Comment by timr

It’s “like pulling teeth” because the guidance isn’t changing (at least not because of evidence).

There seems to be a very motivated contingency who want to spin a story that male vaccination for HPV has benefits for women. The problems with this story are:

1) Efficacy of the current vaccines for women are incredibly high. Vaccinating young women, alone, is basically enough. Whatever benefits you're imagining must therefore be marginal.

2) Efficacy of current vaccines for men are (surprisingly) low [1], so it’s hard to claim secondary benefits for other people without substantial additional evidence.

It’s perfectly OK to acknowledge that the HPV vaccine is an overall good, should be on the schedule for young women, and yet does not need to be administered to men. Giving it to men (particularly older men) is not supported by data at this time, which is why your doctors don’t make it easy for you to get it.

[1] Again, refer to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8706722/

See table 4. In a naive population of men, the efficacy against DNA detection of HPV runs around 50%, and in men who may or may not have the virus, the number is lower. Efficacy against persistent infection is similar. Compare to tables 1-3 for women, where efficacy nears 100% in some populations.