Embracing the HPV Vaccine -- Warts and All?

We've posted before here and here about the HPV vaccine and debated whether or not it should be 'mandated' for girls; today in the NY Times an article in the Fashion and Style section (??) asks whether or not the parents would encourage their boys to get the vaccine. Currently, Gardasil is only FDA approved for girls and is marketed as preventing cervical cancer; but boys could benefit too, because the vaccine also protects against genital warts. Currently the vaccine is already approved for boys in Australia, Mexico and countries in the European Union; Merck will seek FDA approval for boys later this year. The question is, will the parents of young boys and girls in the USA buy it? Full article accessible here.

Not a 'Good News' Day

This morning's news has two disturbing items:

First, from the Washington Post: Researchers have had to shut a South African AIDS vaccine trial developed by Merck & Co; they started warning hundreds of clinical trial volunteers that a highly touted experimental vaccine they received in recent months might make them more, not less, likely to contract HIV. The full article here.

Secondly, another reason to become a vegetarian -- from Wired, the inside scoop on how cloned meat (and milk) is filtering its way into the food chain and onto on your dinner table. The author talks to one of the farmers about the health problems that his cloned pig offspring have suffered: "Within weeks of delivery in September 2002, the first piglet got sick and died. Another dropped dead two months later. A few days before Christmas, Earnhart walked into his heated barn at feeding time and spotted his last two piglets belly-up in the straw. The cause of death was apparently their identical, adult- size ulcers...[The demise] may have resulted from a well-known, poorly understood side effect of somatic-cell nuclear transfer called sudden death syndrome." Access the rest of the article here.

Let's hope the rest of the week brings better news.