Vaccine For Cervical Cancer

A women's medical group is fighting Cervical Cancer by issuing guidelines that call for inoculating all girls ages 11 and 12. More than 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the United States this year. At least 3,500 women will die.


"The guidelines state that routine vaccination with Gardasil is recommended for 11- and 12-year-old females and for females ages 13 to 26 who have not previously been vaccinated or who have not completed the full series, and that vaccination with Gardasil can be started at nine years of age," Merck said in a news release.

The American Medical Women's Association recommends that doctors check all women 30 years and older for the human papillomavirus, or HPV, that may cause the cancer. The 14,000-member group is also lobbying insurance companies to pay for the vaccine.

The group is planning on re-directing attention to the benefits of new tools to fight cervical cancer, which has a kill rate of 230,000 women annually. The association is taking a stand in favor of the vaccine. A politically volatile topic -- HPV can be transmitted through sexual contact.

"We wanted to reaffirm that girls really do need access to this vaccine," said Dr. Susan Ivey,the association's president and an adjunct associate professor at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "We wanted to frame the discussion in a public-health context, where what you really want is to make your population resistant to diseases and one way to do that is through vaccination."

The vaccine targets four strains of human papillomavirus. Many women carry HPV through their entire lifetimes, but most women are able to fight off an infections before they ever realize they have the virus.

Beyond the vaccine, the American Women's Medical Association is advocating wider use of a relatively new test that goes beyond the standard Pap smear that typically is used to check women for cervical cancer.

Christine Baze 38, underwent surgery and radiation and chemotherapy to treat an advanced case of cervical cancer. She hope the vaccine and HPV test will help a hundreds of women avoid her suffering.

"It's incredible the tools that are available to prevent cancer now," she said. "I just don't want anybody to have to go through what I went through ... and the good news is, they don't have to. We have an amazing opportunity to eliminate this cancer."

While the idea of a mandatory vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease has ignited a worldwide moral debate, the release of the drug was approved in the USA in June 2006.
At the moment, Canada is the only country actively proposing the vaccine for both boys and girls as it causes a cosmetic blemish when given to boys.

What is Cervical Cancer?

Cervical cancer is a disease in which the cells of the cervix become abnormal and start to grow uncontrollably, forming tumors.The cervix is the lower part of the uterus. It is sometimes called the uterine cervix. The body of the uterus, is where a fetus grows. The cervix connects the body of the uterus to the vagina (birth canal). The part of the cervix closest to the body of the uterus is called the endocervix. The part next to the vagina is the exocervix (or ectocervix). The place where these 2 parts meet is called the transformation zone. Most cervical cancers start in the transformation zone.

Cancer begins in cells, the building blocks that make up tissues. Tissues make up the organs of the body.Normally, cells grow and divide to form new cells as the body needs them. When cells grow old, they die, and new cells take their place.

Sometimes, this orderly process goes wrong. New cells form when the body does not need them, and old cells do not die when they should. These extra cells can form a mass of tissue called a growth or tumor.

Benign tumors are not cancer:

Benign tumors are rarely life-threatening.

Generally, benign tumors can be removed, and they usually do not grow back.

Cells from benign tumors do not invade the tissues around them.

Cells from benign tumors do not spread to other parts of the body.

Polyps, cysts, and genital warts are types of benign growths on the cervix.

Older women are at the highest risk for Cervical cancer. Although girls under the age of 15 rarely develop this cancer, the risk factor begins to increase in the late teens. Rates for carcinoma in situ peak between the ages of 20 and 30. In the United States, the incidence of invasive Cervical cancer increases rapidly with age for African American women over the age of 25. The incidence rises more slowly for Caucasian women. However, women over age 65 account for more than 25% of all cases of invasive cervical cancer.

The incidence of Cervical cancer is highest among poor women and among women in developing countries. In the United States, the death rates from Cervical cancer are higher among Hispanic, Native American, and African American women than among Caucasian women. These groups of women are much less likely to receive regular Pap tests. Therefore, their Cervical cancer usually are diagnosed at a much later stage, after the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

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