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Image: Rex Features

Last year — three long years after it was approved for use in girls — the FDA approved the use of the HPV vaccine for boys.   Now the vaccine, which is manufactured by both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, is recommended for young men and women ages 9 to 26 to protect against several strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), some linked to genital warts and a number of cancers.  HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection out there with 20 million Americans infected, and an additional six million new cases each year.

When the HPV vaccine was approved for young girls, it was a foray into a sexual revolution of sorts for young women.  It opened the door to an uneasy thought for many parents: at some point in your daughter’s life, and probably a lot sooner than you’d like to think, she will have a sexual experience that expose her to HPV.  It was a forced reckoning of the sexual choice, power, and agency of young women.  Not promiscuity, but agency.  Better that a young woman is educated and equipped.

Much like with objections to sex ed in schools or access to free condoms, there were sensationalist assertions that somehow protecting against an STI gives one license to just go on out and get it.  Just like how making abortions safe and legal compels people to get abortions all the time, right?? I digress…

But what about boys? Are they getting vaccinated now that they can, and are even being urged to?  While men are very often carriers of HPV, they less often exhibit symptoms than women do.  Also, cervical cancer is far more prevalent and better-correlated to HPV than other cancers, such as penile, rectal, or throat, that might affect men.

Not surprisingly, uptake in boys of the vaccine has been much slower.  I think there is a certain perception of immunity for boys, whereas our girls need to be “protected” as much as possible because…well, you never know with the frenetic and uncontrollable sexuality of women.  HPV is really not seen as a disease among men, nor, I think, is there the same culture of ‘sexual health prevention’ that there is among young women.  In sum, the burden of sexual responsibility and health still disproportionately lies on the shoulders of girls and women. Read the rest of this entry →

Henrietta Lacks, photo: Lacks family

I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  The book has been highly praised and rightly so.  Rebecca Skloot is a poised and passionate storyteller who doesn’t absent herself from that which she weaves, nor does she impose upon it.  The story is so compelling that she is at once invoked and dwarfed by it.

The book is about a woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, and the cells taken, without consent, from her metastasized tumor, which became probably the most famous cells in the world.  They live on and multiply almost effortlessly, the first cell line to do so, thus enabling a myriad of scientific research.

While the world has heard about, and benefited exponentially from the cells, dubbed HeLa, the story of this woman has remained untold.  She is Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American mother of four from Baltimore. Read the rest of this entry →

Tomorrow, Marvel Entertainment (the same company that made X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the Hulk household names) will release the first issue of a new miniseries, called “Marvel Divas.” The comics will focus on four of the Marvel universe’s female characters: Black Cat, Captain Marvel, Firestar, and Hellcat. There’s not much we know about the content of “Marvel Divas” at this stage, but we do know two things.

First, the miniseries is being marketed as Marvel Comics meets Sex and the City. As writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa explains:

The idea behind the series was to have some sudsy fun and lift the curtain a bit and take a peep at some of our most fabulous super heroines. In the series, they’re an unlikely foursome of friends…with TWO things in common: They’re all leading double-lives and they’re all having romantic trouble. The pitch started as “Sex and the City” in the Marvel Universe, and there’s definitely that “naughty” element to it, but I also think the series is doing to a deeper place, asking question about what it means…truly means…to be a woman in an industry dominated by testosterone and guns.

Second, tomorrow’s issue will reveal that Firestar (pictured standing up, in the middle) has breast cancer.

Read the rest of this entry →