Tell Someone. Be One Less.
A new vaccine for HPV, Gardasil, became available on the market this past summer. Since then, Merck, a pharmaceutical company, has flooded the airwaves and doctor’s offices with the vaccine’s slogans.
HPV is a virus that can cause cervical cancer if not detected and treated.
Merck has created several television commercials and pamphlets aimed at women, urging them to “tell someone” and “be one less” woman affected by cervical cancer.
“TV and media have really made it, for me at least, something I knew more about,” Emma Howe, a sophomore in First Year College, said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 50 percent of sexually active people will acquire a form of HPV at some point.
According to Dr. Charlotte Sweeney, staff physician at Student Health Services, Gardasil works the same way the Hepatitis B vaccine works. The virus is covered with a protein coat. Both vaccines trigger your body to form antibodies to the protein coat.
“There is no virus that’s introduced to your body,” she said. “Just the protein coat information.”
Sweeney said in a developed country like the United States, if women take advantage of available prevention and detection methods such as regular pap smears, limiting sexual partners, using condoms and getting abnormal pap smears taken care of promptly, women can “hopefully reduce their risk of getting an HPV by about 70 percent.”
“If they get their pap smears when they’re supposed to and if they get their abnormal pap smears taken care of appropriately,” she said. “Then unless they have AIDS or they have an immune compromised system, they should never die of cervical cancer.”
Students in biological science Professor Anita Flick’s Biology in the Modern World class can collect five extra credit points if they receive the vaccine this semester.
“She was just offering five extra credit points for any female that went and got the Gardasil vaccine for HPV,” Jennifer Burnette, a sophomore in psychology, said.
Howe said she was in Flick’s class last semester when Flick explained the HPV vaccine.
“If I didn’t take that class I wouldn’t have heard about it,” Howe said.
Students differ on the immediate importance of the vaccine.
Howe said although she thinks the vaccine is important, the vaccine is only for one virus right now.
“It’s a good suggestion,” she said. “But, I don’t think it’snecessary.”
Burnette said she thinks that even people who may already have HPV should acquire the vaccine because it can still prevent cervical cancer.
“I would say it’s very important,” Burnette said. “It’s becoming a very life-threatening virus.”
Sweeney said the vaccine is available at the Health Center through the Immunization Department.
