The Human Papillomaviruses (HPV) vaccine called Gardasil can protect from the infection of four types of the HPV virus. Two of these types cause up to 70 percent of all cases of cervical cancer.

Recommendations were released by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) regarding the use of Gardasil. The FDA approved Gardasil in June 2006.

The role of ACIP is to advise the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about vaccine usage and vaccine-preventable diseases.

The recommendations published by the ACIP:

• Recommended age for routine vaccination of girls is 11-12 years.
• The vaccine can be given to girls as young as 9 years.
• Catch-up vaccination is recommended for girls and women between the ages of 13 and 26 years who were not vaccinated previously or who did not complete the full vaccine series (the vaccine is administered in three separate doses).
• Routine cervical cancer screening remains important following vaccination.

The ACIP's recommendations can influence policy and practice, but are not directly linked with school and daycare entry laws. These laws are made by individual states.

Albuquerque, New Mexico is on the verge of becoming the latest state to require sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against the HPV virus. Currently only Texas requires the vaccine, other states are in the process of considering having the vaccine become mandatory.

Federal regulators have approved the vaccine, made by Merck & Co, but the issue of making it a requirement for girls has been surrounded by controversy. The federal government approved Gardasil, a three-dose vaccine that protects against the human papilloma virus, or HPV, in June 2006 for females ages nine to twenty six. The vaccine protects against the HPV strains that cause cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancers.

Some states want the drug to be free to all girls who want it and other states are considering making the cervical vaccine mandatory for girls entering six grade unless their parents sign a form refusing it.

More of The Cancer Blog's coverage of this issue can be found here:

Merck stops cervical cancer vaccine campaign

Texas first to mandate cervical cancer vaccine

Cervical cancer vaccine discount pursued for poor nations

New Hampshire first to immunize young girls

Girls should see gynecologist in early teens

Thirteen year old girl is the first in Britain to have the new cervical cancer vaccine

Vaccine for cervical cancer to be administered to sixth graders

Concerns raised about new cervical cancer vaccine

Cervical cancer vaccine available for college students

Cancer vaccines virginity and sex: a battle first for acceptance

Women In Government applaud FDA approval of cervical cancer vaccine

First cervical cancer vaccine approved

There are sometimes silver linings to the darkest of cancer clouds. I know -- because I have the dark cloud of HER2 positive breast cancer hanging over my head. HER2 positive means the tumor removed from my breast was aggressive. It aggressively over-expressed a protein that accelerates tumor growth. And it led to a poor prognosis -- that might be considered a good one too.

You see, research on the whole HER2 issue is turning up some pretty powerful potions. Like Herceptin -- the drug that miraculously cuts recurrence upwards of 50 percent for positive women like me. I was a lucky recipient of this drug. And the pharmacist who mixed the drug for all 17 of my infusions tells me it's really a good thing I have this HER2 problem -- because the drugs created to attack the problem may just cure me of my disease.

So in an odd turnabout -- from bad luck to good fortune -- I am not so sad my tumor was aggressive. It means there are bonus treatments for me. And if my cancer comes back and Herceptin no longer works, there is another drug called Tykerb. And now the Army is leading its own breast cancer vaccination study. The focus -- HER2.

Early study results from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. suggest a 50 percent reduction in disease recurrence for HER2 positive women who receive a vaccination of AE37.

AE37 targets HER2 and boosts the body's immune system so it can battle the protein before it stimulates growth. It's similar to Herceptin, but the activity of AE37 stimulates a patient's own immune system to recognize the cancer target rather than interacting with the target directly.

Should the Food and Drug Administration decide to support this study, it will proceed to Phase 3 testing, which includes a much larger pool of participants.

Cervical cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide. The World Health Organization has estimated that each year over 500,000 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer and over 300,000 women will die of the disease. Cervical cancer is caused by a chronic infection with high-risk subtypes of the human papillomavirus (HPV). Two of these high-risk subtypes cause more than sixty percent of cervical cancers globally.

The impact of the widespread adoption of the HPV vaccination in Mexico showed that it could potentially drop the cases of cervical cancer by 59 percent. They showed that the biggest impact would be to girls given the vaccination at the age of ten.

Dr. Adriana Bermudez, who is a professor of gynecologic oncology and vice president elect of the International Gynecologic Cancer Society, says "This study shows the potential impact of the new prophylactic HPV vaccines in the Americas. We will need a major public-private partnership to make these vaccines available to the girls and women of the Americas, as well as a major educational campaign to alert parents to the importance of protecting their daughters from cervical cancer."

The International Gynecologic Cancer Society is a non-profit professional society with 1200 members from 80 countries dedicated to reducing the global burden of women's cancers through education and research.

The beauty of blogs and small newspapers. If you want to read interesting reporting, take the road less traveled where writers are allowed to follow the compass to places large corporate media does not seem to venture.

In Daily News Central's FDA's Ok of Cervical Cancer Vaccine May Spawn Multibillion Dollar Market is an excellent piece explaining all the major participants and motives behind the recently approved cervical cancer vaccine. While no one expects that altruism is ever at play when it comes to business, understanding the reasoning behind the actions at least gives all the rest of us a chance to understand the brouhaha this particular cancer vaccine has, and will continue, to create.

While GlaxoSmithKline has a cervical cancer vaccine they hope will be approved and available next year, Merck is first out of the gate with the FDA approval of Gardasil. The company needs this to be a success after taking a financial hit a few years ago over its drug Vioxx, a pain pill that was widely-prescribed and later withdrawn from the market over safety concerns.

In the last year, Merck has quietly spent an estimated $1 million dollars launching the Tell Someone campaign and was connected to the Make the Connection campaign, both designed to raise a general public awareness and hopefully to ease the concerns of the evangelical Christian opposition they anticipated over a cancer vaccine so closely linked to sexual activity and teenage girls. The cancer vaccine works for girls who are virgins, who are not yet sexually active. You can see the potential for religious opposition considering their only stand on prevention in general when it comes to sex is to instruct teens not to have sex.

On June 29, immunization experts at the CDC will hold a meeting to decide if the new cervical cancer vaccine should be added to a list of mandatory vaccines administered to the youth in this country. Congress will have a vote on adding the cancer vaccine to immunization programs, and the health officials in each state will decide if the new vaccine will be required. The battle over a sexually-transmitted cancer and cancer prevention for virgins has just begun.