Why boys as well as girls should get the cervical cancer jab

Boys should be vaccinated against the sexually-transmitted disease which causes cervical cancer, a leading specialist said yesterday.

Ministers have already announced that girls aged 12 will be given the jab against it in the hope of saving around 700 lives a year.

Now Dr Anne Szarewski of Cancer Research UK says 12 and 13-year-old boys should also receive the jab on the Health Service.

Apart from passing on the disease in future years, she says maximising the number of recipients would increase immunity across the population. The vaccination has to be given to pre-teens because it is more effective before puberty.

Dr Szarewski told GP magazine that just vaccinating girls sends out 'a bad public health message.

'Not vaccinating boys will increase the risk that homosexual men will become infected.'

HPV is responsible for most cases of cervical cancer, which kills more than 1,000 middleaged women in Britain a year.

So far ministers have committed themselves only to a vaccination programme for 12 and 13-year-old girls, subject to an independent review of its cost effectiveness.

But Dr Szarewski, from the Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry, told the magazine there should also be a catch-up programme targeting girls of 15 and 16.

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'The mean age for sexual intercourse among girls is 17, so there is a chance to protect teenaged girls as well,' she said.

'It would be a great shame if the vaccination programme does not include this.'

Last night an adviser to the government on HPV said there was not enough evidence to justify the inclusion of boys in the current vaccination programme. Professor Margaret Stanley, a virologist at Cambridge University, said the programme should concentrate on 'vaccinate as many girls as possible'.

Pamela Morton, director of the cervical cancer charity Jo's Trust, said: 'I can see the reasoning behind this but the priority really has to be young women.

'We appreciate the merit that the vaccine has in taking on genital warts and herd immunity is clearly better.

'But the priority must be women who could die, which is why we are concerned there is no catch-up programme for girls over the age of 12.' Stephen Green, of Christian Voice, warned that such a vaccination programme could lead to more sexual activity among young people.

He said: 'Giving the vaccine to boys as well as girls would simply encourage promiscuity among boys.

'What these vaccines do is bring about a false sense of security.

'Boys are simply going to think, ''I'm all right now'' and will take more risks. 'Surely a better way would be for schools to put more effort into promoting a lifestyle of chastity.'

Jackie Fletcher of the antivaccination campaign group JABS said: 'It would make far more sense to start offering the cervical cancer smear test to women of a lower age than introducing a new vaccine to the cocktail they already receive.

'We have concerns about the inadequacy of the safety trials that have been conducted on the HPV vaccine.

'They have been tested on adult women meaning we do not know whether they are safe for boys and young girls.'

Ministers are to make a final decision on who should be covered by the vaccination scheme later this month. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the Government, said it would only be cost effective to give it to 12 and 13-year-old girls.

Otherwise they said the cost of the vaccination programme would vastly outweigh the cost to the NHS of treating cervical cancer victims.

More than half of family doctors in a recent poll said they did not feel knowledgable enough about the HPV vaccine to advise parents on the subject.