One of the ancient tragedies of our world, even the post Enlightenment world after 1750, has been the way that womens’ issues have been downplayed and undervalued. In health, social policy, education and any number of other areas, it’s still all a bit male-centred. One man however, did a tiny bit to change that in one small but vital area of health. It was cervical cancer, and that man’s name was Harald zur Hausen.
He it was who insisted that this disease was the result of human papilomavirus and not the herpes group, as orthodox opinion generally held. By dint of patient, intellectually rigorous work, this courteous and civilised man slowly changed our perception. And has made life better thereby for an almost immeasurable number of women.
And so we salute Harald, via this link to Sarah Neville of the Financial Times. [1] Lets hope that the future gives birth to more like him and less like some of our more ignorant and excitable journalists who have done so much harm by meddling in areas of which they have little understanding
[1]https://www.ft.com/content/eeb66a36-29e4-4a14-b7a4-0ca59214ad05
#cevical cancer #hpv virus #herpes #medicine
Learning, Science and Society 
A big shout out should also go to the wife of Harald Zur Hausen, Ethel-Michele de Villiers, who he acknowledged was a major contributor to his research into the link between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer. They were a great partnership and I believe she provided tissue samples for his research. (Trying to find a reference for this – if I am correct something I heard on BBC R4). Significantly she is listed as an inventor for patents for the Detection of mRNA in cervical smear samples.
The big question is: why did it take so long for their research to be taken seriously enough to develop a viable vaccine for human use? I know vaccine development is a long costly process but Harld’s research team successfully isolated the two viruses connected to cervical cancer in 1984 and 1985, vaccines were developed for veterinary use, but it wasn’t until the 2000’s that and an HPV virus was available for the human population.
There has been a strange reverse gender discrimination in this area of sexual health, I believe driven mostly by financial incentives because the effectiveness of the vaccine which is estimated to have prevented 90% of cervical cancers.
The vaccine rollout in the UK to teenage girls started in 2008 and sine 2012 all teenage girls in year 8 have been offered the vaccine. It was not offered to boys until 2019. There was a very misguided conception that only girls should be vaccinated because some 99% of cervical cancers are associated with papillomavirus.
There was too much focus on heterosexual vaginal sex whereas we know the HPV transmission is also associated with other sexual activity and causes mouth and throat cancers, head and neck cancers, cancers of the anal and genital areas. LBGT centres started offering HPV vaccines to ‘at risk’ MSM (men who have sex with men) before it was offered to boys in school.
NHS – How the HPV Vaccination Programme Changed?
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/hpv-human-papillomavirus-vaccine/#How%20Has%20The%20HPV%20Vaccination%20Programme%20Changed?
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/ethel-michelle-de-villiers
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2008/hausen/biographical/
BBC World Service – Witness History, The Creation of the Cervical Cancer Vaccine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswsr0
Cancer Research UK The Story of HPV and cervical cancer.
https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2022/11/21/into-the-archives-the-story-of-hpv-and-cervical-cancer/
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