HPV Vaccine: Why Boys -- Not Just Girls -- Need a Shot in the Arm

Why is HPV still considered a girls' disease?

Today, "girls" well past girlhood are seeking the vaccine to guard against human papillomavirus and cervical cancer -- and, according to new findings by Dartmouth researchers, women aged 18-25 are more likely to get the $360 shots if they think their mother would approve.

It's great that girls and women are being proactive. But where are the male counterparts? Why are women bearing yet another burden of sexual activity while their partners and boyfriends and husbands ride on the coattails of girls' earned immunity? (STD prevention now, just like birth control, has become the woman's responsibility in the vast majority of relationships.)

From the outset, the easy reasoning for women and girls to vaccinate was that HPV causes cervical cancer and cervical cancer, invariably, has a greater impact on women and girls than boys and men. But, in reality, to say so is a bit like Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) explaining that because he himself technically doesn't need maternity benefits, he doesn't want to pay for them. Someone in his family -- if only his own mother -- at some time, needed maternity benefits. Similarly, cervical cancer, it might be said, affects society as a whole -- and men will be "paying for it'" in the emotional, as well as material, impact that such cancers have on couples and families.

I can see that moms of boys and boys who become men might say: Well why add another vaccination when all the girls are already doing it? Aren't they taking care of it for us? Thus far, that is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's argument: -- girls will shoulder the burden; the herd immunity granted by girls will protect the boys.

But that brings me to the second reason that boys, just like girls, should get vaccinated: Because boys, too, can get HPV -- genital warts -- and HPV-related cancers. And gay and bisexual men? They aren't protected by vaccinated girls or women. Seem a little more reasonable to vaccinate now?

Back in September, the FDA thought so, and went so far as to recommend that boys start getting Gardasil, the vaccine to prevent certain types of HPV. "It's a sexually transmitted disease, and it takes two people to transmit the virus," Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La., told ABC News at the time. "If the vaccine can reduce the risk of infection in men as well as women, then I believe it should be given to both men and women."

And studies had shown that, like in girls, Gardasil helped prevent the lesions in boys.

Funny thing is, as The Washington Post pointed out last month, when girls were the target audience, the question was whether the vaccine's availability would lead to greater promiscuity. When it's boys, it's about whether the cost is worthwhile. Boys are at risk for anal and penile cancers, throat and and oral cancers -- about 7,500 men and boys will contract HPV-related cancers each year, and 1,000 will die. The Centers for Disease Control will meet again in June, and decide in October, whether the cost-benefit analysis of vaccinating boys is enough to warrant a recommendation to vaccinate. As of now, they are leaving it up to parents to decide.

"The cost-effectiveness studies are really important, but I don't think they should be the sole driver of public health policy," Gregory D. Zimet, professor of pediatrics and psychology at Indiana University told the Washington Post. "This is a vaccine that principally benefits women's health. I wonder if it was the reverse, and there was a vaccine for women that helped prevent prostate cancer in men, this would be as much of an issue."

It's hard to believe it would be.