccines to prevent cancer, this is the first vaccine specifically developed for widespread use to prevent a relatively common type of cancer," said Dr. Steven Black , co-director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, Calif.

"If an effective vaccine comes out of this, one could envision it becoming part of routine childhood immunizations," according to Dr. Stephen Rubin, professor and chief of the gynecologic oncology at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia.

In The Research Pipeline

However, experts caution there is more to do.

HPV type-16 is only one of more than 60 types in the human papilloma virus family and it is responsible for only 50 percent of cervical cancer cases.

"Several of the HPV types cause cervical cancer and cocktails of vaccines will be necessary to further reduce risk. That said, most scientists working in the field as well as most of us who follow the work believe that this strategy will be successful in markedly reducing the risk," said Young.

Kathrin Jansen, senior director of vaccine research at Merck Research Laboratories says clinical trials are currently testing the two strains of HPV that are most closely associated with cervical cancer and the two that are the most tightly linked to genital warts.

Jansen says if proven effective the vaccine will protect women against 70 percent of all cervical cancers and 90 percent of all genital warts.

The End of the Fear Provoking Pap Smear?

Unfortunately, Pap smear screening "although extremely efficacious, is not a guarantee that the virus will be detected," said Jansen. A vaccine will therefore help protect the many women who have seemingly normal Pap smears yet still go on to develop cancer.

In addition, many women can safely carry the virus without developing cervical cancer — positive HPV tests are very common among young, sexually active females.

"Over a woman's lifetime, if she is getting routinely screened, she has a one in three to a one in four of having an abnormal Pap," says Dr. Laura A. Koutsky, the study's lead author and professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington.

An abnormal Pap smear can therefore ring a false alarm — terrifying women unnecessarily as they confront the possibility of developing cancer. "The vaccine will reduce the number of women who have abnormal Pap smears and have to go through the fear and anxiety of having this diagnosis," says Koutsky.

Also at issue is the fact that "effective pap smear screening is relatively expensive and requires substantial resources to follow-up and treat pre-cancerous lesions. The high costs of screening and treatment are thus leaving women at the mercy of a deadly disease which "is nearly always preventable," says Dr. Steven E. Waggoner, chief of gynecologic oncology at University Hospitals of Cleveland.

This is particularly important in developing countries where more than 80 percent of cervical cancer cases exist, said Young. Attempts to develop screenings programs among these large populations of high-risk women have been frustrating and minimally successful, said Young, advocating yet another reason for which "the vaccine strategy is enormously exciting and important."

"If this study holds true," says Dr. Jay Brooks, the chairman of the department of hematology and oncology at the Ochsner Cancer Institue in Baton Rouge, La. "I believe we could be on the doorstep of a dramatic advance in prevention of a major worldwide problem."

Reference Source 104

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