Spotlight

FY12 Spending Debate Comes to a Close

Congress completed, and the President signed into law, the FY12 appropriations bill. The $915 billion spending bill wraps up the remaining nine appropriations measures. The bill provides funding for programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National
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Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) Editorial in Most Recent Science

Science 16 September 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6049 p. 1549
DOI: 10.1126/science.1211494
EDITORIAL:

Dueling Visions for Science

Rush Holt
Rush Holt is the U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 12th Congressional District and has a doctoral degree in physics.

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Vaccination to Prevent Cervical Cancer - 6/20/07

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Dr. Doug Lowy
National Cancer Institute/NIH

After nearly two decades of research, Dr. Lowy, along with his colleague Dr. John Schiller, discovered the underlying causes of most cases of cervical cancer. Their discoveries led to a vaccine intended to protect against infection from the two types of human papillomavirus (HPV) that cause the majority of cervical cancers worldwide. Together, these two HPV strains are responsible for approximately 70% of all cervical cancers.

The vaccine represents a major advance in cancer prevention. Cervical cancer, the second most common cause of cancer death in women worldwide, is responsible for about 240,000 deaths per year. In the U.S., approximately 10,000 women per year develop cervical cancer; of those, approximately 4,500 women will die each year. While there is still a need for second-generation HPV vaccines to prevent the infections by the strains of HPV that the new vaccine doesn’t target, great progress has been made. The next generation of HPV vaccines could also reduce the cost of cervical cancer screening. The development of effective vaccines against other important infectious causes of cancer would also have a major impact on public health.