The vaccine only works in people who have never encountered the virus. But you're making an assumption, that the vaccine creates antibodies that recognize the viral dna like a flu shot does. The people that invented this vaccine were really smart. They created an injection of the protein that coats the virus, (this later dissolves after the virus enters a cell and becomes something different - the E6 and E7 onco proteins that knock out two critical parts of the cells dna that control apoptosis and immune signaling [ p-53 and rb] that are called the tumor suppressor genes) which your immune system learns to recognize. Unlike other vaccines this is one of the first to use a part of the virus which is not dangerous to us to alert the immune system. There is no viral dna in the vaccine shot. So your immune system goes out and destroys invaders that have this unique protein coating on them, not targeting the virus itself (they just happen to be coated with the target protein). All this is about making vaccinations safer without giving you a small part of the disease which is the way most vaccines work. So theoretically it might work in you because your body did not recognize the virus itself. But many HPV patients that have been treated for cancer do develop antibodies after treatment for some reason yet unknown, and that MAY account for why so few of us that were HPV+ do not end up in multiple recurrences, or at least at far lower rates than tobacco patients. So you may already have protection, and unless a researcher did an analysis for the hpv16 antibody in you, you wouldn't know for sure.