Women as a Vessel for Prevention

I would like to start my saying that I was very impressed with the presentation today on public health and the HPV vaccine. I feel like because they ran so short of time there were some important issues that could not be discussed. Firstly who is getting the vaccine. As discussed, there is no vaccine for men, which means the responsibility falls on woman to get vaccinated. I understand that it is important that women protect themselves from HPV and other STI's but why are we focusing on women when by doing so we are leaving out a large population. If you go to the CDC website you will find a wealth of culturally infused information about who is really being protected and why. link to CDC website. You will notice that all four pictures featured on the site are of non-white males. This indicates who the CDC believes will be the most likely to contract HPV. The most unnerving thing about this site was under the title "Is there a way to test for HPV in Men", in bold they have written Remember "HPV is very common. Most men with HPV will never develop health problems from it. Finding out if you have HPV is not as important as finding out if you have the diseases that it can cause". The fact that the CDC says not to worry about having HPV but rather worry about the potential threat it cause in the future is infuriating to me! HPV has significant health risks for women and men with HPV should be concerned about passing it on to others. Not only are women being encouraged to get a vaccination that can have some pretty nasty side effects, but we are telling men not to worry about it. The site also says that "men who have sex with men are 17 time more likely to contract HPV". So not only are we not concerned with the health of women we are also ignoring the gay community and their sexual health concerning HPV. My question to you is why are we only offering this vaccine to women and what are the ethical issues or cultural stigma's that surround this decision?