Carissa Ray / msnbc.com The HPV vaccine doesn't encourage girls
to have sex, a new study says. The HPV vaccine does not send
teenage girls out seeking sex, contrary to the protests of some
parents who worried about immunizing young girls against a
sexually transmitted virus, researchers reported Monday. While
several surveys of teen girls suggested they would not feel free
to have sex just because they’d been vaccinated against the
virus, this is the first one to make sure that girls were not,
in fact, more likely to engage in sexual activity after
vaccination. “We wanted to do an objective clinical survey using
data,” said Robert Bednarczyk of the Kaiser Permanente Center
for Health Research and Emory University in Atlanta, who led the
study. The human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the main cause of
cervical cancer, as well as genital warts. It can also cause
other cancers, including cancer of the mouth, head and neck,
penis and anus. The vaccine protects against the main cancer-
causing strains. “In 2006, the A