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The human papillomavirus vaccine strongly and consistently protects against genital warts - one of the more common sexually transmitted infections - as well as the lesions causing cervical cancer, according to an international study published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal...

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This is a very disappointing report of an important clinical study that appeared in one of Canada's leading national papers. Unfortunately, it reads as if it came from the press office of the vaccine manufacturer and it lacks important context and details which could influence how people think about the vaccine.

While the article says that "the human papillomavirus vaccine strongly and consistently protects against genital warts - one of the more common sexually transmitted infections - as well as the lesions causing cervical cancer", the article fails to mention the fact that most women are naturally exposed to this virus and that it most often clears from their system without incident. An imbalance in the story can be seen in the fact that the article only provides the relative percentages of vaccine benefits and fails to mention any harms associated with the treatment. This is disappointing given that there have been many post-market reports of serious adverse reactions associated with the HPV vaccine (even some deaths).

In addition to a misleading title (which implies that there are cases where HPV has been proven effective), we readers don't know if the researchers or spokespeople quoted in the article were paid consultants or otherwise had conflicts of interest related to the vaccine manufacturers.

It's interesting to note that while provincial authorities in Canada are recommending the vaccination for girls as young as 13, the research discussed in the report involved about 17,500 women in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific between the ages of 16 and 26. In addition to finding out more about the lifetime effects of this vaccine, parents should be interested in how well the vaccine works for the population of kids who are currently being told to get it.

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