25% of teen girls vaccinated for cervical cancer, U.S. says

The CDC calls the rate 'very good' for a new vaccine such as Gardasil. Earlier data show, however, that only about 1% of Latina teens have received it. By Thomas H. Maugh II | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer About a quarter of the nation's teenage girls received the controversial cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil last year in its first full year of distribution, federal authorities said Thursday. "For a new vaccine, 25% is really very good," Lance Rodewald, director of the division of immunization services at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a telephone news conference releasing the data. "We need to see that rate every year if we are going to meet our goal" of having 90% of teenagers vaccinated, he said. But immunologist W. Martin Kast of USC's Keck School of Medicine said, "Twenty-five percent is not... [read full story]