OCF fought with the CDC several times and David Hastings went to their meeting on vaccines as our representative. The broadest recommendation was given at that time for pediatricians to even vaccinate boys. Before that they were using the vaccine "off-label"" which puts their license at risk if something goes wrong. That approval got rid of the off label use of it issue. But there has been no clinical trial which show definitively that it will prevent oral cancers, regardless of what the scientific community believes (that it will). So with few parents realizing that it is beneficial (since all they hear about is genital benign warts) they don't pursue it. Even if insurance did pay for it they wouldn't see the value.

In October there is another CDC meeting where we hope to fight for and get a statement that includes oral / head and neck cancers in the discussion. Once that happens, insurance companies will have a vaccine that is not just for cervical cancers (men don't get them) so there will be a legal argument to get them to cover giving boys the shot as well.

By the by, with about 50% of girls in the US vaccinated after many years of the vaccine being n the market, most have only had one of the three shots in the series. It is interesting to see that the earliest girls (single shot) still have 100% coverage almost a decade out, meaning that the booster shots may not in the long run be necessary. How long the vaccine will be protective is still to be determined - a decade is good, but it will take many more years to find out how long (perhaps a life time) the coverage lasts.