alt Hacker NewsThe estimated number of deaths from cervical cancer in the US in 2026 is 4,200. The death rate is 2.2 per 100,000 people down from 3.1 per 100,000 in 1992.
If we multiply 3.1e-5 by 50 years that's about a 0.15% chance of dying of this cancer. The HPV shots cost $500-1000 for the three shots, so the cost per life saved is about $650K. With the statistical value of a human life being about $12M this is quite cost effective.
I'm assuming the reduction in death continues to later in life after 30, but that's a reasonable assumption, IMO.
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Even if you just consider all of those 4000 + survivors would have got treatment for the cancer after getting it which costs far more than a vaccine.
Good calc, here's some other benefits.
herd immunity: Vaccines benefit even those that don't take the vaccine now. eradication effects: vaccines benefit those that don't take the vaccine in the future.
fertility increase: non lethal cervical cancer can cause inability to get pregnant or carry a pregnancy to term. I don't know if it can cause birth defects.
Life Years: Early deaths save more Life Years than diseases that protect against later disease.
Quality Adjusted Life Years: Very nuanced, and I don't know how HPV cancers compare against the baseline of QALY. But being a vaccine that prevents, the Quality of life gained should be 100%, which would compare positively to treatments that do not cure completely
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It's not reasonable to use the rates from 30+ years ago because survival rates for all cancers have been sharply increasing for decades. You also need to consider years of life lost if you're going to look at things economically, because you're formulating things as if somebody who died of cervical cancer never existed.
Cervical cancer disproportionately affects older women, even moreso than other cancers. The average age of diagnosis is 50 [1] and so the years of lost life due to cervical cancer is both going to be extremely low and going to disproportionately be very late life years lost. Rates in U30 are already near zero with an extremely high survival rate for those that do get it.
[1] - https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/cervical-cancer/about/ke...