Gardasil available in some places

Gardasil, Merck's vaccine against the Human Papillomavirus strains that are responsible for cervical cancer, began arriving in the Bay Area in the past few weeks. Kaiser Permanente will begin dispensing the shots starting today.Once again the debate about whether it is feasible to vaccinate young girls against a sexually transmitted disease is bound to begin. Conservatives are aghast that the FDA approved the vaccine in the first place. They feel that giving the vaccine to 11-year-ols will encourage sexual promiscuity.However medical professionals and advocacy groups are at pains to point out that cervical cancer is one of the most preventable cancers today. "This is not a vaccine for sexually transmitted diseases," said Dr. Charles Wibbelsman, chief at the Kaiser teenage clinic in San Francisco. "We're talking about cervical cancer. This virus is everywhere. You can get it without having sex. It can be on your hands."He also pointed out that young girls were often victims of sexual harassment, "`If your daughter were a victim of date rape, I wouldn't want her to develop cervical cancer later on because she wasn't vaccinated," he added.The FDA has approved Gardasil for girls as young as 9 years and for young women up to 26 years of age. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed that the vaccine is being tested in boys as well, but there are no results as yet.The vaccine protects girls and young women against HPV types 16 and 18, which are implicated in over 70 percent of all cervical cancers. Gardasil also protects against HPV types 6 and 11, which cause 90 percent of genital warts.However FDA stressed that parents still have the final say as to whether their daughters can receive the vaccine. The state of Michigan recently made it mandatory for schoolgirls to receive the vaccine. It is hoped other states will soon follow suit.