Cervical Cancer: October 2006 Archives

Reuters reports that Merck's Gardasil is on sale now.

Uptake of .. vaccines will depend crucially on government recommendations for their use and funding.

The manufacturers received a boost earlier this month when the influential Lancet medical journal called for routine vaccination of all adolescent girls in European Union countries.

This recommendation was also released earlier this month - EU should make cervical cancer vaccine mandatory for young girls.

Noticing that this vaccine "was launched in Britain and Ireland on Tuesday in the latest phase of an unusually rapid rollout for the new product", I can only hope that this vaccine won't get widely accepted and made obligatory without thourough and careful testing.

The way pharmaceutical corporations are securing their profits is amazing. Creating a vaccine, rapidly rolling it out, having respectful journals to call on massive and obligatory vaccination.
Well done. I just hope that EU goverments won't fall for this easily.

Read the article below

A decade after her diagnosis, Prime Minister John Howard's wife Janette has revealed publicly for the first time her battle against cervical cancer. Until now, the intensely private Mrs Howard had not disclosed which type of cancer she had suffered. Soon after her husband became prime minister in 1996, he called off his first overseas trip due to her ill health.

LONDON (AFX) - Well-respected medical journal The Lancet has called on the European Union to implement mandatory vaccination of young girls with a new jab that can protect against cervical cancer.

Gardasil, a vaccine developed by Merck & Co and Sanofi Pasteur MSD, was granted marketing approval by European medicine regulators last week.

Most cervical cancers are caused by a virus called the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is wide spread throughout the population and transmitted sexually.