A Healthy Conclusion

The CDC moves a step closer to eradicating cervical cancer.

WHAT HAPPENED -- or, rather, what did not happen -- at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week was more than refreshing.

A CDC panel recommended a new vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV), by far the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country, for widespread administration to girls at ages 11 and 12. There were predictions that conservative groups might claim the recommendation encourages promiscuity. Instead, most such groups, including the Family Research Council, praised the committee's conclusions.

By all indications, the Department of Health and Human Services will soon put the vaccine on its recommended inoculation schedule, a federal guide for doctors and state policymakers, and include it in the Vaccines for Children program, which provides shots free to almost 40 percent of American children. If so, good science and sound policy will be ascendant.

One possible reason for the political controversy that did not happen is the unquestioned worth of the new vaccine. It has no known side effects, and it effectively fights the four dangerous strains of the virus. And HPV can be very dangerous. The virus is responsible for about 70 percent of all instances of cervical cancer. At least 80 percent of American women carry some form of the virus by the age of 50. Every year 6.2 million American men and women get HPV, and most of them do not even know they are carriers. Like polio, a viral infection that a vaccine eradicated in the United States, HPV only causes problems for a fraction of its victims. Yet because so many people have it, the virus is responsible for about 3,700 deaths annually from cervical cancer.

Pediatricians should take the CDC's recommendation and offer to inoculate their female patients before they become sexually active. And parents should let their pre-teen girls get the shot. It cannot take the place of a frank discussion of the dangers of sex, but if the vaccine becomes as routine as the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, 9,700 fewer American women will be diagnosed with cancer each year.

It will be up to the states to decide whether or not to make the vaccine mandatory for girls of middle-school age, and local legislators probably will not consider it until after the first few years of widespread use. By that time, its worth and safety may be so clear that state legislatures will experience the same welcome consensus.