We could virtually eliminate certain cancers. If Trump's anti-vax warriors don't undo that progress

There will be a sustained assault on vaccinations over the next four years and people will die as a result. Donald Trump has chosen anti-vaccine crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, and even if Trump gets sick of Kennedy and dumps him publicly, as we've seen Trump do so many times, his administration will be stocked with other anti-vaccine officials. 

And as we consider the awful outcomes possible from this set of Trump choices, we have gotten one more piece of evidence to add to not just a mountain but a full mountain range of evidence that vaccines work. A new study conducted by researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina and published in JAMA finds a 62% drop in cervical cancer deaths in women under 25 since a vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV) came into widespread use. HPV is the leading cause of cervical cancer. Though the numbers of cervical cancer deaths in women under 25 are typically low, the researchers isolated that age group as the most likely to have been vaccinated, given that the vaccine was originally only available to adolescents. 

This is a vaccine that could virtually eliminate a type of cancer – and maybe more than one. HPV causes six types of cancer, and the vaccine prevents 90% of cases of those cancers. But if vaccines in general are contested, the HPV vaccine comes in for especially fierce resistance, because HPV is sexually transmitted. As a result, many on the right, especially religious conservatives, oppose vaccination in the view that it might encourage sexual activity in teens or protect people from what they see as the natural and righteous consequences of having multiple sexual partners. The authors of the JAMA study note that HPV vaccine uptake has declined and is only around 60%. 

Imagine that: People are passing up a vaccine that prevents 90% of six types of cancer. 

But then, vaccines are pretty damn miraculous all around. In their first year, COVID-19 vaccines prevented 14.4 million deaths. From 1990 to 2019, the diphtheria–tetanus–pertussis (DTP), measles, rotavirus and Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccines prevented 86.9 million deaths in young children. We could go on – there are plenty more eye-popping numbers of lives saved by vaccines.

And Donald Trump wants to roll it all back. 

Oh, Trump personally probably doesn't give a damn about vaccines. Caring about policy is Not Really His Thing. But the political movement that buoys him is anti-vaccine, and so he surrounds himself with anti-vax true believers. People will die as a result. Too many people already have died as a result of anti-vax sentiment, but now it will be elevated to government policy. It'll be a close-fought race which body of Trump policy and which set of Trump appointees manage to kill the most people, but vaccines have to be seen as a prime contender there.