Teen sexual activity no predicter of HPV risk

If public health decisions were made rationally in this country, a new study from the Centers for Disease Control would put paid to the argument that only sluts should get the HPV vaccine:

Turns out a teen’s level of sexual activity doesn’t predict her level of risk of contracting HPV, the virus that causes genital warts and cervical cancer. The researchers report that HPV is so common that anyone who ever becomes sexually active is likely to get it, and so every girl should get the vaccine.

But of course public health politics aren’t rational and so women will continue to die from a preventable cancer. Including, it seems likely, especially the daughters of right-wing Christians, whose parents, if this vaccine is not made mandatory, will be free to decide that their daughters don’t need this sluts’ vaccine, but whose husbands, judging by the recent track record of right-wing Christian politicians, may well be engaged in plenty of extracurricular sex that puts their wives at risk. Seems to me there’s only one interpretation possible: right-wing zealots want women to be punished for having sex (and even for their husbands’ having sex). There’s a dark side of me that takes grim pleasure whenever this truth is exposed, but mostly I’m depressed. The daughters of zealots don’t deserve to be punished for their parents’ misogyny. Nor do the rest of our daughters.

Sadly, it’s not just the children of the far-right who are at risk. Many parents are reluctant to give their young teenage daughters the vaccine because they can’t conceive their daughter might be sexually active or about to become so. This study should provide the squeamish with a reason to vaccinate their daughters: Any time their daughter ever has a single sexual partner she will be at risk unless she’s vaccinated. Every female but a nun should get it, and, hey, nuns have been known to change their minds, so they should too.

The study should also change the mainstream medical establishment’s approach to the vaccine, too. According to RH Reality Check's blog, the American Cancer Society recommends that women 18 and older talk decide whether to be vaccinated based on a conversation with their doctors about their sexual history. This study shows sexual history is no predicter of HPV risk and the cancer society should get on board with vaccinating everybody. (And indeed it suggests that even the CDC's recommendation that all females ages 11–26 get vaccinated is too narrow. What about older women?)