Even though medical professionals encourage parents to get their children vaccinated for the human papillomavirus (HPV), a preventative measure that can help safeguard against some types of cancer, the country’s rates of HPV vaccination are still much too low. And parents are increasingly citing safety concerns as their justification for failing to get their children their HPV shots — despite the fact that there’s no evidence that the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, is actually unsafe.

According to a new study, 16 percent of the parents who didn’t choose to vaccinate their daughters in 2010 cited fears about the vaccine’s side effects and safety. That’s up from just 5 percent in 2008. And the number of parents who reported they had no plans to vaccinate their daughters in the future also rose — from 40 percent in 2008 to 44 percent in 2010 — even though pediatrician groups have made a concerted effort in recent years to educate parents about the importance of the HPV vaccine.

Gregory Zimet, a professor of pediatrics and clinical psychology at Indiana University School of Medicine, told USA Today that more work needs to be done to make sure that parents are better educated about the real nature of the HPV vaccine. “It’s particularly concerning that parental worries about safety have increased, given that evidence for the safety of HPV vaccination has increased over the same time period,” Zimet said. “In fact, the evidence is overwhelmingly persuasive that HPV vaccines are quite safe.”

Most tellingly, parents didn’t exhibit the same increasing concerns over other adolescent vaccines like tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis — suggesting that there’s something different about HPV vaccinations. Traditionally, the HPV vaccine has been set apart because HPV is a sexually transmitted infection, and conservative fearmongering about “sexual promiscuity” has led some Americans to believe that vaccinating their daughters will somehow give young girls license to become sexually active. Obviously, that’s not the case at all. But the myths about Gardasil have become so pervasive that there have even been scientific studies debunking the imaginary link between the HPV vaccine and increased promiscuity.

For the past several years, federal officials have been recommending that girls receive the vaccination beginning at age 11 as an important preventative health measure, and that guideline was recently expanded to include young boys as well. According to the CDC, however, Americans aren’t following through. Just 30 percent of women between the ages of 19 and 26 had received one or more doses of the three-round HPV vaccine — even though federal guidelines recommend that every women complete her Gardasil doses by the time she reaches 26 years old. The low rates of vaccination are especially troubling considering the fact that cancers related to HPV are on the rise.

An Oklahoma state Senate committee rejected a measure that “would have repealed a 1987 law that prevents cities and towns from enacting tobacco use restrictions stricter than that of the state” by a 2-6 vote on Monday — drawing sharp rebukes from public health advocates who see the legislation’s failure as a political concession to Big Tobacco, and even drawing the ire of the state’s GOP Gov. Mary Fallin, who has called on lawmakers to pass legislation aimed at curbing Oklahoma’s smoking-related public health care costs.

“This is a victory for tobacco lobbyists and the tobacco industry,” said Alex Weintz, Fallin’s communications director. “It’s a defeat for the state of Oklahoma and anyone who cares about improving our health.”

As OKNews reports, the debate over SB 36 revealed a clear correlation between the state senators’ votes and the amount of money they received from the tobacco lobby:

The debate on the measure turned into a showdown between Sen. Frank Simpson, R-Ardmore, the only senator to sign a pledge to refuse all contributions, meals and gifts from the tobacco industry, and Sen. Rob Johnson, who is listed as the No. 1 recipient on a website that tracks legislators receiving money from tobacco lobbyists.

Johnson, R-Yukon, received about $11,295 in campaign contributions and gifts from those who were identified as tobacco lobbyists since 2006, according to the website tobaccomoney.com, which was started last year by Doug Matheny, the former director of tobacco prevention at the state Health Department. [...]

“From the tobacco companies themselves, I don’t think I’ve received that much comparatively to other interests,” he said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with it. I’ve taken max contributions from somebody and completely have been opposed to an idea they’ve had.”

Johnson and his fellow reform opponents implied that SB 36 would be a burden on businesses, since it would discourage Oklahoma residents from patronizing establishments that don’t allow smoking. But that logic completely ignores the very real — and very significant — costs of the state’s smoking epidemic. National smoking-related medical costs amount to $200 billion in preventable spending every year, and studies have confirmed that states making small investments in smoking cessation policies see massive economic returns. In Oklahoma specifically, where about 5,800 people die each year from smoking, every household pays an estimated $556 annually in state and federal taxes to cover smoking-caused medical costs.

Ultimately, the measure’s defeat is a reminder of the outsized influence that Big Tobacco continues to enjoy. Fallin has vowed to continue her fight to encourage anti-smoking efforts in Oklahoma, and will potentially call for a popular referendum on SB 36 — but if she does, the people of Oklahoma can expect a titanic statewide lobbying campaign by the tobacco industry.

The next time you feel the lure of the “last call” at the bar, you might want to keep this in mind: alcohol consumption causes over 20,000 cancer-related deaths in America ever year, making it a significant preventable risk factor for the disease.

As CBS News reports, the World Health Organization already classifies alcohol as the world’s third largest risk factor for disease burden. But its link with cancer is “not widely appreciated by the public and remains underemphasized even by physicians,” the study’s author, Dr. Timothy Naimi of the Boston University School of Medicine, explained in a press release.

The report’s authors hope to combat that ignorance with their findings, which conclude that alcohol causes as many as 3.7 percent of all American cancer-related deaths annually — and drinking alcohol increases risk factors for “cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast:”

Researchers determined that alcohol-related cancer death took away an average of 18 potential years from a person’s life. Average consumption for the group was 1.5 drinks a day or less, and those drinkers made up 30 percent of the reported deaths. Larger amounts of alcohol led to higher risks of dying from cancer. Forty-eight to 60 percent of the deaths were attributed to people who drank three or more drinks a day.

“When it comes to alcohol consumption and cancers, clearly excessive drinking is the riskiest type of drinking,” Naimi said to CBS station WBZ in Boston. “But when it comes to cancer, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.”

In addition to figuring out how many cancer deaths were related to alcohol, researchers also determined that breast cancer was the most common type of drinking-related deaths in women. This form of cancer alone made up 15 percent of the alcohol-related deaths, amounting to 6,000 women annually.

For men, mouth, throat and esophageal cancers were the most common alcohol-associated deaths, making up about 6,000 deaths annually.

All told, the combined costs of lost productivity from criminal justice proceedings, missed work, and medical care related to drinking alcohol adds up to $223 billion in health expenditures every year. That number might actually be even bigger, considering that it likely does not incorporate the full breadth of cancer-related costs caused by alcohol.

The findings also underscore the disproportionate toll that alcohol advertising targeting America’s youth may have on the black population. In general, alcohol advertising targets young, black Americans, a group that also tends to be more susceptible to both getting cancer and dying from cancer than other racial demographics.

African-Americans living in highly segregated counties are at significantly elevated risk of dying from lung cancer, according to the results from a new study.

African-Americans already suffer from the highest incidence of lung cancer in the United States. But as the New York Times reports, a study published in JAMA Surgery finds that black Americans in highly segregated areas are 20 percent more likely to die from the disease compared to those who live in the least segregated regions:

The study drew on federal mortality data from that period, and segregation data from about a third of United States counties that had African-American populations large enough to measure. About 28 percent of Americans live in counties with low segregation, 40 percent in counties with moderate segregation and 32 percent in counties with high segregation.

The gap in outcomes persisted even after accounting for differences in smoking rates and socio-economic status, Dr. Hayanga said.

Dr. David Chang, director of outcomes research at the University of California San Diego Department of Surgery, who wrote an accompanying editorial, said he hoped that the study would focus attention on the environmental factors involved in the stark disparities in health outcomes in the United States because they lend themselves to change through policy. Medical researchers tend to focus on factors that are harder to change, like the genetics and the behaviors of individuals.

This trend held true even when controlling for smoking rates and socioeconomic status, implying that other regional factors played into the discrepancy. While the JAMA report doesn’t delve into the causes behind the mortality rate disparity, other studies on American segregation have found that, in highly segregated locales, a larger minority population corresponded with significantly less access to surgical and emergency medical care. That data alone is not conclusive, but it does suggest that stratified access to health care remains an enormous hindrance to public health — particularly for people of color.

January marks Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, and one South Carolina lawmaker is taking the opportunity to revive his cervical cancer prevention efforts after Republican Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) shot him down last year. State Rep. Bakari Sellers (D-SC) is reintroducing a bill to encourage HPV vaccination among middle schoolers — the same legislation that Haley vetoed last June even though it passed both chambers of the state legislature with broad bipartisan support.

Sellers’ bill would simply require state health officials to offer the HPV vaccine and educational material to seventh graders, and it wouldn’t make it mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children. At a press conference to announce the legislation’s reintroduction, Sellers explained that he is most concerned about expanding access to the vaccine to the families that otherwise may not have heard about it or may not have been able to afford it. “There are sisters, there are daughters, there are mothers who die every day from cervical cancer,” Sellers said. “And if we can save one life, I think it’s worth fighting for.”

Seller’s announcement is particularly timely. Just last week, a joint report released by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute found that HPV-related cancers have been on the rise over the last two years, even as other types of cancer have declined.

Medical experts partly attribute the rising cancer rates to the fact that not enough teenagers are taking the HPV vaccine, and aim to get at least 80 percent of all pre-teens vaccinated by next decade. Even though the CDC approved the Gardasil vaccine for children above 9 years old back in 2009 — and federal guidelines urge all young women to receive Gardasil starting at the age of 11 to help mitigate their risk of developing cervical cancer — less than half of girls ages 13 to 17 got at least one dose of the three-part vaccine over the past two years.

Conservative scaremongering over the vaccine — suggesting it could somehow lead to “sexual promiscuity,” even though doctors simply consider it a preventative measure like any other type of vaccination — has successfully transformed cancer prevention into a politicized issue. South Carolina itself has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in the nation, and Sellers wants to give the governor yet another chance to decide what she wants to do about it.

CBS News reports that cancers related to human papillomavirus (HPV) has been on the rise over the last two years, largely because not enough people are getting vaccinated against HPV. Even though fewer numbers of Americans have been dying from cancer over the last two decades, a annual joint report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute finds that HPV-related cancers have ballooned:

The new report found increases in rates for HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer (throat cancer) among white men and women, in addition to rises in anal cancer rates among white and black men and women.

Alcohol and smoking can also lead to these cancers, however, HPV accounts for about 70 percent of the cancers in this area, [Dr. Michael B. Prsytowsky] said.[...]

“We need to get adolescent children — both boys and girls — vaccinated before they’re sexually active,” Prsytowsky said. “Parents need to understand the vaccine is safe and effective and prevents disease down the road.”

The report found that less than half of girls ages 13 to 17 got at least one dose of the recommended HPV vaccine. The government’s Healthy People 2020 campaign aims to have 80 percent of eligible girls vaccinated by the next decade.

While Obamacare provides support for wellness initiatives and eliminates co-pays for HPV screenings, such provisions are useless if Americans buy into the widely-debunked conservative hysteria that the HPV vaccine is unsafe. 2012 GOP presidential contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) went as far as to claim that the vaccine causes “mental retardation” in girls, and other Republicans have falsely asserted that it somehow leads to sexual promiscuity.

Conversely, medical professionals urge Americans to safeguard their health by receiving their recommended vaccinations. “We must face these hurdles head on, without distraction, and without delay, by expanding access to proven strategies to prevent and control cancer,” Dr. John R. Seffrin, the chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society explained in response to the rising rates of HPV-related diseases.

The Supreme Court is set to review a case in which it will determine whether the bio-pharmaceutical company Myriad Genetics Inc. may legally patent two cancer-related human genes, paving the way for a decision that will have broad-based economic and regulatory ramifications for the biotech and drug industries — as well as for the millions of Americans whose health care may increasingly depend on such cutting-edge innovations.

Back in August, the D.C. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled by a 2-1 margin that Myriad could patent the detection of two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, that have been linked to a heightened chance of breast and ovarian cancer in women. While Myriad and other bio-tech firms argue that such patenting is necessary to spur and protect innovation in diagnostic medical testing, critics — including the ACLU, AARP, and the AMA — warn that it could actually have the opposite effect, stifling the standardization of such testing methods and commoditizing naturally-occurring human biology:

Peter Meldrum, Myriad’s chief executive, said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision could affect the providing of medical treatment to hundreds of millions of people. He said Myriad’s own diagnostic test has helped nearly 1 million people learn about their risk of hereditary cancer.

“The discovery and development of pioneering diagnostics and therapeutics require a huge investment and our U.S. patent system is the engine that drives this innovation,” he said.

Many outside groups supported the petitioners, including the AARP, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Human Genetics, the March of Dimes Foundation, the National Breast Cancer Foundation and several women’s health groups.

“Some critics say it is unjust to give a company a monopoly over something as intrinsic to people’s health as their genes,” said Josephine Johnston, a research scholar at The Hastings Center, a independent bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York, who is not involved in the Myriad case.

“From an ethics perspective, one could argue that genes are owned by everybody, and that patenting them amounts to a commodification of an element of the human body,” she added.

The D.C. appellate court’s ruling also harbors a potential conflict with an earlier Supreme Court finding in which the court found that a pharmaceutical company could not patent “observations about natural phenomena.”

Routine mammograms have caused more than a million U.S. women to receive “unnecessary and invasive cancer treatments over the last 30 years,” a new study finds, detecting tumors that are harmless. The results come after the government’s Preventive Task Force issued recommendations in 2009 advising primary care physicians against recommending mammograms to women under 40 years of age. Those guidelines stirred political outcry on both sides of the aisle and slowed down work on President Obama’s health care law.

But the study shines new doubt “over the effectiveness of an already controversial cancer screening tool that is aimed at detecting tumors before they spread and become more difficult to treat”:

Their analysis showed that, since mammograms became standard in the United States, the number of early-stage breast cancers detected has doubled — in recent years, doctors found tumors in 234 women out of 100,000. But in that same period, the rate of women diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer has dropped just eight percent — from 102 to 94 cases out of 100,000.

“We estimated that breast cancer was overdiagnosed — i.e., tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms — in 1.3 million US women in the past 30 years,” authors Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School and Archie Bleyer of the Oregon Health & Science University, wrote in a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“We estimated that in 2008, breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed,” they added. These women likely received major medical interventions — including surgery, radiology, hormone therapy and chemotherapy — that ought only to be used when absolutely necessary, the authors stressed.

They also concluded the significant drop in breast cancer deaths can be best explained by the improvement in treatments, rather than the early detection through mammograms.

Recent research has confirmed these findings. For instance a 2011 paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that while “some women need mammograms more frequently than others,” a more complex approach to mammography “based on personal risk factors such as age, breast density, family history of breast cancer and even a woman’s personal preference” could help reduce overtreatment and unnecessary testing.

The science encourages women and doctors to consider harms of additional testing, including radiation exposure, the anxiety associated with false-positive findings on the initial examination, and the costs of additional imaging.

In a study about what 1,000 cancer patients expected from their chemotherapy treatments, the majority of late-stage cancer patients thought the chemotherapy could give them a cure. The problem, though, is that chemotherapy treatments could only extend life for these patients, not cure it.

But despite the medical research to the contrary, 69 percent of lung cancer patients and 81 percent of colorectal cancer patients gave responses “that were not consistent with understanding that chemotherapy was very unlikely to cure their cancer,” Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff reports. That was not what some of the researchers expected:

“I was really surprised,” says lead study author Jane Weeks, a professor at Harvard Medical School. “Prior studies have suggested maybe a third of patients don’t understand. Those studies are done in the optimal setting though, and this was the first to look at a big population. I thought the numbers were disturbingly high.”

The most surprising finding in this study, though, might come from when the researchers looked at what the patients’ thought of their doctors. The survey asked about how good their oncologists were at communicating about treatment.

Patients who rated their doctors as the very best communicators, the most open and honest, were the most likely to have the unrealistic, inaccurate expectations.

“This suggests that patients perceive physicians as better communicators when they convey a more optimistic view of chemotherapy,” the authors conclude. “Similarly, the finding that patients, especially those with colorectal cancer, who were treated in integrated networks were somewhat more likely to understand that chemotherapy is not curative suggests that providers may be able to improve patients’ understanding if they feel it is part of their professional role.”

The fact that patients think more highly of their doctors when they’re being told optimistic information about their treatments could be problematic as Obamacare regulation beginning this month will tie some hospital payments to how highly patients rate their hospital experience. “This is a cautionary tale,” Weeks told Wonkblog. “I think everybody agrees that satisfaction alone is an incomplete measure of quality. It doesn’t give you the whole story. I think this is an example of that.”

A 2011 poll about palliative care showed that 96 percent of doctors said that it’s more important to improve dying patients’ quality of life than to prolong their lives as long as possible. Presumably, the same idea should apply to patients going through cancer treatments so that they can know as much as possible about their treatments and understand the most likely outcomes.