On the 23rd.
I fail to see how a thread making fun of jerks marginalizing breast cancer is “working” to help either victims or finding a cure. To those of you who think this is a fun game, if breast cancer was a part of your life in some way you would understand why it offends some of us as it does.
On the 23rd side? How many legs have you got???
:eek:
No, I just have to wrap it multiple times.
I did not know that.
Can boys even get the vaccination? At my pediatrician’s office, the shot is offered to girls. I have 2 boys and never thought about getting them vaccinated.
That’s an excellent question, and I don’t know the answer. I’ll go Google a bit and see if I can find out. I will be very surprised if boys actually can’t get the vaccination, as opposed to it simply not being offered or encouraged, but you never know.
The FDA says it’s OK to give boys and young men the vaccination. From here.
[QUOTE=Start of WebMD article]
Sept. 9, 2009 – An FDA advisory committee voted to recommend approval of the vaccine Gardasil for males ages 9 to 26 to prevent genital warts. … HPV can cause genital warts and penile and anal cancer in men.
[/QUOTE]
However:
[QUOTE=End of WebMD article]
Gardasil is up for FDA consideration only as a way to prevent genital warts in boys – not to prevent cancer in males or to curb transmission of the HPV virus to women.
[/QUOTE]
I imagine that if you asked your doctor about the vaccine specifically as an oral cancer preventive, the doc might not support it. I do not believe a majority of the non-oral-surgeon/oncologist MDs out there are aware of the HPV-oral cancer connection yet.
Also, from here:
[QUOTE=A Medscape article]
October 21, 2009 — Despite hearing impassioned pleas to protect both men and women from cancer, a federal advisory panel today declined to recommend that a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine be routinely administered to boys to prevent genital warts.
Instead, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) issued a “permissive” recommendation stating that physicians have the option of vaccinating boys with the HPV vaccine Gardasil for genital-wart protection. …
In making its recommendation today, ACIP appeared to be swayed in part by published research questioning the cost-effectiveness of routine vaccination of boys with Gardasil. The committee’s decision has far-reaching economic effects because third-party payers typically pay for vaccinations that are recommended for routine use, but not those coming with a permissive recommendation.
[/QUOTE]
What this means for you is that you can probably get your boys vaccinated, but your insurance won’t pay for it.
It is interesting to note that the “published research” that “swayed” the ACIP seems to be this British study: “Cost effectiveness analysis of including boys in a human papillomavirus vaccination programme in the United States.” A Scientific American blog post explains that this study did not look at the cost effectiveness of vaccination alone:
[QUOTE=Scientific American blog post of Oct 9, 2009]
Their calculations, based on trial data, health care and awareness campaign costs, as well as quality of life figures, found that the cost of launching a massive public health campaign to reach just as many boys as girls outweighed the economic benefits.
[/QUOTE]
(My bolding.) This is irritating. I think insurance shouldn’t get to skip paying for the vaccination itself just because a “massive health campaign” would not be cost-effective; no one’s asking them to pay for any massive damn nonexistent campaign. (sigh) The CDC says here that “The retail price of the vaccine is about … $375 for [the] full series.” (It takes three shots spread out over six months.) Gah! Of course, on the other hand, my oral cancer is costing my insurance company hundreds of thousands of dollars – I’ve been scared to add it all up, so it might have topped a million by now.
HPV: Gives you genital warts and cancer, and even hijacks discussions of the color of your underwear.
I suspect the awareness they were trying to raise is in the women that maybe that lump or whatever not-quite-right situation in their breast could be serious, could be cancer, should certainly be checked. I don’t think anyone’s looking for a cure with their bra colors, but rather to get women to pay attention to what’s in them. That said, I didn’t participate.
Isn’t most breast cancer discovered and reported by the women to their doctors? I’ve seen statistics, I believe that’s the case. I assumed it was self-awareness they were trying to promote and see no harm in it.
That’s my suspicion too. I read something related in an article just now
[QUOTE=Neighbourhoods that kill. Peter Aldhous. New Scientist vol 205 no. 2743, 16 January 2010, p. 7]
Deep down, Diana Garmon-Spears knew something was seriously wrong when she noticed a lump in her right breast, about the size of a peanut. “I ignored it, [emphasis not in original] but then my breast started to deform. I started to form a mass of lumps all around.”, she recalls
[/quote]
Before I read that my naïve expectation (as a man) was that a woman with a peanut-sized lump in a breast would of course run, not walk, to her doctor.