Expert backs jab as more effective than screening

CERVICAL cancer vaccination is more effective than screening for the disease, according to the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who discovered the agent that causes the disease.

Professor Harald zur Hausen directly contradicted Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s assertion in the Dáil on Wednesday that the Government’s screening programme was more important and more effective than vaccination.

Professor Harald zur Hausen said vaccination was “clearly superior” to screening as it avoided the need for therapeutic intervention.

“As far as the vaccination is concerned, it really prevents those lesions which are discovered by screening and [which] after the screening procedure require removal. The removal, which in some instances consists of the colonisation of the cervix, leads to complications in some instances during pregnancy,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme yesterday.

“For all those reasons, vaccinations and screenings are two different pairs of shoes. The vaccination is clearly superior in preventing all those lesions and avoiding the therapeutic types of interferences,” he said.

The German scientist, who this year won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, first discovered the human papillomavirus as the agent which causes cervical cancer in 1983. He said it was important to recognise that the vaccine was preventative.

“The benefit is quite clearly that the vaccine protects at this moment against about 70% or possibly even close to 80% of the recurred lesions of cervical cancer. It is likely that due to this it will protect against the subsequent development of cervical cancer itself so one should keep in mind that it is a preventative vaccine and this prevention is active against 70% of the types that may lead to cervical cancer,” he said.

Prof zur Hausen said the vaccine would save the lives of many women and pointed out that his own granddaughter had been vaccinated.

“If you look into the number of people who develop cervical cancer, you still can calculate that a certain percentage of these women will die subsequently of cervical cancer.

“If you can prevent it is of course superior to waiting and seeing and being forced subsequently to interfere therapeutically,” said Prof zur Hausen.

The decision to scrap the cervical cancer vaccination for 12-year-old girls has come in for widespread criticism in recent days.

On Wednesday, the Government defeated a Fine Gael motion calling for the decision to be reversed.

However, for the third time in three weeks, Taoiseach Brian Cowen lost the support of a Government TD, this time Fianna Fáil’s Jim McDaid, who abstained, saying the “withdrawal of a lifesaving vaccine is not [a decision] I can support”.

HPV: Vaccine may also protect men

A vaccine designed to protect women and girls from cervical cancer may also protect men, a US pharmaceutical company has claimed.

* The Gardasil vaccine, made by Merck and Co, was found to be 90% effective in preventing lesions, mostly sexually transmitted warts, caused by a human papillomavirus (HPV) in men.

* It was 45% effective in preventing infection with the four strains of HPV that it targets.

* It was more than 90% effective in reducing external genital lesions in males related to these four types of HPV.

* 4,065 men between 16 and 25 were tested with the vaccine or a placebo and checked every six months.

* HPV is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections.

* It is the main cause of cervical cancer, which kills on average 85 women in Ireland every year and 300,000 globally.

* HPV can also cause other types of cancer, including anal and penis cancer as well as mouth and neck cancer.