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A very (very) long time ago, I had a close-to-cervical-cancer diagnosis. It was, of course, horrid. Some sort of pre-cancerous mass. My main memory of getting the diagnosis is that the medic who broke the news said: 

“It’s a sin.” 

Actually, they said it was a CIN — a CIN3. A specific type of abnormality. But because cervical cancer had become intrinsically linked with sexual activity, because most are caused by the human papillomavirus, my addled brain heard “sin”. 

Later, someone else went on and blasted a grand portion of my cervix away with a laser and I had the horrors of three-monthly pap smears for a while.

This is how it was for my pre-Gardasil generation. Many pap smears. Many abnormal results. A constant worry. An uncomfortable intimacy with speculums. Then in 2007 came Gardasil, a vaccination against HPV, and everything changed. 

Gardasil halved the chances of women developing CIN3. Eventually, it could see cervical cancer eliminated as a public health problem. A study published in the Lancet found “cervical cancer could be considered to be eliminated as a public health problem in Australia within the next 20 years”. 

“However, screening and vaccination initiatives would need to be maintained thereafter to maintain very low cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates,” the researchers wrote. 

Now, a global peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cancer has found cervical cancer rates were stable or decreasing in most countries — particularly those with effective screening and HPV vaccination programs. It’s a potentially preventable deadly disease. 

One study estimates that more than 62 million deaths could be avoided with the rollout of the vaccine.

Gardasil was rolled out despite the bluff, bluster and bullshit of some at the time. 

In 2006, then-health minister Tony Abbott said he wouldn’t rush to get his own daughters vaccinated. “Maybe that’s because I’m a cruel, callow, callous, heartless bastard but, look, I won’t be,” he said at the time. He eventually stopped being such a cruel, callow, callous, heartless bastard. 

He wasn’t alone. That same year Barnaby Joyce (then a senator, now the deputy prime minister) was concerned about the “social implications” of the vaccine, trickly claiming to represent the views of others when he said: “Don’t you dare put something out there that gives my 12-year-old daughter a licence to be promiscuous.” 

He later said his comments were taken out of context. 

Two South Australian schools at the time refused to offer the jab because of their beliefs it would make girls promiscuous. 

Multiple studies since Gardasil was introduced in countries around the world found that was utter tosh (here’s just one). Girls did not rush off to bonk just because they were protected from a deadly cancer. 

HPV vaccination — like all vaccination — is one of the most effective public health interventions we have. Of course, it’s total bullshit that some people tried to hinder its rollout by creating a false moral panic around it.

Disturbingly, it’s hard to work out whether it’s more heinous that the opponents would put girls and women at risk of developing a deadly cancer, or that they enjoyed the idea of a deadly cancer as some sort of modern-day chastity belt.