Pap smears can and do alert you to pre-cancerous cells. In the case of pap smears, detection can alert you and surgery can prevent cancer from developing. In most cases, surgery is a cone biopsy performed as a day surgery. It can actually be done in a doctors office without hospitalization. This surgery does not cause infertility.

It seems to me that people are rushing into this without considering the long term effects and the precedent that might be set. Why the rush? You'd think this was a pandemic or something. In fact, the cases of cervical cancer are declining, thanks to the pap smear.

Give me a break! You'd keep going along, hoping that women get pap smears, and if they show signs, let them be subject to surgery that will reduce the strength of the cervix and can compromise healthy pregnancies because of what? Resistance to three shots that can prevent several (by no means all, but the four most dangerous) forms of viral infection that lead to cancer? Accurate and timely detection (sometimes a challenge, depending on the lab) are critical but not always performed. And surgery has far more risks than immunization shots. Surgery that misses getting everything can add insult and complications to the injury. And the women who didn't get the pap smears and who end up with cancer, well, too bad. Those pesky shots were too big a nuisance to have mandated, is that going to be your story? Critical thinking is necessary to puzzle this out, and the excuses for not putting this into effect are a sorry bunch of old rumors that have long since been debunked.

Only one company makes the vaccine. So it's not like there was no competition for any reason other than only one company offers it. And Wesley, I'm disappointed--you need to think outside that XY box. Just because you don't need it at this particular time, you would dismiss making it uniformly available (meaning the schools are going to be the gatekeepers for this cancer prevention initiative because what schools want, schools get regarding immunizations for school). There are a lot of "what ifs" that can be tacked onto this to provide good personal incentive to view the vaccine differently. Basically, think of any young woman in your life now and in the future.

SRS