THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2009
NEWS
5A
HEALTH
Students, doctors weigh in on HPV
BY LAUREN HENDRICK
lhendrickkansan.com
WHAT ABOUT MEN?
■ There is currently not a test for men to determine whether they have HPV.
It was two months ago that Ashley, a KU junior who asked that her last name not be used, visited her gynecologist for a pap smear. Ashley had been getting her annual pap smear since her senior year of high school and each sample had returned from the lab free of irregular results.
Vaccines protecting men from HPV are not available yet, but research is being conducted.
A person can have HPV for years without noticing any health problems. Because most men and women don't realize they have HPV, they unknowingly pass it on.
There is no treatment for HPV.
Men with HPV are at risk for genital warts, perilile cancer and anal cancer.
Men who have HPV and have healthy immune systems do not usually have health problems.
"That was the scariest phone call I have ever gotten," she said.
Source: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
She waited for the same phone call she had received for four years, which would tell her everything was normal. But this year she answered the phone and heard different results: She had tested positive for human papillomavirus.
Had she received the Gardasil vaccine before becoming sexually active, Ashley might never have gotten the phone call. Ashley said her diagnosis came as a shock to both her and her boyfriend. He was her first partner, but like most men who are carriers, he was unaware he was a carrier and was uninformed about the virus.
Kathy Guth, nurse practitioner in the Watkins Memorial Health Center's gynecology department, said she frequently visited with students who contracted HPV. Guth said she diagnosed an average of four to five KU students with HPV every week.
"I've seen a Gardasil commercial but I didn't know what HPV was," Ashley said.
She said she didn't pay much attention to the commercials because she didn't think HPV would ever affect her.
THE VACCINE
Gardasil, a three-part vaccine designed to prevent HPV and cervical cancer, was introduced to the pharmaceutical market in 2006. Gardasil protects women
from four different types of HPV; types 16 and 17, which cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases; and types 6 and 11, which cause 90 percent of genital wart cases.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection. More than 40 different strains of HPV affect men and women. Ashley said her doctor informed her she had contracted a pre-cancerous strain of the virus.
Guth said women were more likely to notice the infection but that men contracted the infection just as often.
Ashley said she told her mother that she had HPV, but her mother asked her not to tell her father.
"I don't want him to think his little girl is having sex," Ashley said, remembering her mother's reaction.
Renee Carey, Lawrence native and mother of an 11-year-old girl, isn't sure she'll have her daughter vaccinated, though.
"I don't understand why everyone is jumping on the bandwagon," she said. "It's just a big pharmaceutical campaign."
Carey said that she didn't see a reason to push more vaccines on her daughter and that she was
Physicians at Watkins, however, say the vaccine has been more successful than they anticipated. Patricia Denning, senior staff physician, said she decided to have her daughter vaccinated in middle school because she trusted the vaccine.
leery that there was not enough evidence to support the vaccine's effectiveness.
"I have encouraged both of my daughters to get vaccinated," Beth Sakamura, a Lawrence nurse, said. Though Sakamura's daughters are adults, she said she thought vaccinating young girls was a good idea. The Gardasil vaccine is available for women between the ages of 9 and 26.
THE COST
Denning said Watkins offered health care to students at minimal costs, but coverage of the vaccine depends on individual health care insurance.
"It's quite costly," said Lisa Horn, communications director at the Lawrence Douglas County Health Department.
Horn said the health department had recently stopped offering the vaccine because of state budget cuts. Horn said the vaccine had cost patients $143 per
shot and was too expensive to keep in stock.
"Any time there is a new product, insurance companies are hesitant to cover it." Denning said.
Along with the price tag, Guth said some patients had expressed concerns about whether the vaccine was effective and wondered whether there were any side effects. Gardasil lists a number of possible side effects including pain on site of injection, headache, fever, nausea and fainting. The CDC reported that one in 60 patients would likely experience a mild fever, but nothing that wouldn't go away on its own.
POSSIBLE EFFECTS
Denning said there were always risks involved when receiving a vaccine because each patient reacted differently. She has seen an occasional allergic reaction and a patient faint, but she said side effects had not occurred more frequently than with other vaccines. Denning said that Watkins had been one of 17 test sites for the vaccine six years before it was approved by the FDA and that the health center had seen minimal negative reactions.
Courtney Jerome, Austin, Texas, junior, received the vaccine last year and didn't notice any side effects aside from a burning sensation on the site of the injection.
Ashley said she recently started getting the Gardasil vaccine so she wouldn't contract other strains of the HPV virus.
Since testing positive for HPV, Ashley has had to get a pap smear twice a year and will have to keep doing so until two pap smears come back normal.
"It's just awful." Ashley said. "When you get HPV, it's a waiting game."
Edited by Liz Schubauer
NATIONAL
Bush lawyers may face professional sanctions
BY DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press
WASHINGTON Bush administration lawyers who approved harsh interrogation techniques of terror suspects should not face criminal charges, Justice Department investigators said in a draft report that recommended two of the three attorneys face possible professional sanctions.
The recommendations come after an Obama administration decision last month to make public legal memos authorizing the use of harsh interrogation methods but not to prosecute CIA interrogators who followed advice outlined in the memos.
That decision angered conservatives who accused President Barack Obama of selling out the CIA for releasing the memos, and liberals who thought he was being too forgiving of practices they — and Obama — call torture. The president's rhetoric, if not actual policy, shifted on the matter as the political fallout intensified.
Officials conducting the internal Justice Department inquiry into the lawyers who wrote those memos have recommended referring two of the three lawyers — John Yoo and Jay Bybee — to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action, according to a person familiar with the inquiry. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to discuss the inquiry.
The person noted that the investigative report was still in draft form and subject to revisions. Attorney General Eric Holder also may make his own determination about what steps to take once the report has been finalized.
The inquiry has become a politically loaded guessing game,
with some advocating criminal charges against the lawyers and others urging that the matter be dropped.
In a letter to two senators, the Justice Department said a key deadline in the inquiry expired Monday, signaling that most of the work on the matter was completed. The letter does not mention the possibility of criminal charges, nor does it name the lawyers under scrutiny.
The letter did not indicate what the findings of the final report would be. Bybee, Yoo and Steven Bradbury worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and played key roles in crafting the legal justification for techniques critics call torture.
The memos were written as the Bush administration grappled with the fear and uncertainty following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Over the years that followed, lawyers re-examined and rewrote much of the legal advice.
Last month, the Obama administration released four of the long-secret memos about treatment of terror suspects in which lawyers authorized methods including waterboarding, throwing subjects against a wall and forced nudity.
In releasing the documents, Obama declared CIA interrogators who followed the memos would not be prosecuted. Obama left it to Holder to decide whether those who authorized or approved the methods should face charges.
When that inquiry neared completion last year, investigators recommended seeking professional sanctions against Bybee and Yoo, but not Bradbury, according to the person familiar with the matter.
Those would come in the form of recommendations to state bar associations, where the most severe possible punishment is disbarment.
NATIONAL
Souter speaks at conference
BY MARK SHERMAN Associated Press
The Supreme Court Justice bid emotional farewell to lawyers, judges
PHILADELPHIA — Supreme Court Justice David Souter, momentarily choked with emotion, bid an affectionate farewell Tuesday to judges and lawyers he has worked with for nearly two decades.
Souter spoke at an annual conference of judges and lawyers from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He handles matters that come to the Supreme Court from those states. The 69-year-old announced last Friday that he would retire when the court finished its work for the summer and return to his home in New Hampshire.
Momentarily dropping his New England reserve, the justice appeared to choke up as he recalled asking his predecessor, William Brennan, if he wanted to send a message to the same group when Souter was preparing to attend his first conference in Teaneck, N.J.
ute talk, and was introduced by Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a "beloved member of the 3rd Circuit family"
Souter said he had not intended for the news of his retirement to break before Tuesday's event. "I swear to you I was not the leak," he said.
"Just give them my love, David. Just give them my love," Souter remembered. "That goes for me, too."
Still, he said, "It's impossible not to be doing a mental reckoning of some sort."
He received sustained standing ovations before and after his 15-min-
He gave a lighthearted account of the first conference after he joined the court in 1990, noting that he apparently was viewed with some suspicion by the 3rd Circuit. Among the reading material he was given when he arrived at that first constitution was a copy of the Constitution
Souter thanked Scirica for not including the Constitution for this visit.
Souter told the conference that members of the legal profession should take satisfaction in doing "something worth doing" and trying "to do it well."
"He may have assumed that it's too late now." Souter said.
He did not permit cameras or audio recordings at his speech.
said President Barack Obama would not be announcing his choice to replace Souter this week.
Supreme Court Justice David Souter speaks during a dedication ceremony at the New Hampshire State Supreme Courthouse in Concord, N.H., on July 9. Souter bid farewell in a speech Tuesday to the judges and lawyers he has worked with in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He had worked with them for nearly two decades.
Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs ruled out that timeframe when asked about published comments from Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Uttah, who spoke to Obama on Monday and said he expected an announcement this week.
In Washington, the White House
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he had discussed possible nominees with Obama but would not name them. The Vermont Democrat said he wouldn't schedule the committee's confirmation hearings until a nominee was chosen, but he said he was certain that a new justice would be seated for the court's fall term.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Leahy said he has advised Obama, "Make sure you talk to key Republicans, not just Democrats," including the Senate's top leaders, Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada and Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
On Tuesday, Obama made a brief courtesy call to Sen. Jeffessions, R-Ala, now the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Sessions' spokesman, Stephen Boyd, said the
content of their discussion would not be released.
Sessions also expressed tradition
Sessions, in a statement after he became the committee's ranking Republican, said he would ensure "a rigorous and thorough examination" of the nominee's qualifications.
Republican themes on court nominations, saying the nominee must be "a neutral umpire of the law, calling the balls and strikes fairly while avoiding the temptation to make policy or legislate from the bench based on personal political views."
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