In No Hurry to Give It a Shot

Four male GWU students interviewed together in a university dining hall say they rely on their partners to enforce condom use. Three of the four say they're more worried about pregnancy than disease. If a date says she's on birth control and doesn't ask her partner to use a condom, "that's a green light," senior Brian Levey says. It's a matter of knowing her well enough to trust that she would tell you if she were infected, he adds.

The young men admit they don't know much about HPV or the new vaccine. Three are surprised to learn that condoms don't provide 100 percent protection against the virus. (Under the best conditions, it's about 70 percent.) They don't know that at least half of all sexually active people will get HPV at some point in their lives or that for most of them, it will clear up by itself.

What they do know is that HPV has more serious health implications for girls and women than for them, that males can't be tested for it yet nor vaccinated against it. "It's hard for guys to take responsibility for condoms or a vaccine when they don't know a lot about the virus and don't think it really affects them," says Jake Tworecke, Adrian's younger brother.

This is a generation that has been vaccinated against more than a half-dozen diseases in their lives, starting in infancy. You might think taking a new series of shots would be a no-brainer for young women. But some sound war-weary.

"There will always be something else out there, some other disease discovered, or a drug that doesn't work anymore," Kirsh says. "We're always hearing about STDs becoming more prevalent. This is the time of our lives when we're supposed to be carefree. Now there's always some danger hovering above."

Some students prefer to focus on the dangers right in front of them, like the friend passed out after a party. Says Levey: "You see someone who's wasted on alcohol or stoned on your couch. Viruses like HPV can seem minor by comparison."

Across the city, at Howard University, many male students are similarly blase, according to Robaer Washington, a senior. "Some guys I know use condoms; some don't," he says, "but a lot of them don't care. All they say is, 'Right now, I'm going to enjoy myself.' "

Howard senior Dominique Scott isn't willing to give young women a free pass, however, saying, "For every guy who's nonchalant about negative conseqences [of sex], I've met a female who doesn't care."

More to Learn

Scott and Washington argue that if the students they know had better information about STDs, they might pay more attention to what they do. Renee Jenkins, president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics, agrees.

Behavior may not change quickly with information, says Jenkins, an adolescent medicine specialist at Howard University Hospital, but it won't change at all if you don't have the information.

In a recent national survey of mostly white university students, two out of three said they knew little or nothing about HPV. Jenkins says the proportion is also high among the low-income adolescents she serves.

Pediatricians, who are the primary caregivers for this group, don't have a lot of experience with STDs and are often not well-informed on the subject, Jenkins says.

Additionally, the educational material that physicians and clinics receive from government sources are "pretty dense, not something a lot of people will want to read. We're trying to educate our patients, but I don't get a lot of requests for the vaccine."

At Howard, junior Jennifer Ransome is taking a health class this semester that includes instruction on HPV and other STDs. The class is for women only, and many of the students are afraid to go to a gynecologist, she says. When the teacher told students that condoms, even correctly used, didn't protect completely against HPV, "everyone gasped," she says.

Still, "a lot of them were not for the vaccine." But she is. She says she plans to get her first shot at her upcoming annual visit to the doctor. Scott, too, says she'll get the vaccine, but only if a friend goes with her.

"It's not something I like to do by myself," she says. "I don't need a doc or some commercial telling me. I need my friend's support." ·

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