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by mensetmanusman 883 days ago
$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.

2 comments

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.
The HPV vaccine also prevents throat cancer in boys.
0.00001% of the US population dies each year of cervical cancer.

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

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.