Source: www.usatoday.com Author: Liz Sbazo The USA is failing to protect children from preventable cancers that afflict 22,000 Americans a year by not vaccinating enough of them against HPV, a new report says. Although a safe and effective HPV vaccine has been available for eight years, only one-third of girls have been fully immunized with all three recommended doses, according to a report from the President's Cancer Panel, which has advised the White House on cancer since 1971. HPV, or human papillomavirus, is a family of viruses that causes cancer throughout the body, including cancers that predominantly affect men, such as a type of throat cancer. Only 7% of boys are fully vaccinated, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended the shots for them since 2011. Raising vaccination rates to at least 80% of teen girls could prevent 53,000 future cases of cervical cancer in girls alive today, according to the CDC. "Our children deserve this protection," says panel chairperson Barbara Rimer, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Administering the HPV shot poses practical difficulties not faced by other adolescent vaccines, because it currently requires three doses, at least two months apart, beginning when kids are 11 or 12, says pediatrician Mary Anne Jackson, director of infectious diseases at Children's Mercy Hospital & Clinics in Kansas City, Mo., who wasn't involved in the new report. Although emerging research suggest that two doses could be equally effective, experts have not yet changed their [...]