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I recently heard a doctor mention that cervical cancer typically crops up around age 40. As a result, a study like this is a bit premature. It's not bad news, of course, but it's also not exactly good news.

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Study like this are very good to push government to pay vaccination to all kids as early as possible.

In Québec they did the vaccination to all the kids at 12yo, boys and girls.

$300 per dose * 100,000:1, so about $30 million per cancer cure that has a 70% survival rate.

Up to the voters I guess.

The lifetime risk of ever getting cervical cancer is about 1%. So, $30,000 per prevention if you just count the girls, or $60k if you vaccinate the boys as well.

*Assuming the vaccine has zero risk and don't cause other problems.

0.00001% of the US population dies each year of cervical cancer.

The cost to vaccinate all americans is on the order of $100B.

The HPV vaccine also prevents throat cancer in boys.

A policy simply doing -some- good is not sufficient justification given a finite amount of resources to implement it. You need to compare policies against the alternative uses of the resources.

Neither is the fact that "lives will be saved" a sufficient justification. You need to compare that against the lives saved with the alternative policy options available with the given resources.

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