If someone told you all you had to do to prevent yourself from getting a prevalent form of cancer was to spend $360, would you do it?

Recently, the FDA approved a vaccine that would help women from ages 9 to 26 make that very decision.

This vaccine prevents women from contracting the human papilloma virus, which is an infection that a whopping 50 percent of sexually active adults contract within their lifetimes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HPV often goes away on its own, but it sometimes progresses into genital warts and cervical and penile cancer. This vaccine can now prevent us from developing what many times can result in a deadly infection.

The vaccine has been proved to be almost 100 percent effective in preventing diseases caused by HPV, and studies have shown it has remained effective in individuals for five years so far. This relatively new treatment is still being studied, and depending on future results, protection could be effective for even longer.

While many health insurance policies, including NIU’s non-prescription policy, don’t cover this treatment, we feel now more than ever that this vaccine is a worthy investment to make. With HPV most common in college-age students, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s projection that another 9,700 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2006, there is an urgent need for us to take educated measures such as these to take care of ourselves.

Spending $360 on a vaccine may seem like a lot of money, but it does not compare to the price of contracting and spreading such a harmful infection.

With this in mind, we hope your reply to the question above is nothing other than an emphatic yes.