what they said (Hover the mouse cursor over underlined words for more info)

There's growing evidence that the virus that causes cervical cancer in women is also linked to cancers in men, leading health professionals to call for an HPV vaccination program for boys.
Janet Dollin, the president of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, said public health officials in Canada should consider vaccinating both girls and boys against HPV.
"Start thinking about immunizing everybody who is at risk - it makes no sense to vaccinate only the girls," Dollin said....

The original article can be found at: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/14/hpv-cancers.html?ref=rss

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what we said (Hover the mouse cursor over underlined words for more info)

This article scores low on most criteria seeing as it doesn't provide sufficient detail to justify the claims being made. It is a huge leap to say that a certain percentage of men with oral cancers had HPV-positive tumours and then conclude that we should be vaccinating all boys and men. This type of journalism borders on the irresponsible as many people will conclude that there is scientific justification for vaccinating boys for HPV despite the fact such a use has not been approved by Health Canada. (a fact which is gratefully reported in the article).
The article itself borders on disease mongering because there is not the needed caveats to challenge the spokesperson who suggests that the 'disease' of HPV infection in men is much more of a concern than it actually is.

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