[Nathan Zachary]

No, your wrong. From what I've read, it is active HPV infection that causes cellular change. If for example, the doc get a pap test back that shows positive results, he then tests for HPV strain to determine treatment. If the strain doesn't match the risk strains, then he just monitors the case untill the infection passes, and results return to normal.

If however, strain tests come back showing the high risk strains, he will probably use a leez or other method of treatment then, after there is no longer any more sign of abnormal cellular change, montitor the case until HPV infection passes and results return to normal.

It is active HPV, along with other risk factors that cause
cellular abnormalities.
HPV goes away without a trance on it's own.
This is all explained on the ACS treatment section on their website.

[EKrusling]

Do you even know what a pap test is, how it is done, and how a 'positive' result is determined? The original poster said that a majority of women who develop cervical cancer had acquired HPV earlier in life and he was 100% correct.

Cellular abnormalities (dysplasias which are not cancer) develop from HPV. These dysplasias may then become cervical cancer after many years. Hence, if the cervical cancer came from HPV (as over 90% of cervical cancers are), then you got the HPV much earlier in life.

Chistopher P. Crum, MD "The Female Genital Tract". Chapter 22 of Kumar, Abbas, Fausto; Robbins and Cotran: Pathologic Basis of Disease 7th ed.. Philadelphia, PA: The Curtis Center, 2005.
Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia

The reason that papanicolaou smear screening is so effective in preventing cervical cancer is that the majority of cancers are preceded by a precancerous lesion. This lesion may exist in the noninvasive stage for as long as 20 years and shed abnormal cells that can be detected on cytologic examination. These precancerous changes should be viewed with the following in mind: (1) they represent a continuum of morphologic change with indistinct boundaries; (2) they do not invariably progress to cancer and may spontaneously regress, with the risk of persistence of progression to cancer increasing with the severity of the precancerous change; (3) they are associated with papillomaviruses, and high-risk HPV types are found in increasing frequency in the higher-grade precursors.