As a parent of a school-age daughter, I haven’t decided what to think about the new cervical cancer vaccine. That’s why I was interested to learn the shot may soon be given to boys primarily to benefit girls.

Merck’s Gardasil vaccine is approved for use in girls and women, ages 9 to 26, to protect them against the human papillomavirus, or H.P.V., which causes cervical cancer. Girls can be vaccinated when they are as young as 9, although it’s recommended for 11- and 12-year-olds, before they are sexually active.

But as my colleague Jan Hoffman reported yesterday in the Sunday Style section of The Times, the vaccine could be approved by 2009 for boys as well. Although Gardasil also protects against genital warts, which are not life-threatening, the primary reason to extend approval to boys would be to prevent them from transmitting the virus to girls, thereby slowing the rates of cervical cancer. The concept is called “herd immunity.”

And the story raises the difficult question: Will parents of sons consent to a three-shot regimen that has been marketed as benefiting girls?

The story talks to parents who have mixed feelings about the idea, questioning whether they would subject their boys to a vaccine that ultimately wouldn’t benefit their son’s health. What would you do? Would you give your son a shot to lower a woman’s risk for contracting cervical cancer? Hypothetically, would you give your daughter a shot that could lower a man’s risk for prostate cancer?

source: NY Times