ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

A shot in the arm against cancer?

By James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth
Washington Post, July 27, 2006, p A24

When I opened the Post on Saturday and saw the op-ed by Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council ["Pro-Family, Pro-Vaccine -- But Keep It Voluntary," July 15], I thought, "At last, common ground on a sexual issue." I remembered the president of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, was quoted in Fortune magazine last year as saying he would not allow his own daughter to be inoculated because it would send the "wrong message" by encouraging sex outside of marriage.

The apparent reversal of the council's position was certainly encouraging.

My celebration was short-lived, however, once I read the op-ed. Mr. Sprigg wrote that the Family Research Council and other conservative groups oppose the inclusion of the HPV vaccine in state school vaccination programs. He also made no reference to the study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrating that women whose partners used condoms consistently were 70 percent less likely to acquire a new HPV infection.

My group, Advocates for Youth, supports inclusion of the vaccine in state school programs because it is the most effective way to get the greatest number of young people vaccinated at a time when the vaccine will provide the most protection. Parents who do not wish their children to participate can opt out.

Mr. Sprigg's suggestion that abstinence before marriage provides the best answer to HPV prevention is simply mistaken. John Santelli of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University (and formerly director of science and reproductive health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recently published a paper in the journal of the Society for Adolescent Medicine noting that while these programs are 100 percent effective in theory, their real-world efficacy approaches zero. These programs censor health information about the effectiveness of condoms, a proven tool in the battle against HPV and cervical cancer.

Common ground on the HPV vaccine lies in common sense and sound public health science.