Cervical cancer is estimated to cause 500000 deaths each year worldwide. The public health impact of controlling precursor cervical lesions and cancer is potentially huge, especially in developing countries, where the incidence of cervical cancer approaches 40 per 100000 women.1 Advances in cellular and molecular biology and immunology enable detailed investigation of disease pathogenesis. These advances help our understanding of the role that human papillomaviruses play in premalignant and malignant lesions of the cervix and have important ramifications for the way we diagnose, screen, and treat associated disease. In this issue of the BMJ Lehtinen and colleagues report on a study that directly applied molecular immunology to clinical and epidemiological medicine to support existing scientific evidence of human papillomavirus and its association with invasive cervical …