Cervical Cancer Vaccine Ready For Market.

A single dose of an experimental drug is 97% effective in preventing two strains of the virus HPV, which cause 70% of cervical cancer. Three doses over six months is 100% effective. "The Merck vaccine also reduces infection with HPV 6 and 11, which cause 90 percent of genital warts cases." The goal is to get girls vaccinated before they become sexually active and hence exposed to the HPV virus. The drug will likely go on the market starting in 2006.

Meanwhile, there are currently about 30 AIDS vaccines in small scale human clinical trials, but none have yet succeeded, almost all of them are slight variations of each other, and there are reasons to be pessimistic about their prospects for success and about their affordability even if they do work.