Medicine: Not A Cure For Cancer, But Close
Cervical cancer has never triggered the kind of fears American women reserve for breast cancer--largely because annual Pap smears can detect most precancerous cells in the cervix. But human papillomavirus (HPV)--a sexually transmitted disease that causes genital warts in both sexes and also causes most cases of cervical cancer if left untreated--is still a plague in this country. Doctors estimate that half (yes, half) of Americans have been exposed. And in the developing world, cervical cancer caused by HPV terrorizes women who don't have the benefit of regular testing, killing more than 200,000 every year. So the development of a vaccine against HPV--the culmination of two decades of research, announced last week in The New England Journal of Medicine--is a major advance.
For the vaccine to fulfill its promise, the next five years may be just as crucial as the last 20. Merck plans to bring it to market by 2007. The pharmaceutical giant will need to conduct more tests to ensure ironclad safety. It will also have to formulate a version of the vaccine that can ward off multiple strains of HPV. (The version revealed last week protects against only one type.) It will have to persuade men as well as women to get immunized. And it will have to do it all without pushing the price of the vaccine past the limits of developing countries, where the need is greatest since screening isn't as common. "I don't want to throw a wet blanket on the enthusiasm," says gynecologic oncologist Charles Levenback, "but women still need to get Pap smears." For those who can't, though, the vaccine could be a lifesaver.
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Mary Carmichael was named General Editor in January 2007 after six years with Newsweek. She writes primarily for the Health, Science, and Society sections of the magazine. Previously, she was an assistant editor since 2003, contributing to the Science and Technology, Society and Tip Sheet sections of the magazine. She came to Newsweek in June 2001 as an intern for the Periscope section.
In her time at Newsweek, Carmichael has written three cover stories and contributed to many more. She also reported on-site from Ground Zero on September 11. She studied statistics with the Weidenbaum Center in 2006 and was a Journalism Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2003. She is also the co-author of the books "In the Beginning" and "Med School in a Box," and writes regularly for the Boston Globe Sunday magazine and other publications.
Carmichael has also worked as the producer of The Infinite Mind on National Public Radio, as an associate web producer of Frontline, as editor-in-chief for special projects for mental_floss magazine, and as a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times and the News & Observer of Raleigh. She graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in biological anthropology and public policy and completed a year of graduate work in psychology and anthropology at Columbia University.
She lives in Boston.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Comments