Putting A Price On A Woman’s Life

One shot can protect people from genital warts and cervical cancer for life.

It is recommended for girls and women to protect them against the virus linked to genital warts and cervical cancer, often caught from men.

But giving the shot to everyone to save women’s lives is not cost effective.

Men and women are both carriers of the virus that leads to cervical cancer and genital warts. And while the uncomfortable and ugly warts affect both sexes, the cancer only affects people with a cervix — namely women.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is determining whether they should endorse giving the shot to boys “to protect them from genital warts and prevent them from spreading the virus to their sexual partners.” At the moment the shot is recommended for all girls and young women.

The shot made $1.4 billion in 2008, but the sales are slowing. The company is recommending the shot to boys, but the question now is whether this money-making scheme is actually in the public good.

Based on an assumption that 75 percent of the female population is vaccinated, the Harvard  School of Public Health said the cost involved in inoculating boys outweighs the benefits.

“Assuming all girls get the shot, adding boys to a national vaccination program may not be worth the expense,” said Jane Kim of the Harvard School of Public Health.

“If coverage in girls ends up being low, then vaccinating boys became much more attractive.”

My math is bad, but this is ridiculous.

Is it not worth it to protect all men from genital warts? The shot would also protect the 25 per cent of women who aren’t inoculated (for whatever reason) from getting the virus from a partner.

The very clever people at Harvard punched the numbers and included “quality-adjusted life years, a figure that takes into account the impact of disease on quality of life,” but how does one put a cost on a human life?