Grant money to entice more girls to get HPV vaccine

Grant
money to entice more girls to get HPV vaccine









University of Florida uses grant money to entice more
girls to get HPV vaccine



(NaturalNews) You've no doubt heard scores
of stories about how organizations, businesses, research facilities and learning
institutions abuse free money, spending it on bizarre pet projects.

Add
the University of Florida to that list.

The home of the Gators
says it wants to use a $150,000 grant from the Society of Adolescent Health
and Medicine to increase the vaccination rate of the human papillomavirus
among young girls.

What is human papillomavirus? It is a virus that is
responsible for a rapidly growing type of oral cancer, and is most often
sexually transmitted. It is also the same virus that causes genital warts and
cervical cancer.

Free to women on Medicaid and the state's equivalent for
younger females, Florida KidCare, the university wants to use your tax money to
vaccinate girls (nothing was said about vaccinating young men) against genital
and oral complications tied to HPV. What's odd about that is that recent studies
show men are three times more likely than women to develop oral
HPV.

Vaccine inequalities?

"By 2020, there will be more
HPV-positive oral cancers among men than cervical cancers among women in the
U.S., and right now we don't even have a way to screen for them," says
Maura
L. Gillison, MD, PhD, of Ohio State University, according to a study she
led published recently in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. But, she notes, "Our data provides evidence that oral HPV
infection is predominantly sexually transmitted."

Think reckless
self-gratification.

According to local media reports, the university's
Dr. Stephanie Staras, assistant professor in the college's department of health
outcomes and policy, who is serving as the principle investigator for the
project, said it will focus on reaching young women to increase their awareness
about the vaccine - the only one that has been developed to protect against
cancer - and perhaps prompt more health care providers to recommend the
vaccine.

Staras said the vaccination rate among the general population
rate of adolescent girls in Florida is about 42 percent. The goal of the program
is not to, say, teach girls how to protect themselves from getting the virus in
the first place (abstinence?) but rather give them a way to continue to expose
themselves to contracting HPV.

"In Florida, girls enrolled in Medicaid
are about half as likely as the general population to protect themselves from
cervical cancer by getting the HPV vaccine," she said. "We aim to decrease the
vaccine inequalities."

But not through preventative
education.

Entirely preventable

Nationally, about seven
percent of adults are infected with oral HPV, the most prevalent of which is
HPV-16, the same sexually transmitted strain associated with a high percentage
of cervical cancers.

Government agencies, including the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, follow the same kind of strategy that the
University of Florida wants to follow: Assume everyone's going to be
sexually active and provide them with a Big Pharma solution. The CDC, for
example, recommends girls and boys get a three-shot series of one of the
vaccines at age 11 or 12 (before they become "sexually active").

Staras
gushed about the program and can't wait to spread the word.

"It's a
unique opportunity. Vaccination is rarely brought up during sick child visits.
They're thinking about their twisted ankle," she told the Gainesville
Sun.

Not everyone is so pleased by the program. Some health care
professionals, for example, see the obvious.

Dr. Joseph Zanga, chief of
pediatrics at the Medical Center in Columbus, Ga., agrees HPV vaccines can be
life-saving. But he says the disease is entirely preventable - by virtue of
choice.

"This is the only vaccine that protects you against something you
could prevent yourself," he said. "I've had adolescents as patients who get the
vaccine and think they don't need to use protection during sexual intercourse.
They don't seem to get it."



Source:-
http://www.naturalnews.com/036326_HPV_vaccines_University_of_Florida_grant_money.html