"Though most experts have little doubt that the vaccine prevents HPV infections anywhere in the body and therefore the resulting cancers, technically, this has not been proven."
Here's an old analysis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12533280, which puts its effectiveness on-par with MMR vaccines and cost-effectiveness significantly better than the median $/QALY for existing interventions (~$42k, I think).
It's on the WHO list of recommended vaccines, and there are a ton of country-specific ones too; I linked to some elsewhere in the thread. Wikipedia has a giant list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine#Vaccine_implementa...
Today I learned do not talk about money when it comes to healthcare initiatives on ycombinator.
In reality, the vaccine has beneficial effects for the men themselves, as the article points out. It also contributes to "herd immunity", which benefits vaccinated men and women alike. Increased demand for the vaccine could also drive down the unit cost (most drug-related costs are fixed, rather than marginal). These three factors all suggest it's even more cost-effective than my naive analysis above.
Also, definitely talk about stuff like this. It's important and interesting; I'm actually surprised there's less interest in the pharmoeconomic modelling itself, as it's a very HN-friendly topic. That said, it is a little frustrating when people assume everyone involved in something biological is an innumerate dummy. A lot of this stuff has been analyzed, often by fairly clever people.
To give the whole quote in context:
"Merck, its maker, wouldn’t be likely to mention the potential benefit in advertisements. Though most experts have little doubt that the vaccine prevents HPV infections anywhere in the body and therefore the resulting cancers, technically, this has not been proven."
It's not exactly calling Merck out, but the author is clearly not giving them a pat on the back over it either.
A typical jab costs like £50 and lasts a decade
By contrast, we don't routinely vaccinate against chickenpox.
The existing efficacy demo for HPV vaccination against cervical cancer relies on the fact that Pap smears are a thing to get answers in just a few years not decades. The smear test gets us a bunch of cells that a pathologist can look at under a microscope and inspect to see if they're normal or maybe "pre-cancerous" meaning they aren't normal but they are not yet cancer. And we know (from having tried it) that if we just ignore it some of that not-yet-cancer turns into cancer and kills people. So if we see that in a smear today you'll get called back and they'll treat it, even though you haven't got cancer.
This means they could give girls an HPV vaccine and then not only show that those girls didn't get the strains of HPV vaccinated against as often as unvaccinated peers, but further show that they don't get as much not-yet-cancer. And _by implication_ that means it protects against cancer.
There is no smear test for these less common cancers in men. If there are pre-cancerous cells we don't see them. We only find out about the cancer, years and often decades later.
I think the "anywhere on the body... technically, this has not been proven." is also an infelicitous bit of wording. The links to anogenital cancers have been studied pretty thoroughly. There's less data on the head/neck/throat ones and virtually none at all on the vaccines' possible effect on warts elsewhere on the body. It's presumably all the same mechanism whereby HPV infection stresses cells and eventually causes cancer, but it's much further from "proven".
Of course they are. So much vaccine misinformation in the world.