Public Forum
Default group for all members. Biological family sometimes get you down? Come join your logical family!
Organizers:
- Organized by
-
-
Damn Lies and Statistics?
-
Damn Lies and Statistics?
The HPV Vaccine “Zero Cancer Cases” Headline
In January 2024, headlines spread around the world claiming a major breakthrough:
“No cervical cancer cases in HPV-vaccinated women.”
The story came from a Scottish study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) and was widely reported by BBC News and other media outlets. The claim was that girls who received the HPV vaccine at ages 12–13 had developed zero cases of cervical cancer.
But two Australian researchers recently re-examined the underlying data and raised some important questions.
One key issue:
Most women in the “zero cases” group were still under 25 when the study ended.
That matters because cervical cancer is rarely diagnosed before age 25, with the average age of diagnosis around 50. The disease typically develops decades after infection with Human papillomavirus.
In other words, the cohort may simply have been too young to develop cancer yet, regardless of vaccination status.
Another concern raised was screening differences. The vaccinated group was much more likely to attend cervical screening than the unvaccinated group. Since screening detects and removes precancerous changes early, women who are screened regularly naturally show fewer abnormalities and fewer cancers later on.
Critics argue that this advantage may have been attributed to the vaccine instead of the screening behavior.
The Australian professors warned that headlines like these could unintentionally create false confidence and discourage young women from attending cervical screening — which remains one of the most effective tools for preventing cervical cancer deaths.
When oh when, will we see aa return to true investgative journalism, when old media reduces complex studies to a single missleading headline, the public only hears “zero cancer cases,” it can shape perceptions very quickly.
-
2 Replies
-
A link to observational study from Scotland https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38247547/
-
Kind of highlights the importance of a quality peer review. Had they tried to submit it for inclusion in the IMA Journal, I’m willing to bet it would have been rejected for publication.
Log in to reply.