Cervical Cancer Vaccine

News report highlights parental unease about a new cervical cancer vaccine.

In today’s Washington Post, there is an article that analyzes the ethical issues raised a new vaccine for cervical cancer, which ideally should be administered to 11-to-12 year old girls; in other words, before they become sexually active. The health benefits from this procedure have been established. This article, by contrast, highlights three major hurdles to the widespread introduction of the practice—parental doubts about whether the vaccine is safe, issues of payment as the insurance industry grapples with whether or not to cover the procedure, and fears on the part of both parents and pediatricians about how to explain the procedure to their daughters and patients respectively.

What this article demonstrates is that the “translation” of a scientific discovery into universally socially and medically accepted practice is seldom straightforward. From the standpoint of public health, the introduction of this practice would seem to be justified. However, when individual parents and pediatricians have to make a decision, situation specific psychological and economic factors clearly play a role.