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Cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer in women and their No. 2 cause of cancer deaths, resulting in about 3,000 deaths in the United States and nearly 300,000 around the world each year. At least half of sexually active men and women become infected with genital HPV at some point.

The immune system clears most such infections in a year or two, but several types of HPV can persist, cause cervical cancer or trigger other cancers in the genital area. There is no cure for HPV, but the cancers can be treated and an improved Pap test is catching more cervical cancer before it has spread.

Whitehouse Station-based Merck, hammered by slumping revenues and profits and facing roughly 5,000 lawsuits over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, is seeking to beat rival drug maker GlaxoSmithKline to market with the first cervical cancer vaccine.

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From an article in the Ottawa Citizen:

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Not everyone is enamoured with a campaign to immunize children. Conservatives groups like the Family Research Council in the United States fear that administering vaccinations to young people before they are sexually active would only encourage them to engage in sexual activity.

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[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]

If the vaccine gets final approval, that would be a great thing.

All sexually active women should be having Pap smears [as regularly as doctors are now advising] -- we used to say annually, and I still would say that, although maybe someone knows more about recent advice than I do.

Cervical cancer, if caught early, is as close to a 100 per cent curable cancer as there is -- and it is easily treated, too. If allowed to develop, it is horribly lethal.

In Canada, where annual tests are covered publicly across the country, NO woman should ever be dying of cervical cancer ... and yet some are.

It is an indictment of the American health-care system that the rates of advanced cervical cancer are so high there.

What can I say? Get that test. I knew someone who died in her early fifties of cervical cancer -- she hadn't had a Pap smear in ten years. It was crushing because so, so unnecessary. Go.

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Originally posted by RealityBites:

It would be tragic though, if it led women not to have regular PAP smears.

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So the women who are treated don't actually have cancer. Yet.

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skdadl, or anyone -- do you have any idea what a PAP test costs?

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When I worked in Quebec we estimated that they cost around $53. Which is reasonable, I think, considering the cost of the tech to look at the microscope slide, the transport, and the doc's time.

I think I remember reading that with the vaccine coming down the pike, and with new advances in pap tests and human papilloma virus DNA testing (each of which cost about $90, two years ago, from a private clinic in Quebec, FYI) there are beginning to be rumblings of a new standard of care where older women are encouraged to get pap tests less often.

[Edit: added from here on down]

I realize that the above paragraph may make the med system look horribly anti-woman. Actually, conventional pap tests are kind of bad at telling you if you have pre-cancerous lesions. Because there are a lot of false positives (more than 20%) and some false negatives (5-20%), there is a lot more pap testing going on than would be necessary if we had a really great test for cervical abnormalities. The frequency of testing is sort of a way to make the test be more accurate.

As well, I believe most women get HPV young, most women clear it when they're young, and most women--if they've consistently had normal pap results--don't seem to start getting abnormal pap results after the age of 30. HOWEVER, HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, and there is always a chance you'll catch hold of it after 30. So establishing a pap testing pattern IS very important.

Another edit: AND there are lots of different strains of HPV, so even if you get one and clear it, you might get another. And some strains seem to cause cancer more readily than others.

[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: pollyperverse ]

[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: pollyperverse ]

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Originally posted by arborman:
Question for the medical types - does this mean that it's possible to develop vaccines for other types of cancer as well?

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From Fern Hill:

skdadl, or anyone -- do you have any idea what a PAP test costs?

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"Cost of a pap smear is approximately $40" (US dollars)

I agree with you that the frequency of testing looks like a way to increase accuracy -- ie, if people get a false negative one year, then a new test a year later is still going to catch the disease at a fairly innocent stage. Given that we are talking about lives here, and given that there is no better protection at the moment, I would say that the cost and effort are worth it -- wouldn't you?

It astounds me that a disease like this -- that IS CURABLE -- is not a crusade for everyone. No woman should die of cervical cancer. That is as in NO WOMAN.

On and off over my younger years, I skipped years of annual visits, just because ... oh, why? Because it is hard to be medicalized. It is hard on the human spirit, or it was on mine, anyway, and I believe that it was on my friend's. She was actually the last person I would have suspected of feeling queasy about visits to a doctor, but there you go.

We do need open clinics, easier, more informal access, and above all we need changed attitudes among medical professionals, who don't seem to grasp how many people they have driven away by their dehumanizing attitudes towards the patients they prod and poke.

But even after I've said all that, I am still wanting to make the evangelical calls to all those young women who resist the regular check-ups. Please go.

I am a six-year survivor of two gynecological cancers (not cervical), and the queasiest customer you could imagine. But once you're faced with the disease, you're faced with even more tests! Trust me! If you can avoid that with the easy, preventative test, take that opportunity!