The Cancer Vaccine
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/the-cancer-vaccine/281365/
Artists enact the passing of Jade Goody, who died of cervical cancer at age 27. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)
***SNIP
In March of this year, Oklahoma pediatrician Paul Darden wrote in the journal Pediatrics, "Despite doctors increasingly recommending adolescent vaccines, parents increasingly intend not to vaccinate female teens with [the] HPV [vaccine]."
"Our coverage is not moving forward with the HPV vaccine for girls, and coverage is low for the HPV vaccine for boys," Dr. Melinda Wharton, deputy director of the CDC's National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, said in August of the lack of increase between 2011 and 2012.
Meanwhile in Australia the boys are 70 to 80 percent, and girls approach 100. In Rwanda more than 80 percent of teenage girls are vaccinated.
If the United States could reach the same vaccination rates as Rwanda, according to the CDC, it would prevent 50,000 girls alive today from getting cervical cancer.