MaPoSquid wrote
I’ve heard that Merck’s HPV vaccine primarily addresses HPV-6 and HPV-11 strains, which are not oncogenic. These virus strains cause genital warts.
Merck was supposed to also target HPV-16, which is the primary cancer-causing strain (nearly 60% of all cases of Cervical Cancer are derived from HPV 16) but this is apparently no longer the case. If I find a reference for it on the web, I’ll post it here.
Looks like I was mistaken. Gardasil seems to have been embraced as sufficient protection against oncological HPV-16
Better late than never?
Gardasil is a vaccine, licensed for use in June 2006, by the FDA. It targets four strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) – HPV-6, 11, 16, and 18. HPV-16 and HPV-18 account for about 70% of all cervical cancers.
And over here…
SOURCE: Aronowitz, Robert. “5 Gardasil: A vaccine against cancer and a drug to reduce risk”. Risky Medicine , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015, pp. 95-110. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226049854-004
And here (emphasis mine)…
Gardasil and Cervarix are noninfectious, recombinant vaccines; they stimulate an immune response but cannot cause HPV because they are made with proteins that contain only part of the virus (Wheeler 2007). Both target HPV-16 and HPV-18, which together account for about 70 per cent of cervical cancers.
SOURCE: Casper, M.J. and Carpenter, L.M. (2008), Sex, drugs, and politics: the HPV vaccine for cervical cancer. Sociology of Health & Illness, 30: 886-899. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2008.01100.x
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2008.01100.x
Gardasil has since been replaced by Gardasil-9 - a 9-valent vaccine, i.e., it now protects against 9 types of HPV instead of the original’s protection against 4 types
Here is where you might find it today in NTUH
And in a private clinic in Taipei - I expect it to be widely available
https://www.infinityclinic.com.tw/en/service_info.php?cid=10&id=2
And (since 2018) it is now required for girls entering junior high school in Taiwan
Told you I saw the groups of high school girls led by who seemed their teacher going to get their shot at my gyno.
I am glad to have less chance of warts and cervical cancer too. But mostly I am happy to see kids embracing science and not having this chance tarnished by folk telling them the shot is a sin as it will make them promiscuous.
Merck sells materials to TSMC too. They have a factory in Tainan.