State might require new vaccine for girls (Michigan)

[WhiteTara]

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060913/NEWS01/109130011/-1/NEWS

Girls entering sixth grade next year would be required to be vaccinated against a virus that can cause cervical cancer under groundbreaking legislation proposed Tuesday by state Sen. Beverly Hammerstrom, R-Temperance.

Senate Bills 1416 and 1417 would require a vaccine for the human papilloma virus (HPV) to be added to the required immunizations for Michigan schools and academies starting next school year. Michigan would be the first in the nation to require it.

Her initiative follows recent Food & Drug Administration approval of the vaccine for girls and women ages 9 through 26. The federal panel recommended routine vaccination in girls 11 and 12 and, as appropriate, for the other approved age groups.

The relatively new vaccine has been shown to be 100 percent effective at preventing disease from the two types of HPV that are responsible for approximately 70 percent of all cervical cancers.

snip

Though effective, the vaccines could be pricey. Current retail prices are $120 a dose and three doses would be needed. So far, the vaccine is being made only by Merck & Co. But Sen. Hammerstrom predicted price drops as other drug makers produce the vaccine and other states require it.

"If your (insurance) coverage right now covers childhood immunizations, this one would automatically be covered by it," she said. She said the federal Vaccines for Children Program also could lower the cost. "It could become, in fact, less expensive," she said.

more

So, I say, follow the money. Who's getting paid for this?

[Occulus]

1. "Follow the money?"

Um, no, I'm sorry, but in this case, we're talking about a major threat to public health. HPV causes cervical cancer. This is a vaccine for that virus.

Who's getting paid isn't much of an issue in light of those facts. However, I should point out that religious groups are against this... because it might make young women promiscuous.

Yup. They're against a lifesaving vaccine for "moral" reasons. If there is any example of a sicker mindset than that, I don't know what it is.

[Recursion]

77. So you are confident that its only effect on the human body...

...is to prevent the transmission of HPV.

And that it does absolutely nothing else.

What is the source of that confidence?

[Occulus]

150. The fact that it's a fairly major discovery that's been under research

for years. I heard about this a long, long time ago, when the results were only "promising". I read the bulk of the research back then and have been following both the development of the vaccine itself and the rightwing's response to it since I first heard about it.

They've been saying the exact same thing the whole time; if it actually did something even 'worse' than 'corrupt girls' morals', I would think they would have crowed about that as well. Besides, just the fact that they're opposed to it so strongly for the reasons they've given is sound reason to believe this is nothing but good for those who will get the vaccine. But let's see what the DCD has to say:

"The FDA has licensed the HPV vaccine as safe and effective. This vaccine has been tested in over 11,000 females (ages 9-26 years) around the world. These studies have shown no serious side effects. The most common side effect is soreness at the injection site. CDC, working with the FDA, will continue to monitor the safety of the vaccine after it is in general use.

Does this vaccine contain thimerosal or mercury?
No. There is no thimerosal or mercury in the HPV vaccine. It is made up of proteins from the outer coat of the virus (HPV). There is no infectious material in this vaccine."

Being that the vaccine is only made of the outer protein coat, and there aren't any known side effects (from a sample size of 11,000, no less), I'd say concerns are moot; if there were a serious problem with the vaccine it surely would have been identified by now.

[Recursion]

156. ROTFLMAO!!!

if it actually did something even 'worse' than 'corrupt girls' morals', I would think they would have crowed about that as well.

:rofl:

Ah, that was a good one. I haven't laughed like that in a while.

Get real. Pharma companies hide, distort, and ignore data showing their products are unsafe all the time and you know it.

[Occulus]

203. How many drugs can one buy right off the shelf,

never mind get with a prescription, that are known to cause birth defects? Were the birth defects found in five children conceived near the time the vaccine was taken (as was noted below by NotGivingUp) the only problems associated with this drug? How many people are usually involved in similar studies?

Perhaps my impression of vaccines in general being good things comes in part from seeing too many people too many times arguing against vaccinations and immunizations in general. It's happened a whole bunch of other times on this board. I think one of those discussions was in relation to this very vaccine, IIRC. Note that it doesn't contain thimerosal or mercury.

It's no surprise to me that there are a lot of people on our side against this vaccine because it comes from Big Pharm, and there is an awful lot to not like about that industry (such as, for example, their pocketing of massive profits coming from sales of drugs developed through research conducted in whole or in part with taxpayer dollars), but the blame for the health care crisis in the US- and it is in crisis- can be laid at many doors, most of which we all agree upon: HMOs, pharmacos' legislative ties, and a lack of oversight on the part of the FDA being three major issues I can rattle off the top of my head.

How many people in this country have HPV? Preventing that is what this drug is supposed to be about. Since it's such 'common knowledge' that Big Pharm lies and lies, why isn't the FDA more actively involved in the testing, and why isn't there more public accountability during that process? Could it be, because they (or their masters) want profits higher, and faster, and thus are more willing to cut corners in testing new drugs?

There are a lot more facets to this sudden rash of 'bad' drugs than one industry lying in one way. I'll say it again: this is only part of a larger problem, and the blame can be put in many places. The blame for Big Pharm being able to lie about their own testing is not just their fault, but that of others as well. If we demanded more open research with an incentive, maybe something like public review during the human trial phase coupled with a pending patent on the actual drug, itself contingent upon passage of the human trial phase, it would go a lot further to keeping the drug companies a whole lot more honest than they are today. Despite all the very real outrage over their actions, however, it seems possible to only get very little done. Again- the blame for that lies both with Big Pharm and elsewhere.

Not one word of this was intended to defend Big Pharm in any way. Their hands are awful dirty, too. I'm just saying that it got this bad in more ways than their own lying or distortions of test results. And, it's not a good idea to take some drugs when pregnant, and this is a vaccine and not a chemical compound. Vaccines operate very differently, and if you understand how the immune system itself functions, you understand why this vaccine is different from drugs composed of complex, synthetically-developed molecules. Our disgust with Big Pharm notwithstanding, there is good reason- plenty of reasons- to be in support of the HPV vaccine.

[Recursion]

208. Thank you

Were the birth defects found in five children conceived near the time the vaccine was taken (as was noted below by NotGivingUp) the only problems associated with this drug? How many people are usually involved in similar studies?

I'd love to know that too.

How many people in this country have HPV?

Roughly? 150 million or so; 50 million of those have the strains that are claimed to cause cervical cancer. At current rates, of those 50 million, approximately 2% of the women will develop cervical cancer in their lifetimes, while 1% of women without HPV will develop it.

Preventing that is what this drug is supposed to be about.

Preventing cervical cancer is supposed to be what this drug is about. We will see in a few decades if the modeled 30% reduction in cervical cancer cases happens. As I've said, if it does, I'll be just as happy as you. OTOH, I think it's very possible that the same environmental and lifestyle pathogens which are frequently marked by HPV will continue to cause cervical cancer at roughly the same rate as they do now even with their marker infection removed.

The blame for Big Pharm being able to lie about their own testing is not just their fault, but that of others as well. If we demanded more open research with an incentive, maybe something like public review during the human trial phase coupled with a pending patent on the actual drug, itself contingent upon passage of the human trial phase, it would go a lot further to keeping the drug companies a whole lot more honest than they are today.

"Your honor, he left his door unlocked; it's not my fault" :)

But you make a good point.

this is a vaccine and not a chemical compound.

Umm... it's "chemical" in that it is composed of atoms, and it's a set of "compounds" in that the atoms are bonded to one another.

if you understand how the immune system itself functions, you understand why this vaccine is different from drugs composed of complex, synthetically-developed molecules

Ah, it's not a single synthetic compound in an allegedly inert carrier, I take it is what you meant.

A lot of people have been telling me on this thread "this is a vaccine, not a drug", as if that was supposed to answer all my objections, and I still don't see how that is supposed to reassure me. It's a solution of crippled virus and virus particles, sera from the extraction process, stabilizers, preservatives, and probably glycerine. It's the middle three of those that I'm most worried about, because their effects are woefully understudied.

[XemaSab]

227. The original research was done by the national cancer institute;

Merck is just selling it.

[Art_from_Ark]

251. Interesting that just 2 months ago, the National Cancer Institute

revealed that carrageenan, a natural component of red algae, appears to have excellent properties as an inhibitor against HPV

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2656

[NotGivingUp]

187. 2 BILLION DOLLARS to Merck for a USELESS and DANGEROUS vaccine

from mercola.com

The FDA Approves Another Worthless, Potentially Dangerous Vaccine

Almost four years ago, I warned you about a vaccine aimed at preventing cervical cancer that many in conventional medicine were calling a "breakthrough." Unfortunately, that "breakthrough" may turn out to be a huge financial reprieve for Merck, the mega-drugmaker inundated with thousands of lawsuits in America over its heart-stopping Vioxx.

Yesterday, a FDA advisory committee unanimously approved Merck's Gardasil, a vaccine designed to block four sexually transmitted viruses, including two believed to be responsible for some 70 percent of the cases for cervical cancer. And Merck's is seeking approvals in some 50 other countries too.

Don't expect that "protection" to come cheap either: It may cost as much as $500 to be treated with Gardasil (three injections over six months). By the way, Gardasil is completely worthless if you already have one of those viruses.

The other bad news: Five women treated with Gardasil near the time of conception eventually had children who now suffer from birth defects, a problem for which Merck denies responsibility.

Imagine how wonderful and convenient it would be to take a vaccine to sidestep cancer, if it wasn't so dangerous and worthless.

[woodsprite]

228. Not worthless if you HAVEN'T already been infected.

Men don't have symptoms and they pass it along to women, yet there was no vaccine made for the men. The problem with the current vaccine is that it only protects against a few of the kinds of HPV. A woman infected with HPV can look forward to a much higher risk of developing cervical cancer, vaginal cancer, vulva cancer, anal cancer, eye cancer, and any other place where the epithelial cells resemble those of the cervical canal. I personally know several women who have had to have complete pelvic resections done - everything comes out - bladder, anus and lower bowel, all female reproductive organs, and the vagina is remade from skin from the inner thigh. That is usually a last resort, after removal of the cervix, then a hysterectomy, maybe a vulvalectomy. Some are 4-5 years out from surgery and are living active lives. Or as active as you can with 2 ostomys.

That being said, I would try to make sure that my daughter got to an age where she could make her own decision about being vaccinated. By then, maybe we'll learn if there are any additional risks involved in this. I want to protect her anyway that I can, but at the same time, I don't want to *RISK* her health on something they don't know alot about.

[truthisfreedom]

2. this is a good thing.

who cares what it costs?

[rodeodance]

6. I agree.

[Iris]

216. I don't think forcing vaccines on someone is a good thing.

That's just my opinion. I'm not saying the vaccine isn't good or that it shouldn't be available, but I just don't like the government telling someone they have to inject themselves with an antivirus or virus or whatever a "vaccine" is, esp. when pharmaceutical companies have no problem preserving vaccines they give children with MERCURY.

[pitohui]

3. whoever it is, pay them well!

if it is not required, girls and their families will feel obligated not to get it that young "because we're nice people, our girls don't have sex that young"

well, this nice girl did and i think most nice girls do really -- and remember HPV don't need full intercourse to spread anyway


make it requirement and girls will have to get it even if they're "nice" and so thousands will be protected

[ForeverWinter]

4. I don't know...

...I'm for this, and shocked a Republican is sponsoring this bill. I thought they were against the HPV vaccine because a heinous disease is "proper punishment" for having sex. Just like they're against AIDS research and funding.
Am I misunderstanding something?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

9. Female Reublican from Michigan.

Not quite the southern baptist convention.

[greccogirl]

289. I'm not.

There are nuts on both sides. Our family is religious and we attend church fairly regularly. I haven't heard anyone say anything against this. I'm sure they are there, but my experience, no.

[pinto]

5. Good public health/preventative health policy, imo. In line with another

required vaccination - for males and females - around the same age for hepatitis B.

Kudos Michigan.

[BattyDem]

7. Exactly!

It's not a moral issue, it's not a sexual issue ... it's a public health issue!

[Recursion]

67. No, it's a privacy issue

And another example of medical choice being taken away by Republicans.

[XemaSab]

219. I don't believe in the freedom

to not seek medical care for your kids.

Sorry.

[FoxOnTheRun]

8. oh boy... mercury is good for you?

Merck and Glaxo Smith & Kline are rubbing their hands

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

10. Do you actually understand the concept of "children?"

[FoxOnTheRun]

13. mhm

Two homo sapiens one female and one male get together and create another homo sapiens which is called a child.
This procedure has been done for thousands of years.

Convincing studies demonstrate significant protection during breastfeeding against diarrhoea, respiratory tract infections, otitis media, bacteraemia, bacterial meningitis, botulism, urinary tract infections and necrotizing enterocolitis. There is also good evidence for enhanced protection for years after the termination of breastfeeding against Haemophilus influenzae type b infections, otitis media, diarrhoea, respiratory tract infections and wheezing bronchitis. In some reports breastfeeding has also improved vaccine responses. Several studies show that milk may actively stimulate the immune system of the offspring via transfer of anti-idiotypic antibodies and lymphocytes. This may explain why breastfeeding diminishes the risk of developing coeliac disease. Some investigations suggest that there may also be a similar effect on allergic diseases and autoimmune diseases, as well as inflammatory bowel diseases and certain tumours. This needs to be confirmed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10569222&dopt=Abstract

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

16. Then I suspect you might understand...

...that the process we use now for child delivery is not exactly the same one used by our ancient ancestors.

But you certainly seem to be knowledgeable in the art of spreading ancient superstitions, so by all means, please explain why one wouldn't want to be vaccinated against HPV.

[FoxOnTheRun]

22. I've seen too much bad stuff that has been done with vaccines

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050714-082628-1346r.htm

Vaccines and autism

TODAY'S EDITORIAL
July 15, 2005

The CDC estimates that between 1 in 500 to 1 in 166 babies in the United States are born with autism, a condition that affects areas of the brain which control verbal and nonverbal communication, as well as social interaction. That's up from 1 in every 10,000 births in the 1980s. For this reason, many health officials characterize autism as a growing epidemic, the exact reasons for its rise so far unknown.
It's also why there is a growing chorus of doctors, health officials, activists and parents of autistic children who believe autism is in fact a man-made disability -- one which government health agencies, in collusion with pharmaceutical companies, knew about, but covered up. If true, as activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote recently in a provocative Rolling Stone article, and "our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry, to poison an entire generation of American children," then "their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine.
<snip>

http://download.alciada.net/Documents/ThimerosalStudy.pdf

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

25. That's some mighty fine research, tex.

I may have to contact my congresscritter.

[FoxOnTheRun]

29. I don't think that would help.

the medical mafia is pretty powerful, especially in the US. But informing people is a good idea.

Schools get money when they succesfully vaccinate kids

[Shakespeare]

31. psst....mercury has been phased out of vaccines

I agree it's a bad thing, but they're not putting it into vaccines anymore...

[FoxOnTheRun]

33. it's not on the label so it's not in there

,before people got upset they didn't care

[Shakespeare]

37. Oh, come on. You're suggesting they aren't complying with the phase-out?

Well, gee, that sort of conflicts with the snippet you just posted lower down on the thread, showing a decrease in the incidence of autism after the phase-out. You can't have it both ways, you know.

It's been phased out. They're NOT putting mercury in vaccines anymore

[FoxOnTheRun]

38. it said childhood

What can you expect from such organizations? After the results came in 2000 they tried to cover it up.

[Shakespeare]

39. WHAT are you talking about?

What said childhood? And childhood WHAT?

Slow down, take a deep breath, and try to make sense. Because you're making no sense at all right now.

[FoxOnTheRun]

40. you were refering the post I gave below

It said childhood vaccines.

As far as I know thimerosol hasn't been removed from flu vaccines

http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2005/12/06/news/local/doc43952975174bc251623528.prt

[Shakespeare]

46. The HPV vaccine isn't the flu vaccine, and it's for prebuescent girls.

Therefore, the thimerosol ban applies.

[nodehopper]

53. and I am sure Coca-Cola is still made with cocaine.

So, your argument is, vaccine is bad because mercury is bad. When someone tries to answer by saying--the vaccine does not have mercury, and vaccines have not used mercury for years now, you say "just because it says it's not there, doesn't mean it's not there." You know that logic is remarkably similar to Dubya demanding that Saddam prove that he didn't have the WMDs that he didn't have.

[praeclarus]

88. no, coca-cola is made with benzene...

... everybody knows that. ;)

[Recursion]

108. I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but it actually *is*...

...made with benzene.

[NotGivingUp]

149. pssst....it was not mandated for thimerosal (mercury) to be removed

[Iris]

217. They are not putting it in vaccines used in the US anymore.

All bets are off when it comes to other countries.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

32. I'm not the one gibbering about Mercury.

What you're talking about is ten years in the past - wholly irrelevant to modern vaccines.

[FoxOnTheRun]

34. The study was done in 2000 that's 6 years ago

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

35. I'm getting too old for this.

Do you have a cite for problems with mercury in modern vaccines or not?

[Tesha]

124. Do the voices in one's head count as a valid citation? (NT)

[robbibaba]

137. But you are gibbering.

How about do some research? Blind faith in our profit driven pharmaceutical industry doesn't need any cheerleading. The US public is fucking brainwashed on this one.

[Recursion]

138. It amazes me how many people on this board...

...will see through BS if it's spouted by profit-seeking Fox, Disney, RJR, Halliburton, or Microsoft, but if similar BS is spouted by profit-seeking Eli Lilly, Merck, ADM, or Monsanto they call those of us who are skeptical paranoid.

[diamidue]

194. Amen!

Mindboggling.

[proud2BlibKansan]

97. Schools get money for vaccinating kids?

I had no idea. And I have taught for nearly 30 years. I am sitting here thinking damn we didn't have to do all that fundraising. LOL

[Recursion]

117. You were a teacher and you didn't know ...

... that your federal funds were dependent on your vaccination rate?

[proud2BlibKansan]

123. No they are not

You don't work in education, do you?

[Recursion]

131. NCLB has immunization level and reporting requirements

Yes, it's more complex than I was saying because NCLB has to deal with what are nearly-uniform-but-not-quite-uniform 54 state and territory immunization requirements for public schools.

[proud2BlibKansan]

153. Link?

Immunization standards are set by states, not the feds. I have read NCLB and I sure don't remember seeing anything about vaccinations in it. There are state health laws that cover this so it is not necessary to include this in NCLB. (Of course that doesn't mean it would shock me to see this in that bill.)

I would still like to see evidence though. This is the first time I have heard of this and I know that bill pretty well.

[proud2BlibKansan]

154. Also just because it is in NCLB

(if it really is in that bill) doesn't mean funds are taken away if the mandate is not met. Many of the mandates in NCLB have no teeth in them.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

159. I think he's trying to argue...

that since immunization is often a requirement for enrollment, and since federal funding is based on attendance, then the school is paid for immunization.

But that's the kind of logic you have to expect from these vaccine people.

[Recursion]

164. I'm not one of "those vaccine people"

I'm immunized (even for smallpox and anthrax, though I had the corpsman note that I received my anthrax shot under protest), and if I ever have children I expect I'll have them immunized.

I also don't trust pharmaceutical companies to be honest in their "research", and I know perfectly well that the FDA has fallen down on their responsibility to regulate them. And I am very very very uncomfortable with the government becoming a marketing arm of Eli Lilly and forcing their products on people who don't want them.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

166. Yeah, you are.

Right up there with the chemtrail people.

[proud2BlibKansan]

183. You must not realize

that some of these vaccines (and lots of medical research) come from other countries. You can't blame all of this on a conspiracy by the CDC or US pharmaceutical companies.

Last time I checked the FDA still had jurisdiction ONLY in this country. :eyes:

[Occulus]

206. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2363074&mesg_id=2363366

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

"not one of those vaccine people"

:spray:

[Recursion]

210. I'm not; read that post you linked

I'm not one of those people jumping up and down screaming that vaccination will give you children autism and make you blind and stupid. I'm someone saying we don't really know what vaccination does and doesn't do. I myself am immunized and if I have kids I expect I will have them immunized too. But I'm not willing to simply believe everything that comes out in an Eli Lilly press release in the form of an AMA article.

All three bullet points were pointing out that we don't know. We don't know if they cause autism. We don't know if they will prevent HPV. We don't know if they will prevent cervical cancer.

[XemaSab]

They did a large clinical trial

and decided, yes, it does prevent HPV.

I'm assuming they did another clinical trial to link HPV to cervical cancer.

My feeling about drug companies is this: they spend so much research time and money coming up with a way to make rich old men hard, we should thank our lucky stars when they spend money finding a way to reduce the rate of a disease that KILLS WOMEN.

[Recursion]

222. Yes, they did the first trial you mentioned

Between the time I wrote the post that was linked above and now.

I'm assuming they did another clinical trial to link HPV to cervical cancer.

Well there's your problem. They didn't. They have found DNA from two strains of HPV in many (not all) tumors. That's the basis of the claim. There is a model of carcinogenesis but it's got some problems; it's certainly not impossible but it's also certainly not proven.

[XemaSab]

230. Here's a study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=93052861&dopt=Citation

Oh, here's another one:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10451482

Here's an article from the Medical Journal of Australia:

http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/178_12_160603/gar10077_fm-2.html


They've never claimed that all cervical cancer is caused by HPV, but they have established definite links between some cervical cancers and some strains of HPV. The vaccine will not prevent all cervical cancers, but it should prevent many.

And yes, right now they are researching whether HPV causes penile cancer too.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15825185

"HPV DNA was detected in 79.8% of tumor specimens, and 69.1% of tumors were HPV16-positive.... The high percentage of HPV DNA-positive tumors in our study is consistent with a strong association between HPV infection and the development of penile cancer regardless of circumcision status."

[Recursion]

235. Right, those were the very studies I was thinking of

They have found HPV in many cervical (and penile, and anal) tumors. Since this vaccine seems to be effective at preventing the spread of HPV, we'll see in a few decades if that link is causal, or if it's similar to how 80% of emphysema patients have yellow fingernails.

And, in all seriousness, I love science and I'd like to know, so that's one definite good that will come out of this as this vaccine's use spreads. And I do hope we can find a way to make it available and affordable to anyone who chooses to receive it.

[iverglas]

245. yes, that's a good one

They have found HPV in many cervical (and penile, and anal) tumors. Since this vaccine seems to be effective at preventing the spread of HPV, we'll see in a few decades if that link is causal, or if it's similar to how 80% of emphysema patients have yellow fingernails.

Emphysema and yellow fingernails are common caused by the common cause: smoking.

Tumours and HPV are commonly caused by the common cause: X.

I'm waiting for the punch line -- the causal factor that produces both tumours and HPV -- given as how you were not being serious and all.

[Recursion]

264. Could be lots of things

Emphysema and yellow fingernails are common caused by the common cause: smoking.

Tumours and HPV are commonly caused by the common cause: X

There are lots of ideas. Vitamin A / folate deficiency, environmental and lifestyle carcinogens, cell aneuploidy (which itself might be caused by one of these things I'm listing), or a legion of other things that are both immunosuppressive and carcinogenic. And while I mentioned earlier the possibility of cervical cancer and HPV as two markers of an underlying condition it's also certainly possible that they exist in a vicious cycle, which HPV aggravating the underlying condition and/or the cancer (the fact that 40% of women without cervical cancer have HPV while 70% of women with cervical cancer don't suggests that is likely to me).

Look at smallpox. About 70% of unimmunized people infected with variola develop smallpox within 2 weeks of infection, and about 1/3 of those who become symptomatic die. No-one who is not infected by variola develops smallpox. This is the kind of disease that vaccination has been effective against. Compare HPV and cervical cancer. About 50% of the population is infected with some form of HPV, about 20% of the population is infected with the strains of HPV linked to cancer, and of those 20%, about 2% of the women will develop cervical cancer at some point in their lives, generally about 20 years after the infection. About 30% of women who develop cervical cancer do not carry the HPV strains suggested to be linked to the cancer; about 10% of women who develop cervical cancer carry no HPV at all.

Now, come on, clearly there is a big difference there. Vaccinations have never been tested against a virus that has a 2-decade average incubation period and is not the sole cause of the condition being prevented. That last bit is the crucial part. Variola infection was the only cause of smallpox; eliminating the only cause of something is a very good way to eradicate it. Eliminating one cause of something may not be -- it may lower the rate somewhat, it may delay development in some cases, or it may have no effect at all because what looks like a causal link is actually a case of shared causation. We don't know. We'll see if this vaccination works at lowering the incidence of cervical cancer; I hope so, but my own suspicion is that environmental and lifestyle carcinogens play a much larger role than viral infections.

[iverglas]

265. punch line not funny

It's a clever argument and all, but:

it may have no effect at all because what looks like a causal link is actually a case of shared causation.

... I'm still waiting for your theory about what the common causal factor of a tumour and a viral infection might be.

Not all people with diabetes mellitus go blind. Not all blind people have diabetes mellitus. I'd guess that a higher proportion of blind people and people with a visual impairment do not have diabetes than do.

It's a corporate website, but it was handy and I doubt it's lying:
http://www.protemix.co.nz/diabetes/mortality.asp

Findings, consistent from study to study, make it possible to suggest that, after 15 years of diabetes, approximately 2% of people become blind while a further 10% will develop a severe visual handicap.

Is diabetes mellitus not a causal factor in the blindness of diabetic people? Shall we abandon insulin, since obviously there must be some common cause behind diabetes and blindness that we're just not, ahem, seeing?

The fact that causal factor "X" does not explain all incidences of outcome "y" does not mean that X is not the causal factor in some incidents of Y.

Some people who develop lung cancer have never smoked a fag in their lives. Many people who smoke never develop lung cancer. Shall we abandon stop-smoking campaigns and make cigarettes tax-free because obviously they don't cause cancer?

You need to stop pretending that anyone at all has drawn an exact parallel between HPV vaccination and, say, smallpox vaccination. Yes, some layperson in this thread may have done so, myself probably included, by way of pointing out how epidemics are stemmed, but that in no way invalidates what is said by those genuinely in the know. And because HPV is a virus and is contagious, unlike any of the known causes of lung cancer or diabetes, for instance, HPV vaccination and smallpox vaccination are in fact analogous on some levels, where HPV and insulin or non-smoking aren't.

HPV doesn't cause all cervical cancers, and cervical cancer does not occur in everyone who has HPV. What you're not succeeding in doing is offering any sensible hypothesis about what the causal factor in the women who do have HPV and who do develop cervical cancer might be, if you discard the relatively obvious choice. I'll agree to say "a" causal factor, because yes, there may be some combination/synergy effect at work -- but while the HPV infection may not be sufficient in such cases, is there some reason to think it isn't necessary? Or that it doesn't at the very least increase the risk?

Most of all, let's not forget the human lifespan. While I am at enormously high risk of fatal cardiovascular disease, for instance, I may get run down by a truck tomorrow morning and spoil all the studies that would otherwise show how daughters of men who, and whose fathers, died of quadruple coronary artery blockages tend to develop something similar themselves. Meanwhile, shall I throw out my Altase, because it just isn't a sure bet that I'll die of a hypertension-associated cause?

Length of infection may be a factor in women with/without cancer who have the HPV virus. As may getting 8 hours sleep a night and eating lots of carrots. Of course it's difficult to isolate single causes of diseases in many cases, and cervical cancer is likely no different from all those others.

Some tidbits from, sigh, another corporate site -- one that doesn't seem too anxious to sell its wares:
http://www.digene.com/faq/digitalgrit/neutral_FAQ.asp#q3
(footnotes omitted)

Why do the guidelines state that only women age 30 and above should have the Digene HPV Test at the same time as their routine Pap? Aren’t younger women at-risk for having HPV, as well?

1. Only women with long-term, persistent HPV are at risk for significant pre-cancerous conditions that may progress to cervical cancer. While cervical cancer does occasionally occur in women younger than age 30, it is much more frequent in women aged thirty and over.

2. Most young women become infected with HPV within a few years of becoming sexually active. Multiple and sequential infections are very common. Most are transient.

3. Only about 10% of women will have persistence of a high risk HPV infection for 5 years or more. It is this group that is at substantial risk (higher than 50%) for CIN or cervical cancer.

4. While women can be exposed to a new HPV infection at any age, screening only women age 30 and older for high-risk HPV identifies those who are most likely to have persistent HPV.

5. Women under the age of 30 are more likely to have newly-introduced HPV, which is usually transient.

6. The prevalence of HPV in women in their 20’s is at least 25% (though has been documented to be up to 80% in some cohorts studied), so routine screening for the HPV virus in women under age 30 would identify too many transiently HPV-positive women requiring further, often unnecessary, follow-up and treatment. ...

Maybe that will help a bit.

[Recursion]

266. And I answered

... I'm still waiting for your theory about what the common causal factor of a tumour and a viral infection might be.

And I listed a lot of possibilities people have suggested, including nutritional deficiencies (or excesses for that matter), environmental and lifestyle toxins (people have already mentioned smoking as one example; how about lead, manganese, mercury, iodine -- the list could go on for a long time), as well as general immunosuppression or autoimmune problems, which can come about for any number of reasons (including lack of acute illnesses in childhood -- ah, the ironies of medicine...)

*shrug*. The proof will be in the pudding here. Let's get the vaccine out there to anyone who wants it (but please, make it voluntary) and do some long-term cohort studies (which mandatory vaccination will make impossible). At least one of us is wrong here, and that will tell us who. If this lowers the cervical cancer rate, I'll be the first to cheerlead for it; and as it is I'll advocate that it should be given freely to anyone who wants it male or female (actually I haven't seen whether it lowers a male's chance of transmitting the virus; if it does, I'll encourage it even more strongly for males since we're the more active vector in most STDs)

[MADem]

261. Well, the stockpiled anthrax DOES have mercury in it

So if you got your series awhile back, it was first, the OLD shit that had been stockpiled for decades, and second, filled to the gills with thimerosol!!!

[proud2BlibKansan]

181. Yeah I wondered about that

Glad you were thinking the same thing.

Also I find it interesting that none of these well-informed folks on this thread seem to know that parents can opt out of mandatory vaccinations for religious reasons.

[Recursion]

163. It was originally McKinney-Vento

And it got rolled into NCLB in '01. The particular provisions with immunization requirements are in the section regarding integrating homeless students into classes, but it sets requirements for state immunization policies (requirements that as far as I know are consistent with all state policies). And yes, it probably is toothless, so that's a fair point.

[proud2BlibKansan]

182. Linkie?

[TheMadMonk]

260. You might want to check out the latest research on autism,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400513.html

A man who is over 40 has 5 times the chance of fathering an autistic child as a man in his twenties.

I think that might be the real smoking gun. The fact that autistic symptoms appear at the time of imunisation is simply a sad coincidence. One which has led to hundreds, if not thousands of children suffering diseases, particularly whooping cough, unnecessarily over the past decade or so.

[LeighAnn]

118. Lack of long-term studies

Will it be effective 20 years down the road, when these little girls are hot-blooded thirtysomethings with a false sense of security? Will there be unforseen side effects? I don't think anyone should be forced to ingest substances on which no long-term studies have been done. Informed Consent is King.

[Shakespeare]

26. Mercury (i.e., thimerosal) has been phased out of vaccines.

So, no, that's not a problem. This vaccine should be mandatory.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

28. Goddammit.

Don't get in the way of a perfectly good panic!

[Recursion]

83. You're honestly comfortable with Bill Frist being able to decide...

...what should and shouldn't be injected into your body?

This is a privacy and choice issue. If they can mandate this, what can they not mandate?

[Shakespeare]

107. LOL--Frist is against it because they don't want to create an army...

...of promiscuous little girls.

You say it's a privacy issue, I say it's a public health issue. It's pretty easily demonstrable that it IS a public health issue, so I stand by my position.

[Recursion]

111. And it's existentially a privacy issue

So I'll respectfully go back to my dungeon now :)

Somehow I always end up on the wrong side of DU when it comes to medical choice :(

[proud2BlibKansan]

184. Protecting us from contagious diseases

is NOT a privacy issue.

[Odin2005]

41. 5 of my great uncles and aunts died of TB...

They would of lived past infancy if TB vaccines had been around then. You anti-medicine luddites can go **** yourselves.


The mercury scare was nothing but a bunch of luddites like you taking advantage the pathetic anti-science trend emerging in this country.

[proud2BlibKansan]

89. There's mercury in this vaccine?

[Shakespeare]

92. NO. there's not mercury in this vaccine.

Federal law prohibits the use of mercury as a stabilizer in any vaccine used on children--and this vaccine is specifically for use with prepubescent girls. Thus, no mercury.

[proud2BlibKansan]

102. I know

I was being sarcastic. I forgot the :sarcasm: thingie.

[Occulus]

205. According to the CDC, this vaccine contains no mercury n/t

[Iris]

218. Right, but what else does it contain that is potentially harmful

that we just don't know about yet?

[diamidue]

11. This makes me nervous.

The article said that 3,700 die each year from this. This is a relatively small number of deaths to be asking EVERYONE to take the vaccine. Exactly how many vaccines are we going to allow to be given to our young people? We don't even know the extent of the problems that may be associated with the ones we already have. I don't like the pumping of more pharmaceuticals into children.

[Bill McBlueState]

14. 3,700 nationally?

I think it's worth it to save that many lives. And I'm sure the friends of women who die from this think so too.

[nodehopper]

17. first of all, it's 3900, not 3700...also I think you need more information

3900 is the conservative estimate. About 14,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year. HPV is responsible for over 90% of these cancer cases.

Women who don't die of this have to have treatments. Do you know what the treatment is for the FIRST stage of this cancer (i.e. no lesions, can be diagnosed only microscopically)? It's full hystorectomy. For cancer in later stages, chemo and radiation are required.

Women who don't actually develop cervical cancer but have HPV often develop dysplasia and precancerous lesions on their cervixes that have to be first diagnosed with very painful biopsies, then treated with cryo (freezing), another painful procedure. Then they have to go to get their pap smears every three months for the first year afterwards and twice a year for the next year. Until/unless they return to a low-risk group, this counts as a preexisting condition, so if they lose their insurance during that time, it will be that much harder/more expensive for them to get another one.

In most cases, two particular strains of HPV WILL result in dysplasia, which, if untreated, will become cancer. Maybe you don't know this, but cervical cancer is the second most frequent cancer among women worldwide. Diagnosis and proper treatment are dependent on a consistent, reliable and affordable medical care for women diagnosed with HPV--something which is, unfortunately, far from a guarantee in this country.

HPV is also the single most transmissible STD, and the most frequently occurring one in general population. It can be transmitted without actual intercourse, and condoms do not necessarily protect from it.

No offense, but you don't sound particularly knowledgeable about the subject if you reduce HPV and its risks to the number of actual deaths from cancer (which, as far as I am concerned, is still significant enough to warrant a vaccine).

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

19. For fuck's sake.

Vaccines are not "pharmaceuticals" in the chemical sense of the word. This is NOT a drug.

[diamidue]

190. Call them what you want.

But there must be 1,000 diseases young people are susceptible to. How many vaccines are permissible to you? 20? 200? Are kids going to be vaccinated for everything some day?

Exactly how much crap is ok with you want to inject into the bodies of our children?

Sorry, but I do NOT put blind trust in the vaccine/pharma industry. They can keep their hands off my children and grandchildren.

[XemaSab]

221. We had universal smallpox vaccinations

and now we don't have smallpox.

There is no reason why we shouldn't have universal polio vaccination, universal MMR... if and when we develop an AIDS vaccine we could wipe the disease off the face of the earth.

Parents today don't remember what it was like when children frequently died young. I would wager that most parents today don't remember polio scares.

There are killer diseases out there, and I think we have a moral obligation to keep kids safe, and that includes vaccinations.

[iverglas]

256. worth reading about 18th C. smallpox epidemics ... and anti-vaccinators

They tended to happen when the population got lazy/manipulated and failed to comply with vaccination requirements.

http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConNarrative.68/chapterId/1649/Containing-smallpox-in-Victorian-London.html

The closing part of a speech: 'Sanitation, Not Vaccination – The True Protection Against Smallpox', given to the Second International Congress of Anti-Vaccinators, Cologne, 1881, by William Tebb:

Compulsory medicine… is opposed to the ancient constitution of England, and is, therefore, a gross infraction of the liberty of the Citizen and of parental rights. The work of our Congress is to assist in restoring the birthright of our citizens, to give back to parents their highest duty and privilege—the sacred right to protect and defend their offspring from evil, and to liberate the oppressed of many nations from an ignorant, unjust, and indefensible tyranny.

The closing part of a speech by anti-vaccinationist campaigner Dr Walter Hadwen, given at Gloucester, 25 January 1896:

It is not a question merely of the health but of the very lives of the children which are at stake in this matter; and I believe that the present century shall not close until we have placed our foot upon the dragon's neck, and plunged the sword of liberty through its heart… Yes, we are going forward with the 'crazy cry' of liberty of conscience upon our unfurled banner, and we never intend to rest until we get it.

(To loud and prolonged cheering.)

The religious minorities didn't much like vaccination either.

Plus ça change ...

[NotGivingUp]

12. i'll tell you right now that i'm not gonna have anyone in this fucking

country telling me what vaccines i should get.

[nodehopper]

18. are you a female under 26?

cuz if you are not, you are ineligible for it, anyway.

[NotGivingUp]

45. so i shouldn't care?

[nodehopper]

50. well, the way you phrased it

was about the government not telling you to get this vaccine.

So if you are male or over 26, you are in no danger or it anyway.

Personally, I think that mandatory vaccination is just good public health, and one of the few areas in which I think it is appropriate for government to legislate.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

20. Then you'd better find a new country.

Because the state sure as hell will tell you which vaccines are required for your kids... if you want them to attend a public school, at least.

[Recursion]

23. That's fine, and that's different...

...from legally mandating vaccines. If the state wants to say that you have to have these vaccines to go to public schools, parents who are opposed to vaccination for their children can weigh that in their choice.

Medical care should never ever ever be mandated by the state on an unwilling patient. This is the most fundamental privacy issue I can think of. This is a hugely dangerous precedent; the HPV vaccine may be safe (then again we haven't done long-term studies on its safety; it's only been around a few years), but how do you know the next vaccine they mandate will be? Can you guarantee none of the vaccines will be stabilized with mercury? Can you guarantee that universal innocculation won't breed an immune super-HPV? Finally, how is one politician forcing a vaccine on an unwilling family any different from Bill Frist trying to shove a feeding tube back in Terry Schiavo?

Keep in mind, if we had had this statist attitude towards medicine just a few decades ago, we might well have mandated thalidamide for pregnant women, and lobotomies for women who wanted careers not too long before that. Doctors and researchers are not omniscient, and neither they nor a legislature should ever be able to overrule a patient's decision. (And, yes, when you are dealing with children, the parents are the ones making that decision. That's what parental responsibility is.)

EDIT: On re-reading, I see that the bill just mandates it for children who are in public schools. I drop my objection.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

27. No, I can't guarantee any of those things.

And I didn't say it was right. I just said it was the state of the world (in the US) as it currently stands.

[DeSwiss]

43. Well...

"Medical care should never ever ever be mandated by the state on an unwilling patient. This is the most fundamental privacy issue I can think of."

That was my initial reaction when I saw this article yesterday. I share your concern on that part of the issue and in general agree with it, except when and if a disease is communicable. But I didn't know much about the disease and how it is transmitted. I know more about it now. And I'm old enough to have a "polio shot scar" on my left arm like many boomers who stood in long lines to be scratched and poked with a needle. Then, polio was rampant and the electron microscope hadn't long been invented before they "discovered" this virus. Sabine and Salk's vaccine saved countless lives as a result of mandated public vaccinations.

The sexual transmissibility of the HPV's that cause cervical cancer is a different means by which the disease is transmitted. But it is still "communicable" nonetheless. The unwillingness of a patient to undergo vaccination for HPV is clearly their right, that is if they do not intend to have any sexual contact whatsoever with others in society. Ever.

Since the HPV's can be spread by both males and females, to me it isn't a question of promiscuity as so many RW scream about, since sexual behavior, no matter what the religious or moral objections against it may be, is still a natural function of humans. No one should be sentenced to painful health problems or even death for doing what is a natural human activity. If for no other reason, a person should undertake to be vaccinated against all communicable diseases, if not for themselves, then for society at-large.

PS- I would hazard to guess, that if a sexually transmitted disease were ever to be discovered that causes a man's penis to fall off, the hew and cry would be loud and long. Defense budgets would be slashed and taxes raised to pay for it. The 700 Club would probably hold telethons. Vaccinations would be totally free and mandated under pain of imprisonment. And the bible wouldn't even get mentioned. And if it was, they'd probably find verses that are interpeted to say that God's for it....

Peace :-)

[Solon]

47. You seem to be profoundly ignorant about vaccines...

Remember Polio and Smallpox, two diseases that have been practically WIPED OUT due to vaccines that weren't OPTIONAL. Vaccines are NOT like anti-biotics, anti-biotics are chemicals that kill off certain bacteria(in some cases ALL bacteria), bacteria, being a living organism, can adapt to this specific chemical, so an arms race develops.

Vaccines are different, most, if not all, are either weakened versions of the disease they inoculate, or are a semi-harmless derivative(Cow pox, for the Smallpox vaccine). Now, in this case, the vaccine itself doesn't really do anything, except for one thing, it makes another living system(your immune system) aware of a disease and its derivatives, and your immune system then knows HOW to fight the disease off.

Now, the effectiveness of vaccines depends on how many varieties of a disease there are, and how good your immune system can remember the disease. Think of chicken pox, an aggravating, but relatively harmless(low fatality), disease for children. Now, usually a child that gets it is immune from it for up wards of 60 years or more. People that aren't exposed to it, and get the disease as adults end up with shingles, a much more deadly form of the disease.

Depending on the disease, like the Flu, which is actually a whole slew of different, unrelated organisms, usually requires an inoculation that is yearly, though usually only confined to either the very young, very old, or those with immuno-deficiencies.

You argue that its a privacy issue, I don't see why, for no information is really required on the part of the patient that is considered an invasion of privacy. 99.9% of communicable disease can be caught by EVERYONE, if you end up having to have a hepatitis vaccine, this isn't a judgment on you, if you don't have the disease, it prevents you from getting it. Its a public health issue, one that effects others besides yourself. If, for example, you have a child, and refuse to give them vaccines(let's say you home school), and they end up catching a communicable disease, and spread it to other children, YOU should be held PERSONALLY responsible for said outbreak, either with jail time, or with a civil action.

Also, another note, mercury isn't used as a stabilizer anymore. By the way, where would we be if people at the WHO actually had YOUR attitude towards the Smallpox and Polio vaccines?

[proud2BlibKansan]

106. I take it you aren't old enough to remember polio

I am and I can't tell you how grateful I am for vaccines.

[Marie26]

174. So, children shouldn't be vaccinated

for polio, mumps, measles, rubella, & Hepatitis? All of these vaccines are currently required for children entering public school. If you're going to be consistent, we should stop any vaccine requirements.

[RobinA]

295. But the Requirements

are on paper only. If a parent puts up a fuss and says she/he doesn't vaccinate for religious reasons (that all-purpose get out of jail free card) the school isn't going to tell you your kid can't go.

Personally, I believe in vaccination within reason and I also don't believe that the government should be mandating vaccination.

[Posteritatis]

291. So! Died from smallpox lately? (n/t)

[DODI]

15. Good for Michigan! I spoke to my GYN about this, I have an 11

year old daughter, she said GET THE VACCINE! She said at the rate this virus is spreading, 100% of our population will be infected -- if that is the case you will see more than 3,700 death a year due to this without the vaccine.

[bpeale]

142. 3700 huh?

compared to the population worldwide, 3700 is nothing and is an acceptable rate. 3700 compared to just the population in the u.s. is still a drop in the bucket. more people are killed crossing the street than they are by this disease. it's an acceptable rate of death. you forget...everybody has to die of something. if it isn't cervical cancer it will be something else ... probably another form of cancer. you can't prevent death.

[Bridget Burke]

196. "An acceptable rate of death".....

Yeah, and our soldiers who are dying in Iraq would have died of something else--eventually.

[Shakespeare]

198. As someone who's had HPV-related issues with precancerous growths....

...allow me to offer a hearty "fuck you" to your "acceptable" death rate.

[Dora]

209. That's one of the stupidest, most callous responses I've seen yet.

I had to check the url to make certain of where I was.

If there was an STD causing cock cancer and 3700 U.S. deaths annually, I bet my britches that men would be lining up in droves to get their sons immunized.

:eyes:

[tandot]

247. "...3700 is nothing and is an acceptable rate..." how about your daughter

or mother, or girlfriend, or wife...how about something you really care about dying from cervical cancer...it is acceptable???

I guess people don't care as long as they are not personally affected.

[LostinVA]

274. "An acceptable rate"? OMG

I've known someone to die from this disease... how dare you call ANY death rate from ANY disease "acceptable." A vaccine comes along that can say girls from later contracting cervical cancer, and you're against it because it's "an acceptable rate." Mine telling me what IS an acceptable rate?

"You can't prevent death"? Jesus -- nice straw-man. You're right, everybody dies... so why shou;ld we care about ANYTHING? Stop all medical research ASAP. Throw away the heart medicine, the high blood pressure meds, the Prozac, the insulin... so what??? Hey! How about that disease that makes people's skin harden? Hardly anybody dies from that -- screw the research! Put your kids in the front seat without a seatbelt -- if they die, so what??? They gotta die sometime. PREVENTATIVE medicine is important.

When I was little, I knew kids who had braces and crutches because of polio... although I am too young to remember the polio scares.

Ugh. What a comment. And, you can post until; your damn fingers fall off, but you can never, ever rationalize that statement.

[Vidar]

21. Not half bad for a Republican.

[Recursion]

24. What safety studies have been done on this vaccine?

How long were they run? Is the vaccine stabilized in mercury?

We're way way way too fast to run with new treatments sometimes.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

30. Mercury hasn't been used in vaccines for years.

Your concerns are without foundation.

[FoxOnTheRun]

36. Isn't that nice

/ Science & Technology / Health & Medicine / Vaccines
Study Shows Decline in Neurodevelopmental Disorders After Removal of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines

A Champ | March 2 2006

A new study published today (3/1/06) shows that the rate of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs) in children has decreased following removal of thimerosal, a preservative containing the neurotoxin mercury, from American childhood vaccines. The study, published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, a peer reviewed journal, by Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier examined two independent databases maintained by the government – one national and one state. The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and the Californian Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) database each showed the same downward trend for the period from 2002 through 2005. According to the study “he results indicate that the trends in newly diagnosed NDs correspond directly with the expansion and subsequent contraction of the cumulative mercury dose to which children were exposed from through the U.S. immunization schedule.”


http://capwiz.com/a-champ/issues/alert/?alertid=8519116&queueid=633765701

[nodehopper]

52. so this vaccine doesn't have mercury, shouldn't you think that's good?

[Recursion]

57. This one *may* not (neither of us know)

The point is that the Pharma complex is way way way too eager to jab whatever the hell they want in our arms and the government is way way way too eager to mandate it since "doctors know best". That has contained mercury in the past, in some cases it contains it now, and some cases will likely continue to contain it in the future.

[Shakespeare]

61. If the vaccine is for children--and it is--it's precluded by law from....

...having mercury. As a woman who's had a scare with cervical cancer, I think this vaccine is as important as the small pox and polio vaccines.

[nodehopper]

120. it says it doesn't

merury has not been used in vaccines since 2000. Before that people complained about mercury. Now when pro-vaccine people say "there is no mercury, look, they phased it out, it does not contain mercury" you say "prove that it's not there!" Proving a negative is exactly what Dubya wanted Saddam to do w/r/t WMDs, you know.

[phylny]

246. You'd never know it from my Early Intervention caseload.

In addition, I had several clients when I had a private practice who deliberately did NOT vaccinate their kids because there were family members with autism. It didn't matter, they still had kids with autism. I just read an article a month ago that postulates the increase in autism may be linked to ultrasounds.

In any event, there's no mercury in this vaccine. As the mother of three daughters, I would discuss this vaccine with their physicians.

[Recursion]

60. *buzz*

Thanks for playing. Mercury has been used within the past 4 years; as a start, see: http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm

Now, please answer my original question about what long-term safety studies have been done on this vaccine. Do we know it is safer than being un-vaccinated?

And please, don't tell me how dangerous HPV is; I'm well aware of that. Point me to data that show that the 10-year mortality rate (for example) after this vaccination is lower than without it.

[Shakespeare]

62. Mercury is still used in some adult vaccines, but has been phased out....

...of vaccines for children. Buzz right back atcha.

Let's see; being unvaccinated leaves you open to HPV, which hugely increases the chances of developing cervical cancer (been there, not fun). It hasn't been in existence long enough to have 10-year studies, but is being fast-tracked (and justifiably so in this case) because initial studies DO show it to be safe, and the benefits far, far outweight potential risks.

[Recursion]

63. "Hasn't been in existence long enough"

That's exactly my point.

There's no way we should be *mandating* treatments that are so new that long-term safety studies physically cannot have been performed yet.

[Shakespeare]

68. It's not as if it were JUST developed.

And your repeated suggestion that there's no indication at all of the vaccine's safety is wrong and disingenuous. Yes, long-term trials should certainly be run, but when the initial studies show such complete and dramatic effectiveness, it is unethical to withhold the vaccine from distribution.

[Recursion]

71. I'm not saying it should be withheld

I'm saying it shouldn't be mandated until long-term trials are run.

And your suggestion that I'm saying it should be withheld is what is disingenuous. I believe in choice; if someone wants this treatment I believe it is her right to receive it and if someone does not want this treatment I believe it is her right not to receive it. Unlike those who would mandate a treatment whose long-term effects are not yet known.

[XemaSab]

223. 6th graders by law cannot be responsible for their own medical decisions

Furthermore, in 6th grade most girls have not thought about sex... you have no way of predicting which preacher's daughters are going to get knocked up in 9th grade, and which hippie kids will become nuns.

[Recursion]

65. About your "buzz"

I don't trust Merck or Eli-Lily, and I don't trust FDA or the Congress as they stand now to regulate them.

Do you?

[Shakespeare]

69. Well, there ya go.

In that case, let's forego all preventative medicine because we're suspicious. You try to stay healthy now, ya hear?

[Recursion]

72. Damn it, I'm saying don't mandate unproven therapies

If you haven't run a long-term study on the safety of the treatment, how can you tell someone she *has to* take it?

[Shakespeare]

74. It's NOT unproven!

It just hasn't hit the 10-year mark yet. You really should read the NCI report I posted elsewhere in the thread.

[Recursion]

75. Yes, I know it's proven to prevent HPV

I'm saying it's not proven to not cause cancer, or autism, or parkinson's, or etc...

[Shakespeare]

78. But it's proven to keep cancer from occurring.

And it prevents the transmission of a communicable disease. Those are both HUGE public health issues, and preliminary trials show it to be safe. Public health wins out in that case.

[Recursion]

80. OK, then demonstrate to me...

...that the mortality rate after, say, 10 years, is lower in vaccinated people than in unvaccinated people.

If you can't, I don't think it should be mandated.

It should be available and free to anyone who wants it, but it should not be mandated.

[Shakespeare]

94. What you ask is impossible, and puts the public health at risk.

And we will have to agree to disagree on whether it should be mandated. Obviously, we both feel strongly about it; I'm not going to change your mind, and you're not going to change my mind.

[Recursion]

98. Except that I will never deny the principle at stake here,

namely, that you cannot tell me what I must have injected into my body.

[Shakespeare]

109. You go on wit your bad self.

Were you to contract something like, oh, ebola, and there was a vaccine to treat it--yeah, I'm pretty sure the government could and would mandate that you get a big ol' needle in your ass to keep you from spreading it.

[Recursion]

81. It's proven to keep *some* cancers from occurring

Do you know that it doesn't cause other cancers? or other conditions?

Are you certain that its only effect on the human body is to prevent the transmission of a single virus?

If you are not certain, why are you comfortable mandating what a woman must have injected into her body?

[Shakespeare]

85. There are no contraindications to date for the vaccine.

The rather extensive studies done to date indicate that it does precisely what it's supposed to do, with no evidence that it causes harm.

When it concerns a public health issue such as a communicable disease, then yes, I believe it should be mandated. And I'm comfortable enough with its effects that I absolutely think it should be a required vaccination for girls. If we wait the full ten years, thousands of women will eventually lose their lives to cervical cancer.

[Recursion]

95. Nor were there for Thalidamide for about 5 years

Why is this so hard for you to grasp? It's my body, and you can't tell me what to inject into it.

[Shakespeare]

100. Red herring. Thalidomide was not needed for public health reasons.

It was used to treat morning sickness. Treating HPV is several orders of magnitude greater in importance. Why is that so hard for YOU to grasp?

[Recursion]

104. I can tell from your posts you are smarter than that

It was a medication that was widely prescribed. Its side-effects were not known for years.

In retrospect, everyone agrees that its side-effects outweighed its benefits.

We don't know if this vaccine is like that or not, yet. It hasn't been around long enough and we don't have the data, and Pharma squashes independent studies.

Look, we're 98% in agreement here: I'll be on the front-lines fighting for free access to this vaccine for anyone who wants it. I'll be on the front lines for a public education program touting its benefits. What I won't do is tell a teenage girl she has to have some substance injected into her body if she doesn't choose to have it injected.

[Shakespeare]

110. Do you undestand the difference between a vaccine and a medication?

Do you? Because they're a world apart chemically, and affect the body in vastly different ways. It's far less likely for a vaccine to cause any kind of serious side effect than a new chemical cocktail would. You're trying to create a boogeyman out of this that isn't supported by science.

[Recursion]

112. This is my last post on this

I'm trying to say that Bill Frist can't tell a teenage girl what must be injected into her. If you don't respect that fight, I understand that. But it's still my fight.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

165. Is that what you're trying to say?

Because your argument kept changing and getting even more ridiculous everytime your previous argument got shot down.

I didn't know that's what you've been trying to say all along.

[proud2BlibKansan]

114. Thalidomide was widely prescribed

IN EUROPE. Very few women in the US took it. Nice try, though.

[XemaSab]

224. Furthermore, thalidomide is now prescribed to treat nausia

in AIDS patients. It's a drug that did a lot of bad things when given to the wrong person, but can do some good when given to the right person.

[Lars39]

103. You are a male according to your profile.

Somehow I don't think you'll be among the 300,000 women world-wide that die every year from cervical cancer.

[Recursion]

105. I'll never have an abortion either,

but I'll bleed my last drop of blood to defend any woman's right to the choice of having one, or not having one.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

42. Good.

To hell with the women-hating puritans and the vaccine nuts.

[Jack Rabbit]

44. A Republican from a place called Temperance is proposing this?

Hmmmmm . . . .

Anyway, I'm all for preventing cervical cancer, but vaccinating school children is something done to prevent communicable diseases; cervical cancer isn't communicable.

It would not take too much to persuade me I'm wrong about on this issue. It's an argument I'd be more than happy to lose.

As for federal aide to buy the vaccuine, Senator Hammerstrom should hope that decider doesn't decide that his corporate cronies need another tax cut more than school children need to be vaccinated against preventable diseases, whether they are communicable or not.

[Solon]

48. Inoculating the girls, BEFORE they are sexually active...

prevents them from catching the disease. It is communicable.

[Book Lover]

49. Please re-read the article

"The relatively new vaccine has been shown to be 100 percent effective at preventing disease from the two types of HPV that are responsible for approximately 70 percent of all cervical cancers."

HPV is a virus - this is what the vaccine protects against. The virus is transmitted during sexual and near-sexual activity and is most effective if administered at this age.

[Recursion]

58. "Relatively new"

Remind me what long-term safety studies have been done on this vaccine?

[Shakespeare]

64. Why don't you read the info for yourself:

The NCI report on the vaccine is as complete as any info out there.

http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/results/cervical-cancer-vaccine1102

And do you know much about clinical trials, and the incidences of fast-tracking when the initial results are overwhelmingly strong? It's not always possible, practical or ETHICAL for a vaccine or other medication to be withheld pending 10-year trials.

[Recursion]

66. Actually I know a lot about "fast tracking"

Having watched a fast-tracked drug kill my aunt, I'm rather familiar with the process.

[Shakespeare]

70. I'm sorry for the loss of your aunt. However...

...that is in no way related to the HPV vaccine. All current indications are that the HPV vaccine is completely safe.

Having dealt directly with the effects of HPV and cervical cancer myself, my perspective is a little different than yours.

[Recursion]

73. And thalidamide looked safe for about 5 years

Look I'm just saying that doctors and researchers aren't omniscient and it's not the place of the government to mandate any given treatment if a patient has doubts. This is no different (in my mind) than Bill Frist saying we have to shove the tube back into Terry Schiavo.

If this bill were to fund clinics that gave free HPV vaccinations, or for a an education campaign on the benefits of the vaccine, I'd be 150% for it. What I don't like is the government removing medical choice from people. This is a privacy issue.

[Shakespeare]

76. birth defects aren't exactly a big concern here....

...considering the vaccine is for prepubescent girls.

There have been extensive trials done on the HPV vaccine, and they should continue. But when a vaccine is shown to be SO effective--as this one has--it should not be withheld from the public once it is INITIALLY PROVEN safe and effective.

It's not a privacy issue when it concerns a communicable disease--it's a public health issue.

[Recursion]

79. Jesus F. Christ...

Thalidamide was an example of how medical science is not always right; I'm not saying this causes birth defects. I'm also not saying it doesn't. And I'm not saying that it doesn't cause cancer or meningitis or parkinson's or huntington's or fibromyalgia or anything else because we don't have the data on its long-term effects because pharma won't let us have the data and as always legislatures play along because "doctors know best" (never mind their demonstrated failures in the past).

I'm saying that any treatment has unforseen consequences and it does not behoove a liberal state to mandate medical treatment, for that very reason.

Look, if you want someone to back sex ed and safe sex education, I'm there. If you want someone to back free clinics that allow people to voluntarily receive this vaccination, I'm there.

But if you want me to sit by and watch the government *force* women to receive this vaccine, no matter what their own choice is, I'm not there at all.

[Shakespeare]

82. We DO have data.

And I disagree that it shouldn't be mandated, because it concerns a communicable disease, which makes it a public health issue. In that case, the government DOES have the right--and the responsibility--to mandate it.

[Recursion]

84. OK, so demonstrate to me that the long-term effects...

...of this vaccination are a net gain over not having this vaccination. I'm aware that it prevents HPV; hell, I'll grant that it is 100% successful in preventing HPV. Now show me that it does not produce any more serious side effects than HPV.

[Recursion]

87. We caught Pharma with their pants down once about vaccination

with the mercury they were shooting into children. Are you sure that's the only bad thing Merck has put in there? Are you really sure? Are you sure enough to take away someone's right to refuse a treatment she does not want?

And are you sure they've taken the mercury out? I received (against my will) an anthrax vaccination that contained mercury 3 years ago.

[Shakespeare]

115. You do know that the thimerosol ban applies only to children?

I think it should be extended to all vaccines, but the point remains that the HPV vaccine, as it is for girls technically considered "children," will not contain thimerosol.

[Recursion]

116. Breaking my vow to end my participation...

...ok... one last thing...

my point, which I feel you must be purposefully ignoring, is that mercury is one example of a harmful substance in a vaccine.

Do you know that's the only harmful thing that was in there?

Since you don't know, why are you so cavalier about telling someone else she must have one injected into her?

[Shakespeare]

90. Demonstrate that they have side effects.

Neither of us can do what you ask--or what I counter with, because it is an absolute. But the evidence to date showing no contraindications for the vaccine falls strongly in favor of my argument, and not at all for yours.

[Recursion]

93. Bingo: we don't know

And since we don't know, you can't mandate it for me. End of story.

[Shakespeare]

96. No, we DO know that it prevents a communicable disease.

Therefore it's a public health issue, and I say you CAN mandate it. Not "end of story."

[Recursion]

101. It *IS* the end of the story because you don't know what else it does

And until you can *show me* that it doesn't have other side effects (like 99% of medications do) you cannot tell me that I must have it injected into my body.

[Shakespeare]

113. See my post above RE vaccine v. medication.

There's a reason respected doctors and other medical authorities feel this is safe enough to be approved; and a large part of that confidence comes down to the difference between a vaccine (and its effects on a body) and a medication (and any potential side effects).

[Mojorabbit]

229. I disagree

Without long term studies you do not know what might happen as a side effect down the line.
Most vaccines cause problems in a subset of the population. There are always side effects for at least some.
Look at the smallpox vaccine most of us have had.
"Life-Threatening Reactions

Rarely, people have had very bad reactions to the vaccine. In the past, between 14 and 52 people per 1 million people vaccinated for the first time experienced potentially life-threatening reactions. These reactions require immediate medical attention:

* Eczema vaccinatum. Serious skin rashes caused by widespread infection of the skin in people with skin conditions such as eczema or atopic dermatitis.
* Progressive vaccinia (or vaccinia necrosum). Ongoing infection of skin with tissue destruction frequently leading to death.
* Postvaccinal encephalitis. Inflammation of the brain."

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/bt/smallpox/7021.htm

If they start large scale vaccinations I can guarantee you there will be people who will have a reaction and who may die. We won't know till years from now if there are any long term adverse effects.Nothing is a hundred percent safe. I wouldn't want my daughter if I had one to be one of the guinea pigs until everything shakes out on a new vaccine. I would want a choice.
I am hoping it will be fairly safe and without long term effects. If it is so it will be a blessing

[Odin2005]

119. FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, Thalidamide is irrelavent to the disscussion!!!

Morning sickness isn't contageous or life threatening. You are comparing apple to oranges.

[Recursion]

129. It most certainly is not

It's an example of a product that pharmaceutical companies said was safe, but wasn't safe. I chose it because it was a particularly graphic example; if you want more timely and relevant examples, Vioxx and Baycol come to mind.

Products like that exist. There are almost certainly unsafe products being dispensed today, just like there have been for centuries.

The FDA does not regulate the pharmaceutical industry. They are way too chummy with them, and most reviewers of research have financial interests in the industry. Drug companies test their own products, report their own results, and have those results reviewed by people on their payroll. If you trust that, fine; there are cases where I trust that too. But I literally can't imagine a sane person *mandating* that someone have a substance developed by this process injected into their body if they don't want it.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

146. Do you have children?

I think you'll find that mandated vaccination is a widely recognised/implemented concept.

[diamidue]

192. I'm not there either.

Unbelievable how people still are willing to believe everything they are fed by the medical establishment.

[nodehopper]

51. HPV is communicable

HIGHLY communicable. So communicable, in fact, that it is THE MOST COMMON STD.

The vaccine is against HPV.

[Jack Rabbit]

54. Uncle

You're right.

[colinmom71]

56. Just reiterating what the others said in their replies above...

HPV is very communicable, to the point of being practically epidemic. And it is what greatly contributes to the majority of cervical cancers and dysplasias (pre-cancerous cells).

My mother works for an OB/GYN firm in south Georgia processing insurance claims. She recently told me that in the last 10-15 years, the amounts of positive HPV diagnoses *and* abnormal pap smear results have increased EXPONENTIALLY at their firm. In fact, she now processes more insurance claims concerning these diagnoses than she does for obstetrics care (keeping in mind that each OB patient sees the doctors about 15 times for standard pregnancy care). And this is at just one OB/GYN office! It scares the crap out of me to think how many other women's care practices have had similar increases.

While I don't think that Michigan (and other states as well) should make the vaccine mandatory for school attendance, it should be highly recommended and offered for reduced and sliding scale prices for working and lower class families with 5th-6th grade aged daughters.

[kestrel91316]

55. I'm all for this. Vaccinate as many as you can.

Protect the herd!!!

[Recursion]

59. Please point me to the long-term safety studies on this?

I'd really love to see them.

Or are we just mandating whatever vaccine Eli-Lily wants to make a profit on this quarter?

[kestrel91316]

86. You're joking, of course?????

Kindly inform me of the long-term HARM of vaccines? They are for PREVENTING disease. Name a human vaccine that has harmed individuals in the long-term (and I don't accept internet rumor mill citations). Human papillomavirus is what is doing long-term harm in the form of cervical cancer.

If you don't "believe" in vaccination, then by all means don't get vaccinated. But don't presume to deny others their benefits.

And yes, I know what I am talking about. I am a veterinarian with an undergraduate degree in microbiology, and have suffered through HUNDREDS of hours of university level course work in virology, immunology, and pathology. And I am a WOMAN who went through all her fertile, sexually active years without benefit of this vaccine. It is a GODSEND to women.

Go rain on somebody else's parade.

[Recursion]

91. I assume you're joking?

The long term harm of some vaccines has been so amply demonstrated I don't know where to start.

And incidentally, I believe in vaccination, and I believe in choice. What I don't believe in is mandating any medical treatment for any individual who would choose not to receive it.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

121. Well...

The long term harm of some vaccines has been so amply demonstrated I don't know where to start.


Perhaps with a citation?

[Tesha]

125. Then you shouldn't have any trouble naming the ones that caused harm. (NT)

[Recursion]

128. Well, for starters...

...there were about 50 that contained thimerosal for about 50 years. I can find them and list them if you want.

Now, everyone is going to say, "but they took out the thimerosal, problem solved". But that's because nobody even listens in an argument about medical choice. The point of bringing up thimerosal is that if you're going to trust immunizations you have to:

A) trust Eli Lilly and other Pharma companies that they have actually taken it out
B) trust Eli Lilly and other Pharma companies that nothing else in the vaccine is dangerous

Do I trust them? Yes, given the risk of disease that vaccines can prevent. But there's no way in hell I'll let you or anybody else *force* someone who doesn't want a vaccine to receive one. Pharma has lied many times before about the safety of their products. Why are you so insistent that they are getting it right now, when they've got it wrong so many times before? And why won't you give somebody else the freedom to choose whether or not they want a product injected into their bodies?

Ask yourself:

Have pharmaceutical companies ever lied about the risks of a product before? Yes.
Have pharmaceutical companies ever covered up studies that show a product is dangerous before? Yes.
Have pharmaceutical companies ever launched a product before doing sufficient research to determine long-term (or even short-term) safety implications? Yes.

Since the answer to all three questions are yes, the benefit of the doubt should go to a patient's choice whether or not to receive a drug.

[Tesha]

130. Thimerisol doesn't count. The jury's still out on that.

Thimerisol doesn't count. The jury's still out on that.

NAME THE VACCINES THAT CAUSED HARM (speculation about Thimerisol
aside).

You seemed to have them "at hand" a reply or two ago.

Tesha

[FoxOnTheRun]

132. there a lot, but they don't brag about it

UNICEF Nigerian Polio Vaccine Contaminated with Sterilizing Agents Scientist Finds
Scientist says things discovered in vaccines are "harmful, toxic"

KADUNA, Nigeria, March 11, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A UNICEF campaign to vaccinate Nigeria's youth against polio may have been a front for sterilizing the nation. Dr. Haruna Kaita, a pharmaceutical scientist and Dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, took samples of the vaccine to labs in India for analysis.

Using WHO-recommended technologies like Gas Chromatography (GC) and Radio-Immuno assay, Dr. Kaita, upon analysis, found evidence of serious contamination. "Some of the things we discovered in the vaccines are harmful, toxic; some have direct effects on the human reproductive system," he said in an interview with Kaduna's Weekly Trust. "I and some other professional colleagues who are Indians who were in the Lab could not believe the discovery," he said.

A Nigerian government doctor tried to persuade Dr. Kaita that the contaminants would have no bearing on human reproduction. "…I was surprised when one of the federal government doctors was telling me something contrary to what I have learned, studied, taught and is the common knowledge of all pharmaceutical scientists -- that estrogen cannot induce an anti-fertility response in humans," he said. "I found that argument very disturbing and ridiculous."

<snip>

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/mar/04031101.html

[Tesha]

133. Ah, good, a whack-job story. Next? Has no one any real evidence??? (NT)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

144. THAT...

...is a freakish right-wing pro-life site. Please tell me you don't get your medical news from them.

[FoxOnTheRun]

157. The internet in nigeria is pretty useless,

I would say, how can I obtain a newspaper outlet from there?

[iverglas]

252. and their strange bedfellows

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol18no2/182polio.htm

UN mediates polio deadlock in Nigeria

New infections threaten global eradication drive

The controversy began in July 2003, after some Islamic religious leaders charged that vaccines supplied by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) had been deliberately contaminated with sterilization chemicals as part of the US war on terrorism. In response, four state governments in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria halted a vital immunization campaign until their safety concerns were met. Now all but one state has agreed to resume vaccinations, and local authorities in the final holdout, Kano, have indicated they will soon follow suit.

... Federal Nigerian government and independent testers announced last year that no contaminants had been found, but tests by the Kano state government were said to confirm the presence of oestrogen and other foreign substances. With the scientists at odds and relations between the Muslim north and the federal government already strained by communal Christian-Muslim violence and the adoption of Islamic Sharia law by most northern states, the dispute ground into political standstill -- with disastrous results.

Northern Nigeria is one of only six remaining pockets of naturally occurring polio on earth, together with India, Pakistan, Niger, Afghanistan and Egypt. But because Nigeria's immunization programme was interrupted, the strain unique to the region has spread, reinfecting southern Nigeria and at least 10 other African countries -- Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Sudan and distant Botswana, over 4,000 kilometres away.

There sometimes are sterilization problems with immunization programs in Africa -- problems with the sterilization of the equipment.


Religious fundamentalists opposing life-saving health programs and policies ... who'd 'a thunk it??

Funny how eager the right-wing Christians (and especially RCers, internationally) are to get into bed with the right-wing Muslims.

And even funnier how eagerly liberty-lovers supposedly on the other end of the political spectrum eat it all up.

[LostinVA]

275. That's a bonkers extreme RW site -- another cite?

[Recursion]

134. OK, if you say thimerosal didn't cause harm, then I give up

That's the "inert" ingredient I know about. And if you refuse to acknowledge the dangers, there's not much I can do to convince you.

I still think you're missing my point:

1. You don't have to convince me that vaccines are safe because I largely agree, and have received vaccinations.

2. To get me to go along with this, you would have to convince me that despite their having put unsafe materials in vaccines before (and I'm still a little astounded you think "the jury is out" on whether or not mercury is safe), and despite the fact that they still put it in adult vaccines, Eli Lilly, et al, have somehow in the past 6 years become model corporate citizens and are not putting anything else unsafe in there, and we can trust them on that without independent studies of the long-term safety effects of vaccination.

2a. Just reminding you, I personally view the potential risk of vaccines as low compared to the potential risk of the diseases they prevent. What I don't do is project my judgment on that issue onto others and force them to receive vaccinations if they do not trust the vaccine's manufacturer.

3. If we had a functioning FDA that actually tested and studied drugs and vaccines, and held manufacturers accountable for their lies and mistakes, I'd be much more amenable to this kind of thing.

4. If the vaccine is safe and effective, then the only people harmed by not receiving it are those who don't receive it. It's not the government's job to protect me from my own beliefs (yes, this is more complex because we're talking about children, but my inclination is to always lean towards choice over government decision in medical questions).

5. On this concrete question, the link between HPV and cervical cancer is no more firm than the link between thimerosal and autism (I'm personally not sold on either as the sole cause of the linked condition). Roughly one fifth of the population carries HPV 16 and 18, and roughly 1% of women develop cervical cancer; about 90% of those who develop it carry HPV. Cancer is a wildly complex subject and we've been searching for a single viral "magic bullet" that causes it for decades, with little success, while ignoring all the toxins we have been dumping into our environment and bodies.

5a. Expanding that, no test has ever been done to see if use of the vaccine lowers the rate of cervical cancer. HPV is not the sole cause of cervical cancer (as proven by the fact that at least 10% of those who develop cervical cancer do not carry the virus), so the question of whether or not removing the single factor of HPV would prevent these cancer incidences is open. There are people with HPV16 and HPV18 without cervical or penile cancer, and there are people with cervical and penile cancer without HPV16 and HPV18. In essence, Eli-Lilly wants to use a generation of children as an experimental group before finding out if removing the HPV factor stops the cancer, and before finding out if the vaccine itself has long-term health or safety consequences.

5b. Obviously every drug is going to need human tests; I understand this. But those subjects need to be willing patients who volunteer to receive it, not mandated human guinea pigs.

6. Finally, has a cost-benefit analysis been done on this? Would the money for this prevent more HPV infections if it were spend on sex education and prophylactics? It might, it might not; I don't know, but I'd like to know before we spend a lot of money forcing yet another big pharma product into schoolchildren.

[kestrel91316]

139. We're talking about a SERIOUS, DEADLY public health threat.

Cervical cancer kills.

I believe in protecting the herd. Get the majority vaccinated. At least then, those who refuse the vaccine will also benefit because the virus won't be able to propagate thru the population.

[praeclarus]

99. so you're a vet...

... and that makes you eminently qualified to
judge the safeness of a vaccine even without any
studies.

I'm all for that. You should apply for a job
at Monsanto, they'd love you there.

[kestrel91316]

140. Your statement implies that you believe there have been no safety studies.

Words escape me at the level of ignorance here.............

FDA won't even consider approval of a vaccine without millions (or is it billions) of dollars worth of safety and effectiveness studies.

Yes, I'm a veterinarian. I realize that automatically makes me an ignorant boob.

The anti-science attitude I see in some of these post obviously qualifies you and others of your ilk for jobs at the Vatican or Bob Jones university.

[Bridget Burke]

143. Veterinarians need good backgrounds in biology....

And all the branches of the discipline that apply to medicine--human or otherwise.

Of course, it's even possible for a liberal arts dropout like me to avoid pig-ignorance.

There HAVE been studies.

[Recursion]

152. Sure, studies funded by the manufacturer

And reviewed by owners of the manufacturer's stock, and the data vetted and selected by the manufacturer who is completely free to ignore datasets they don't like.

There were hearings on this... when? '01? '02? I'll search for them for you. One exchange went something like this:

Senator: "You had this one trial of 10 children, 9 of whom died and one of whom survived. You claimed a 100% success rate for the treatment"

Pharma rep: "Yes"

Senator: "How do you call a 10% survival rate a 100% success rate?"

Pharma: "It was a 6-month course of treatment; since the 9 subjects who died did not receive the full course, they could not be counted"


9 of the 10 subjects died taking the treatment, and they published the safety and efficacy study saying it was 100% effective.

FDA said nothing for 10 years and it took a Senator (a Repuke at that; I need to find that hearing transcript and nail it up to the church door here) to get them to acknowledge they had done that -- and it still didn't have any effect on the company's ability to sell the product!

[LostinVA]

276. Beat me to it! I trust my vet as much as my GP

[matcom]

122. Since all the MORAN'S have already posted, I can honestly say

:woohoo:

without fear of reprisal

hopefully this will expand nation wide

[Tesha]

126. I'm starting to believe that the correct answer...

I'm starting to believe that the correct answer is that the
vaccine should create an indelible mark that is very-difficult
to reproduce fraudulently.

Then all the know-nothings can refuse the vaccine, but before
anybody sensible sleeps with anybody, they simply say: "Okay,
show me your HPV tat."

When the HIV vaccine finally debuts, do the same thing but
make the mark different.

No tat(s)? Send the proposed partner on their way.

With a little luck, in a few generations, know-nothingism might
even be selected-out of our species.

Tesha

[FoxOnTheRun]

136. hopefully

[The2ndWheel]

151. Haha! That's a good joke!

You are joking, right?

[sadiesworld]

269. Unless males are vaccinated your plan is flawed.

[Tesha]

273. I'm entirely in favor of vaccinating males as well. (NT)

[hippiechick]

127. Agreed!

:applause:

[IronLionZion]

135. Here are some things for everyone to read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus

click on the links at the bottom of that article too for more information. You may have HPV right now and not even know.

[bpeale]

141. anyone remember swine flu vaccine?

i think this is another swine flu vaccine type of thing, and i think they are using these young girls as testers. bet it hasn't been vetted by the fda either. if i was a parent, i would be hitting the roof on this thing.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

145. Anyone RTFA?

bet it hasn't been vetted by the fda either

From TFA:
Her initiative follows recent Food & Drug Administration approval of the vaccine for girls and women ages 9 through 26.


And this has about as much in common with the Swine Flu thing as... Well, no, it has almost nothing in common with the swine flu thing, which was an emergency vaccination programme aimed at a nonexistent threat. HPV DOES exist, causes cervical cancer, and kills.

[Recursion]

148. Oh, right, the FDA...

Her initiative follows recent Food & Drug Administration approval of the vaccine for girls and women ages 9 through 26.

Yeah... because their record recently in actually studying drugs once pharma says "it's ok" is stellar.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

160. Who's talking about drugs? n/t

[LostinVA]

277. Zero in common with the swine flu thing

But, I suspect you already knew that. Next straw-man, please!

[NotGivingUp]

147. This is what's in vaccines and BTW...it was NOT mandated to eliminate

the thimerosal(mercury).

Vaccine Fillers and Ingredients
from mercola.com

In addition to the viral and bacterial RNA or DNA that is part of the vaccines, here are the fillers:

aluminum hydroxide
aluminum phosphate
ammonium sulfate
amphotericin B
animal tissues: pig blood, horse blood, rabbit brain,
dog kidney, monkey kidney,
chick embryo, chicken egg, duck egg
calf (bovine) serum
betapropiolactone
fetal bovine serum
formaldehyde
formalin
gelatin
glycerol
human diploid cells (originating from human aborted fetal tissue)
hydrolized gelatin
monosodium glutamate (MSG)
neomycin
neomycin sulfate
phenol red indicator
phenoxyethanol (antifreeze)
potassium diphosphate
potassium monophosphate
polymyxin B
polysorbate 20
polysorbate 80
porcine (pig) pancreatic hydrolysate of casein
residual MRC5 proteins
sorbitol
sucrose
thimerosal (mercury)
tri(n)butylphosphate,
VERO cells, a continuous line of monkey kidney cells
washed sheep red blood cells

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

And you thought you were just getting a viral vaccine. In many cases the vaccine additives are far more toxic than the viral component. This is particularly true for thimerosal which is mercury.

Many will say that thimerosol is not in the vaccines any more. Well last summer Congress "strongly recommended" that the Pharmaceutical Company take the thimerosol out of vaccines....it was not mandated; simply recommended. The drug companies were not told to take the existing lots off the market. The recommendations only applies to new product line manufacture. An unknown amount of vaccine was/is still on the shelves.

Now the twist:

Yes, the new vaccines are supposed to be thimerosal-free, but I'm not sure that they are. In addition, it is unknown when you get a vaccination if you are getting a "new lot" or an "old lot." It is unknown exactly when the new thimerosal-free vaccines went into effect and were available in the market. In addition, if you were vaccinated with an old lot, or vaccinated previous to last summer, you got a dose of the mercury.

NOW the 'big marketing push" for vaccines, in 6 color glossy is "this vaccine is THIMEROSAL-FREE!!!!"....as if they had no idea before last summer that mercury was a problem. And, in response to "YOUR CONCERNS (even tho unfounded), oh faithful followers, we are making a new, and safe vaccine."

[Shakespeare]

155. Yes, by LAW thimerosol has been phased out.

They were given an arbitrary deadline (which has now passed) to get rid of old supplies that still contained the stabilizer, but it's gone now. All new vaccines for children (and this one is specifically for prepubuscent girls) are prohibited from containing thimerosol.

Good lord. I can't believe we're still all arguing about this. I don't think most of you really realize what a threat HPV is. I happen to know from personal experience, and I'm BEYOND thrilled that they've developed a vaccine to save girls from going through what I've gone through. The really hideous thing about the variant of HPV that causes cancer is that you never know you have it until you get the abnormal pap. There are no symptoms--it's silent, and potentially very deadly.

But hey! Let's all go have a colposcopy (and no anesthetizing drugs, doncha know!), just for fun! Woohoo!

(For those of you who don't know, it's the first step in confirming the effects of HPV, and involves the gynecologist hacking at your cervix with what's basically a fish hook on a long handle, AFTER your cervix is doused in acid. They allege that there are no nerve endings there--bullSHIT--and give no anesthetisa, not even local. After that fun, there are potentially subsequent colposcopies (I had THREE!), and then cryosurgery, which is also horrifically unpleasant, and also done without numbing. And that's just the physical part--the emotional aspect of going through this, and knowing that you may have or do have cancer, is even more harrowing.)

Yes, this vaccine is a very good thing, and yes, I think it should be mandated for all girls. I've actually taken the time to READ about the development of the vaccine and the studies to test its safety and effectiveness, and have no problem with getting it out there before the 10-year mark.

[Recursion]

158. But the link between HPV and cervical cancer is hardly solid

about 50% of people in the US carry HPV. About 20% carry HPV-16 or HPV-18. Of those 20% with -16 or -18, about 2% of the women will develop cervical cancer. Of women who don't carry HPV, about 1% will develop cervical cancer.

I don't normally shout, but I'm doing this because people are so blithely ignoring an obvious fact:

We don't know yet that preventing the transmission of HPV will prevent that 1% "gap" in cancer rates

It may. If it does, awesome; fund the drug and get it into free clinics. But this will take years -- decades -- of study to demonstrate. And as I've said on this thread time and time again, banging my head into a wall, I cannot in good conscience support mandating a drug whose ultimate purpose is not proven and whose long-term effects are unknown.

(And let me stress, since someone may misinterpret: I am granting for the sake of this argument that the vaccine is 100% effective in blocking HPV transmission. What I'm saying is this will be the experiment that proves whether HPV is a marker of cervical-cancer causing pathogens or a cause itself. We don't know the answer to that yet, and I guess part of my irritation with this subject is that we've been searching fruitlessly for viral causes of cancer for decades when that money would have been better spent on studying and combating environmental carcinogens.)

[FoxOnTheRun]

161. What About SV 40 polio vaccines and cancer

Even CDC
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/cancer/default.htm

isn't lying blatantly

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

169. What about it? n/t

[FoxOnTheRun]

171. it's a viral cause for cancer and the polio vaccines were infected with it

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

172. So we shouldn't have vaccinated against polio?

:shrug:

[diamidue]

193. Do you want to vaccinate against all diseases?

I mean, do you want children to have to be vaccinated against 400 different diseases? What is to stop the govt. from joining with vaccine makers into requiring ever more and more shots for women and children? How much can a child tolerate? Polio was a huge problem. This is a relatively small problem in comparison.

[Lars39]

197. For the women involved it's not a small problem.

300,000 women die each year from cervical cancer.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

258. Hey, but they're just *women* right.

This is a women issue, not a health issue.

I'd add a sarcasm tag, but this thread has broken my sarcasm-o-meter.

[sadiesworld]

270. Out of the estimated 546K who will die from cancer this year in the US...

less than 4K will die from cervical cancer. On the TODAY show this AM they had a commercial...er, segment about this vaccine and two others which prevent diseases which will affect even fewer people. I think the poster makes a valid point about where the line is drawn, particularly when discussing mandatory vaccinations of new drugs.

I have mixed feelings on this issue, but it certainly seems like they've gone from 0 to 60 in record time here. There's also a great deal of money involved and you know how bushco likes to move $ out of the public and individual sphere into the hands of his corporate contributors.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

293. Gee, where to begin?

less than 4K will die from cervical cancer.

Oh. Only 4000. So, essentially, more than the number of soldiers who've died in Iraq. More than died on 9/11. But not enough, I guess.

n the TODAY show this AM they had a commercial...er, segment about this vaccine and two others which prevent diseases which will affect even fewer people.

So I'd like to know two things:

1) What do YOU think the threshold number of deaths per year should be for mandatory vaccination?
2) Who do you think OUGHT to set that threshold?


I have mixed feelings on this issue, but it certainly seems like they've gone from 0 to 60 in record time here.

This vaccine has been under development for going on twenty years.

There's also a great deal of money involved

Name something in medicine that doesn't.

[Recursion]

298. Easy: all the stuff that's getting overlooked

There's also a great deal of money involved

Name something in medicine that doesn't.

Nutrition.
Finding the health effects of environmental toxins.
Finding what can mitigate those health effects.
Safe sex practices education.
Studies demonstrating the superiority of a pharmacological solution for condition X compared to a non-pharmacological solution, be it hygiene, education, nutrition, lifestyle changes, environmental changes, or what have you.
Studying the impact of poverty on a population's vulnerability to a disease.
Studying the impact of occupational hazards and stresses on a population's vulnerability to a disease.
Studying the impact of lifestyle hazards and stresses on a population's vulnerability to a disease (look how long it took to get medical science to move on smoking).
Studying the impact of a still-patriarchal and still caucasian-oriented medical establishment on a population's vulnerability to a disease.
Educating at-risk populations on what actions they can take to improve and maintain their own health.

There's not a great deal of money involved in these, but there should be. Nobody makes money doing this so money isn't being put into it, despite the fact that doing this could well save more lives than the next wonder drug. Some high-profile exceptions (asbestos, lead, reproductive choice for women) have scared some powerful people so much that it's even more difficult to get more of them done.

[LostinVA]

278. Mind-blowing, isn't it?

[Shakespeare]

162. Uh, yes it is solid.

You really, really need to do a little more research into this. And they've already done decades of study on the link.

Mine cleared on its own after the cryosurgery, but many, many women are not that fortunate. I only had to go through a LITTLE hell, and I was one of the lucky ones.

I understand that your issue is with making the vaccine mandatory by law. I get that. But don't try to discount what's known medically about HPV to try and manufacture a reason to push your point. I get your point just fine, all on its own.

[Recursion]

168. Then why do people without the virus get the cancer?

And why do people with the virus not get the cancer?

2% of women with the two HPV strains develop cervical cancer. 1% of women without the two HPV strains develop cervical cancer. It's at best a cofactor, and the reason I'm harping on this is I believe government research grant policies are far too oriented towards easy, single-pathogen "solutions" to diseases because nobody wants to address the health effects of environmental toxins and other multiple-pathogen models, and because nobody gets rich off addressing those issues, while plenty of people get rich with pharmaceuticals.

But, hey, we'll have the data in 30 years or so if this vaccine gets widely used. If lifetime cervical cancer rates drop from 1% to about 0.6%, then we can say the vaccine prevents cervical cancer. If it doesn't, then our model is wrong. It's a test we haven't done, because we don't have time to since women are dying from cervical cancer now and as a society we seem to have judged that it's better to have widespread use of a treatment whose long-term efficacy is not known than to let people keep dying.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

170. LOL.

There is no connection between drunk driving and car wrecks.

Some people drink and drive, but do not get in car wrecks.

Some people get in car wrecks, but were not drinking and driving.

Who the hell does Bill Frist think he is telling me I can't drink and drive!!!11 ZOMG!!1!

[Recursion]

177. Fine, I can show you those data

According to MADD, 0.5% of drivers in a given day are intoxicated (I have no verification for that number other than in a MADD letter I got after I joined; but let's run with it). According to NHTSA, 40% of all traffic fatalities are caused by a drunk driver.

That is to say, if you are intoxicated, you are about 1200 times as likely to cause a fatal accident as a non-intoxicated driver.

Now, some cities have instituted programs to reduce the rate of drunk driving. For instance, Washington DC introduced a free cab ride home program for holiday evenings in 2000. According to DCDOT, since 2000 drunk driving fatalities during these holiday periods are down 25%. By this model, an absolute eradication of drunk driving should reduce the fatalities by 40%, but it seems safe to assume that the programs were not universally followed, and indeed DCDOT lists some fatalities on those holidays as having been caused by alcohol. But at any rate, the reduction is the right order of magnitude for the model, and the model is vindicated by these data.

Now, let's compare the link between HPV and cervical cancer. Roughly 20% of women carry the relevant strains of HPV (16 and 18; over half of us carry *some* form of HPV). Of those women who carry it, roughly 2% will develop cervical cancer over a 70-year lifetime. Of those women who don't carry it, roughly 1% will develop cervical cancer over a 70-year lifetime. See a difference already: the drunk driving statistics are linking a cause to an effect that very night, while the HPV statistics link a cause to an effect decades later. But at any rate, this shows that a woman carrying HPV is twice as likely to develop cervical cancer as a woman who does not have HPV.

Fine, that's a model and I'm willing to run with it. The model says that if HPV spread is prevented 100%, about 30% of the women who get cervical cancer now will stop getting it. So, over the next 70 years, if we see a 30% drop in cervical cancer rates, the model is vindicated. I'm not saying it's impossible or unlikely, I'm saying we don't have the data yet, and we have far too often jumped on a viral bandwagon for cancer before.

Now, also compare this to the smallpox vaccine I received in 2003. A historical view of smallpox shows us that in an outbreak about 66% of unimmunized persons will contract smallpox, most of whom will die. Among the immunized population, contraction of smallpox during an outbreak is for all intents and purposes 0.

There's a lot more at work here than just one virus, and pouring so much money and energy into viral solutions is what really bothers me about this.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

186. Let's get down to basics.

You're just afraid of needles. Aren't you?

[XemaSab]

226. Post of the day!

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

[Shakespeare]

176. Your logic is false, and I suspect you know that. HPV is not the ONLY....

...cause of cervical cancer (and no one has suggested it is), but it's a real cause, and one that's been studied for years. Do you know how many thousands that "one percent" translates to? It's beyond offensive that you try to minimize it by repeating "one percent" over and over as if it represents such a small segment of the population that it's not worth pursuing a cure. Fuck that, and fuck you for doing that.

And the HPV/cervical cancer link--which, in its own way, IS an environmental factor--was known and studied long before pharma-sponsored grants dominated the scene. I understand your arguments about long-term study--I've made that clear. I understand your position on government-mandated vaccines--I've made that clear as well. But you have completely ignored the results of a significant amount of study that's already been done on the vaccine. We have differing opinions on whether that vaccine should be mandated, but our opinions don't discount the efficacy that studies have already shown. You're trying to conflate the two, and that is wrong.

You have not once offered an argument about what is currently known about the vaccine: your argument is that no long-term studies have been conducted, and that the government shouldn't mandate the vaccine. Let that argument stand on its own; don't try to bolster it by ignoring what's known about the vaccine or by trying to minimize the deadly effects of HPV. That's bad logic and extremely disingenuous.

[iverglas]

250. co-factors ... multiple unrelated factors ...?

http://www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C369713.html

Cigarette smoking accounts for approximately 30% of cervical cancers deaths in the USA, with women smokers having a two-fold increase in the incidence of this disease over never-smokers. Cessation appears to have an immediate effect, with former smokers having no increased risk of developing cervical cancer.

A 9-year prospective study of over 6,000 women found a dose-response relationship between smoking cigarettes and the risk of cervical cancer. Those who smoked 15 or more cigarettes per day were 80% more likely to develop cancer or precancerous lesions than nonsmokers. Those who smoked for 10 or more years were 80% more likely to develop cancer. Starting smoking younger than age 16 produced twice the risk of nonsmokers for developing cervical pathology. Smoking is one co-factor that makes HPV-infected cells more likely to turn cancerous.

Of course, we promiscuous women are probably more likely to be smokers, too ...

[Recursion]

268. *shrug*

Of course, we promiscuous women are probably more likely to be smokers, too ...

I've never seen any data on that, though I can say anecdotally that times in Dmesg's life where he has been sexually promiscuous are also times in Dmesg's life when he has smoked, and in general I suppose one high-risk behavior may be an indicator of other high-risk behavior. I can also say anecdotally that among women who have had sex with Dmesg, the incidence of smoking is much higher than in the general population. So it's not implausible, but that would be an interesting dataset to acquire at any rate.

Moreover, high-risk behavior like smoking is probably a marker for things like:
* poverty
* stress
* lack of exercise

and any number of other environmental and lifestyle risks for many, many diseases. My dog in this fight is that I think we have for the most part beaten the "easy" (yes, that's sarcastic) single-pathogen, single-disease killers in the industrialized world. But we're still trying to shove 19th-century epidemiological pegs into 21st-century environmental and lifestyle holes, and I think cancer is the strongest example of that. I have never once said we should stop developing vaccines like this one or that they should be banned (I've never even suggested that anyone not receive the vaccine). I've stated my doubt that this will have a significant impact on cervical cancer rates, and we will have within the next few decades data that will confirm or deny that doubt so it's a bit pointless for me to keep going on. I've also stated as a matter of principle that no patient should receive any medical treatment he or she does not want, including vaccinations -- particularly given that mandatory and universal vaccination makes true cohort studies on the effectiveness of the vaccination impossible.

Edit to add: Now, if 100% of the population wants the vaccine and is capable of receiving it, then I suppose a cohort study like that would be unethical. However, I do not think 100% of the population wants to receive this vaccine, and I think it's improper to violate their privacy by forcing it on them, and that doing that also has the scientific disadvantage of preventing a cohort study to see if the vaccine actually works.

[Shakespeare]

286. hmmmm...what about those of us who aren't promiscuous?

I'm not--I've had six sexual partners over the course of my life (I'm 42), and all have been during serious relationships. Yet, I still contracted the form of HPV that can cause cervical cancer. It's not entirely accurate to consider high-risk behavior a real correlation to HPV contraction; it's at best a subset, and we don't even know how big a subset.

[Recursion]

288. That's a very good point

And I hadn't meant to imply that anyone who has HPV is having promiscuous or unsafe sex. The transmission of HPV is an understudied question if pubmed is any indication.

It's not entirely accurate to consider high-risk behavior a real correlation to HPV contraction; it's at best a subset, and we don't even know how big a subset.

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about: we're jumping very very fast towards finding a pharmaceutical solution before we've even fully understood the problem. What are all the transmission vectors for HPV? Which ones are more effective? Is it different for different strains? Does the transmission method affect correlation between HPV and cervical cancer, or is any method of acquiring the virus equally dangerous?

Why I'm irritated by the rush-to-vaccine is that until we spend the time and money to understand how and why HPV spreads, under what conditions, and what effect that spread has on incidences of cervical cancer, we might end up coming up with a much less effective solution. Do we know that an HPV vaccine will prevent more deaths from cervical cancer than some other use of that money, say, by better and less invasive screening techniques, or by bribing enough Republicans to finally let condoms be distributed anonymously to any teen who wants one? We have a finite amount of money and researchers to allocate here (well, money at least; the researchers tend to follow that once it's allocated :) -- and I'm not ragging researchers here; it's tres hard to get funding nowadays and I know they have to do what they have to do to keep doing work), and our default solutions seems to be that searching for a single pharmacological magic bullet is going to be the best expenditure of money when in many cases spending that money on education and other forms of prophylaxis might well save more lives -- we don't know.

And why don't we know? Someone below mentioned how 20 years of research have gone into this -- huzzah and kudos to those scientists who did this, but in those 20 years of finding a vaccine, why couldn't we afford a few studies to find out all these unknowns, like, why only some women with the virus develop cervical cancer? why do some women never exposed to the virus develop it? what is the mechanism by which this virus causes or aggravates cancer (pubmed found me one study suggesting a kind of intra-cell protein replacement -- this is an interesting lead; why wasn't that followed up and fully explicated?)? what is the epidemiological course of the virus through the population? how can a virus responsible for a deadly disease be present in such a large percentage of the population? what historical models do we have for that, and how can we apply them here? Are there common environmental or lifestyle factors in the women who do develop cervical cancer after HPV? Do they share those factors with women without HPV who develop cervical cancer? Do they share those factors at the same rate of incidence (and if not, does the disparity to the common cause or marker model I mentioned earlier)? Will a vaccine prevent more transmissions of the virus than an education program? Will it do so at an acceptable cost (I'm not with the guy above who talks about "an acceptable death rate", but again we only have a finite amount of money here)? What other virus-induced cancers do we know of in humans (K. sarcoma comes to mind, and thankfully has had much money spent on it in the past couple of decades -- is its transmission model comparable? if not what's the difference? if so what can we learn from it?)?

Forgive my cynicism, but I respectfully suggest that the reason *those* questions have not been studied nearly as thoroughly as the question "what pharmaceutical product can prevent the transmission of HPV?" is because none of those other questions -- while quite possibly more important to saving lives -- makes large corporations any money to answer.

[iverglas]

296. and what if I

was being Sahara-like in my humour ...

No, seriously, it's not unreasonable to consider the effects of the co-existence of risk factors, smoking and "promiscuity" (the quotation marks were there in the other post, just invisible) being possibles. I just don't know what it would tell us if it turned out that my multiple partners at a young age (i.e. undoubtedly HVP positive status) and smoking were both contributors to the condition of my cervix.

That a mandatory vaccination wouldn't have helped me? I'd say exactly the opposite: that removing one risk factor from the synergistic or whatever phenomenon could be just the ticket.

It's useful to know what causal factors are, including individual behaviours; it doesn't always mean that the problem can be solved once they're known. Were that true, there would be very little disease of any kind in the world ...

African women get HIV from the husbands they know to be having multiple partners, and many know that this is their big risk factor. It's not like they can do much about it.

Some 11-yr-old girls may grow up to smoke and have multiple partners and thus be at greater risk than otherwise. But it's nothing but plain old deviant puritanism to deny them protection against even one of those risk factors. I'm not saying anyone here is doing that, but it's a current that runs very strong in the USAmerican psyche, and you can bet it's a big force behind resistance to this plan in the real world.

If only people wouldn't do whatever foolish and naughty thing they're doing this time, they wouldn't be sick, be poor, be fat, be whatever else they are that is evidence of their unworthiness. The prosperity gospel: if yer good, yer rich (and healthy and beautiful); if yer bad, yer not. I always preferred the social gospel: one's duty is to help the disadvantaged, not blame them for their disadavantage.

I'm sure "lifestyle" factors played a role in my cervical condition, and obviously still play a role in my health. I was lucky -- but if I hadn't been, just imagine; not having the vaccine would have meant that I could never repent and reform!

[Marie26]

167. Well, good.

I'm just surprised a Republican is backing it. I'm also surprised at the level of ignorance about vaccines at DU.

[rodeodance]

173. yes, as generally, they would argue it would promote sex!

[rodeodance]

175. but this is woman congresscritter (when it comes to health, they generally

tend to be a bit more sensible and NOT follow the herd)

[Marie26]

199. I agree

It seems like the fundies might have offended many moderate Republicans w/this latest venture. Basically, they were trying to prevent a cure for cancer in order to force young women to be abstinent. It's like something from the Taliban. You'd think any mother would support a vaccine that can protect girls from such a deadly disease.

[winston61]

178. Listen, did you hear that sound?

It's the sound of heads exploding over the Family Research Council. Don't you love it?

[NotGivingUp]

179. The only safe vaccine is a vaccine that is never used- Dr. James A. Shanno

that's just one quote from one doctor. here's another:

'How about one entitled:

"HOW TO PUT THE MEDICAL QUACKS AND VACCINE PEDDLERS IN JAIL AND GET THESE FRIGGING UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAWS OFF THE BOOKS!!!"

Wake up out there folks, you're all sound asleep. The white collar criminals go right on doing quack medicine right under your noses - even those MDs with children who have suffered the results of their own stupidity go right on recommending other "safe" vaccines!! And the stupid public goes right on worshipping these half educated fools who are more of a danger than those who recommend vaccines outright.'

Dr Daniel H Duffy Sr


there are many more:
http://www.vaccinetruth.org/doctors_against_vaccines.htm

[Marie26]

188. "Dr. Duffy" is a chiropractor.

'Nuff said.

[NotGivingUp]

191. Unbelieveable...put the kool-ade down and do some research.

[Shakespeare]

195. Insult aside, I HAVE done research.

And I know how to tell the difference between real research and crackpot sites like mercola (which is EXACTLY what mercola is). The fact that you're suspicious of ALL vaccines pretty much precludes any possibility of reasoned debate with you. You have to start from at least somewhat logical territory before we can even begin.

[NotGivingUp]

200. Insult aside...obviously not enough.

[Shakespeare]

201. You are in NO position to make that judgment.

In case you missed it upthread, this is pretty personal to me. I've had precancerous cell growth (and the resulting and barbaric treatments) because of HPV. When you're staring down the possibility of having cancer, believe me, you DO you homework. I've educated myself as much as a layperson can on HPV and cervical cancer (and I'm of above-average intelligence with post-graduate degrees, so let's just add for fun that I'm probably much better at research than your averae joe), and have stayed VERY informed on developments in treatment, up to and including this vaccine.

Mercola is a JOKE. All-encompassing, all-inclusive rejection of all vaccines is ludditism at its worst, and also dangerous to public health. I tangled with another poster on this thread who has understandable issues with government mandating the vaccine, but he at least recognizes the potential value of the vaccine. That is a MUCH more reasonable position--something you'd do well to think about.

[NotGivingUp]

202. You are in NO position to tell me I am in NO position.

[Shakespeare]

212. Uh, yes I AM, and I notice you fall back repeatedly on....

...making attacks and hyperbolic statements, and back them up with ZERO argument. Just totally empty message areas....LOL. Weak, weak, weak--and the sure sign of someone with no basis to their position. So....good luck with that.

[NotGivingUp]

214. i see you are a very insulting person and not worth talking to. bye.

[Shakespeare]

215. Wow, project much?

You refuse to engage in rational debate, and get all huffy when you're called on it. Grow up.

[Recursion]

204. If you meant me

I'm militantly agnostic about vaccination. I think the data simply aren't there for a judgment. Infection and mortality rates for whooping cough, polio, and TB (off the top of my head) started declining before their vaccines were developed, and have continued to decline since. I'd be very surprised if the vaccines had no effect on their near-eradication in the industrialized world, but we never did studies to see how much of that decline was the vaccination and how much was the improvement in hygiene, nutrition, and lifestyle. Jenner's vaccine seems largely effective -- but that was the introduction of a whole, live, related virus stabilized in animal pus, a method no modern vaccine (including modern smallpox vaccines) that I know of uses.

I say I'm a "militant" agnostic about vaccines because I can see perfectly well that the data simply aren't there to form solid judgments about the effectiveness of most vaccines, and I get irritated when people say we do have that data, or call people with legitimate questions about the safety and efficacy of vaccines crackpots.

As for Mercola, I do get annoyed with him a lot too. In some ways his site is like DU: it's a clearinghouse for people disaffected with a corporately-dominated mediascape. To dismiss him because he publishes some crackpots would be like dismissing DU because we have some posters who believe that holograms of planes crashed into the WTC.

As far as pubmed can tell me, 0 studies have been done on the immunosuppressive effects of vaccinations and what long term health effects they may have, particularly on children. 0 studies have been done comparing infection and mortality rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts. This doesn't make me personally give up on vaccinations, but as I've said (and I as I thank you for recognizing) it makes me extremely unwilling to second-guess an individual's or parent's choice on the question.

Anyways, I'm sorry if I've been snap-ish in this thread, and I do appreciate the suffering you've been through. Hopefully some time soon we'll have an FDA that restores my trust in the pharma development process and this disagreement won't be necessary...

[Shakespeare]

211. No, that wasn't you I was referring to.

But you were the poster I referred to when I used the example of somebody who at least has a reasoned position, even though we disagree.

[iverglas]

220. me too, me three ...

Lost my cervix 20 years ago, the whole big cut it out procedure, because of microscopic precancerous lesions discovered by colposcopy after problematic PAP. Turned out there apparently weren't any more, but because of the location of the ones there were this was the only way to find out. I wasn't in a mood to be "conservative". My doctor had recommended the colposcopy rather than wait-and-see because she had recently had a patient go from dysplasia on a PAP to full-blown cancer in short order while waiting and seeing. I agreed. A cervix is something you can live without when the alternative is that risk.

That was before there was any solid knowledge of this cause of the cancer, I believe. What was known was that it was rare in nuns and that multiple partners were a risk factor. Now we know why.

Nobody should be at risk of any of it when there is *prevention* available. What utter nonsense all of the objections here are, and how utterly offensive the talk of tolerable death rates and everybody dying sometime are. The people who die of cervical cancer are women, commonly relatively young women (I was about 35 when I had surgery -- an age when many women have dependent children, just by the bye), and women who will probably be quite happy to die of some variety of old age, just like the rest of us.

Little girls and the women they will grow up to be are not pawns in anyone's game of Let's Diss Big Pharma. Surely there's a Viagra discussion going on somewhere that people bent on playing that game can go join.

[wtmusic]

241. And hence an expert on medical quackery nt

[fujiyama]

233. LOL

Considering most people don't have to worry about things like TB, polio, and smallpox...I'm gonna have to go ahead and say that vaccines that have been proven effective in combatting diseases should be widely administered. It's the only potential way to eradicate it.

Imagine, how many in developing countries would not die if a pharma developed a vaccine for say malaria or AIDS?

[Art_from_Ark]

243. Carrageenan might be a better preventive than the vaccine

The National Cancer Institute has recently revealed that carrageenan, a substance found in red algae that is commonly used as a food thickening agent, was extremely effective as an HPV inhibitor.

"We were screening different compounds for potential HPV inhibitors in vitro, and carrageenan, which is an inexpensive, widely available product, came up as being extraordinarily potent," says Douglas Lowy, a researcher with the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2656

By the way, I have a co-worker named Fujiyama who recently returned from a trip to a developing country in Africa. Mr. Fujiyama remarked that malaria there seemed to be as common as the common cold, with about the same recovery rate. It seems that continuous exposure to malaria there has led to natural immunization, or at least natural amelioration, against the disease.

[iverglas]

249. more dangerous claptrap

Mr. Fujiyama remarked that malaria there seemed to be as common as the common cold, with about the same recovery rate. It seems that continuous exposure to malaria there has led to natural immunization, or at least natural amelioration, against the disease.

http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_596.html

Malaria deaths on the increase

A report by WHO and UNICEF attributes the high Malaria death rates in Africa to inadequate medical care, failure to use insecticide treated nets and increased resistance to drugs.
Zachary Ochieng

The report, launched during celebrations to commemorate the African malaria day, says that the drugs hitherto used for the treatment of Malaria are losing their power while the next generation drugs are far beyond the reach of most families. The theme of the celebration was: "Insecticide treated nets and effective malaria treatment for pregnant women and young children by 2005".

... In Kenya 34000 children are killed every year - almost 90 per cent of the global figures. Malaria is also responsible for 30 per cent of outpatient cases and 19 per cent of inpatients. Some 6000 women suffer from Malaria related anaemia during the first pregnancy, thereby increasing chances of abortion, stillbirths and low birth weights.

According to the report, the disease costs the continent US$ 12 billion a year - a major constraint to social and economic development.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0612_030612_malaria.html

Only a small proportion of malaria infections are fatal, but children under five and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable due to their weaker immune systems. Brian Greenwood, a world authority on malaria and director of the Malaria Center at the University of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, estimates that 1 to 2 percent of cases lead to fatalities.

High recovery rates have sweet bugger all to do with "natural immunity"; they are the norm for the disease.

But hell, it's just little kids and pregnant women dying, so maybe your friend didn't notice them.

And so one day when a vaccine is developed, it won't be a good idea either ... if I'm not in the 1 to 2 per cent of infectees who dies, who cares whether the malaria-laden blood that mosquito extracts from me kills the next victim?

[Art_from_Ark]

253. More dangerous claptrap?

I am merely repeating what my colleague told me, after returning from his extended trip to SE Africa. The people there seemed to have little concern about catching malaria, according to his anecdotal evidence. I myself was quite surprised to hear that, but Mr. Fujiyama is not the type to joke about such a matter.

And you are aware that a malaria vaccine already exists, no? My colleague had to get one before his departure.

[iverglas]

255. good grief

Please don't say such foolish things in public. Some people might believe them.

No, a malaria vaccine does not exist.

Yesterday's news -- literally:

http://allafrica.com/stories/200609130201.html

Uganda: Study Leads to Hope for Malaria Vaccine
September 12, 2006
Posted to the web September 13, 2006

Josephine Maseruka
Kampala

A joint study by Makerere University and Karolinska Institute (KI) in Sweden has produced important findings on the malaria parasite, which will lead to the development of vaccines and therapies to combat severe malarial infections.

What your friend was probably given was Mefloquine, a subject of considerable controversy itself. This is a prophylactic (protective agent against the disease), not a vaccination.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/00vol26/26s2/26s2n_e.html

The people in the areas your friend visited may quite reasonably have had little concern about catching malaria. For one thing, it is not endemic everywhere in Africa; it is more common in some regions, and is much more prevalent in rural than urban areas, for example. And as I already said, it is not a serious threat for healthy adults; the death rate among infected people is actually quite low, as potentially fatal diseases go. The problem is that when the infection rate is so high, as it is in some areas, and when particular population groups are at such higher risk, the death rate within the population will be high, and particularly high within those groups.

http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_health/Transcripts/s927466.htm

Malaria affects 10 percent of the world's population. It kills about 2 million children every year. That is one every 15 seconds. Anti-malarials like the quinine-based drugs have to be taken regularly, and are too costly for much of the third world. What is needed is a vaccine. Australian scientists are at the forefront of the international effort to produce such a vaccine. They have made several breakthroughs, and are getting closer to providing relief from the devastation of malaria.

There is no vaccine against malaria, and malaria kills 2 million children a year, for starters. That's a rate of 33/100,000 -- and that's just the kids, and that's averaged out worldwide, when of course the deaths are concentrated, at a far higher rate, in certain areas. Two million of them!!!

Have a heart, and a brain. I'm sorry, but having an opinion about anything based on such unconsidered nonsense is silly; insisting in public that it is right is beyond foolish.

[Art_from_Ark]

257. My bad

You are right, there is no vaccine for malaria, just oral tablets. Mr. Fujiyama told me before he left that he would need a malaria vaccine, so I just assumed a vaccine was available. But now he told me there were just oral tablets available.

Pardon me while I go sit in this corner for a while :dunce:

[iverglas]

259. All learning is good

I have to do it myself in order to address things that just seem to need addressing.

Insecticide treated mosquito nets remain the best available protection against malaria -- just as condoms were the best available protection against HPV until the vaccine was developed.

Quinine was the original prophylactic against malaria -- hence the name "tonic water": Brit colonists drank water with quinine as a tonic against malaria. Gin just happened to go well with it. I've recently taken to drinking it a little myself, the tonic water part, because quinine has beneficial effects on muscle cramps, and when I work all night ... as I am doing now, having procrastinated too long to get any sleep ... or just don't get enough sleep, I get horrific foot cramps. Why one's toe (let alone the skin on the top of one's foot) would want to try to sever itself from one's body, I have never figured out. Anyhow, I googled up on quinine and decided I didn't really want to ingest it regularly, so I save it for outbreaks of cramps, and try to remember to take my potassium-laden vitamin supplements regularly, and extra when I'm unslept.

Anyhow, the thing about quinine and its modern descendants is that they do not provide extended protection against malaria, they just protect temporarily against it (I haven't figured out how) if they are taken consistently. That's expensive, and whether or not all the bad things said about them are true, long-term use isn't likely wise.

[LostinVA]

280. There IS no malaria vaccine

There is medication that can help you not get it if exposed -- a coworker took it, and it drove her semi-bonkers, and gave her horrible nightmares, but she could functional. I also know someone who got malaria, even from taking pills, and once you have it, you always have it.

Maybe your coworker mistook lack of concern for fatalism.

[LostinVA]

279. Fujiyama-san is mistaken about malaria n/t

[iverglas]

180. the Republican in question, just out of curiosity

Two news items from Planned Parenthood Michigan:

http://www.miplannedparenthood.org/newsletters/Summer05MIChoice.pdf#search=%22%22Beverly%20Hammerstrom%22%20abortion%22

We are perhaps most excited to announce that contraceptive equity legislation is back in play once again thanks to Senators Hammerstrom and Scott. Senator Martha Scott (D–Highland Park) introduced SB 431 to require insurance companies to cover FDA approved contraceptives in the same way other prescriptions are covered. Senator Beverly Hammerstrom (R–Temperance) introduced SB 432 to require the same of health care corporations. Both bills were referred to the Senate Health Policy Committee.

http://www.miplannedparenthood.org/newsletters/Fall05MIVoice.pdf#search=%22%22Beverly%20Hammerstrom%22%20abortion%22
Fairness at the Pharmacy Gains Support

Representative Steve Bieda (D–Warren) introduced House Bill 5175, a contraceptive equity bill that joins Senate Bills 431 and 432, which were introduced by Senator Beverly Hammerstrom (R–Temperance) and Martha Scott (D–Highland Park). Planned Parenthood is also pleased to see the Governor publicly support contraceptive equity through the priorities in her women’s agenda. The legislation, if passed, would require insurers who provide prescription drug coverage to include all U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptives in that coverage.

Editorial comment in favour of the move:

Thttp://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060212/OPINION03/602120321/1031/METRO
wo powerful lobbies, the Michigan Catholic Conference and Right to Life of Michigan, and the legal muscle of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, have helped move Michigan out front in backward time travel on women's health issues, especially abortion and contraceptive information.

But last week, female senators from different political persuasions -- Beverly Hammerstrom, R-Temperance, and Martha Scott, D-Highland Park -- mustered a Senate Health Policy Committee hearing to face the facts -- or at least the societal cost -- of sex.

However:

http://www.rnclife.org/faxnotes/1999/june99/99-06-24.shtml

A bi-partisan group of state senators has introduced legislation protecting the conscience rights of Michigan citizens who want abortion-free health care coverage. The three-bill package, SB 645-647, by Senators Beverly Hammerstrom, Dave Jaye and Phil Hoffman, would eliminate elective abortions as a standard covered benefit in health care plans and would require those wanting such coverage to request and pay for abortion coverage in a separate policy rider. Abortion is a standard benefit in most health care plans. Senator Hoffman, sponsor of SB 647, suggested the onus should be on abortion proponents to request such coverage. "This whole situation is backwards. If abortion is supposed to be a matter of "choice," then shouldn't people who want abortion covered have to choose it? Right now, those who don't want it are forced to pay for it. These bills don't deny anyone the ability to get abortion coverage. They simply have to ask for it in a separate rider, and be willing to pay a separate premium, too."

She has also sponsored a bill to permit pharmacists to deny service at their own whim (those "conscientious objectors" to doing the job they are paid to do).

Interestingly:
http://miboecfr.nicusa.com/cgi-bin/cfr/contrib_anls_res.cgi?can_last_name=Hammerstrom&sched=*&sort_1=common_name&sort_2=amount&sched=*
-- she received campaign contributions from numerous health care worker PACs, Blue Cross Blue Shield ... and Right to Life of Michigan. I wonder what they'll think of her contraceptive coverage proposal.



Oh, by the way. As a woman who lost her cervix 20 years ago as a result of surgery after pre-cancerous lesions were detected, I of course say yay, and hope to see this vaccine not only available but mandated in Canada in the near future.

One question: why not vaccinate boys? They're the ones most girls/women get the virus from ...

[iverglas]

185. and another interesting bit about her:

http://scienceandsarcasm.blogspot.com/2005/10/weve-elected-gay-bashers-to-michigan.html

We've elected gay-bashers to the Michigan Senate

Senators Alan Cropsey (R-33), Mike Goschka (R-32) and Alan Sanborn (R-11) put forward a resolution in the Michigan Senate in response to the recent ruling by Judge Joyce Dragonchuk, of Ingham County, that Proposal 2 does not prohibit public employers from providing benefits to same-sex domestic partners and their children. The resolution, as adopted, reads:

... Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That we urge the Michigan Supreme Court to take whatever steps are necessary to maintain the status quo, with regard to same-sex benefits, that was in place prior to the September 28, 2005, 30th Circuit Court ruling in order to prevent the spending of taxpayer monies to fund benefits for homosexual unions until the court has reached a final adjudication; ...

... The resolution was passed with a 22-16 vote with no abstentions. Two brave Republican Senators voted against - Senators Beverly Hammerstrom (R-17) and Shirley Johnson (R-13). By my count, that also means that 2 Democrats voted for the resolutions.

An odd duck.

[Marie26]

189. I like her!

For a Republican, she's made some courageous stands. Though it's mixed in w/some more traditionally conservative votes, too.

[bamacrat]

207. Good idea, but......

the type of cancer caused by HPV is pretty rare. And this is a little bit of a privacy issue I do believe.

[Shakespeare]

213. No, not that rare. And they also suspect it may cause penile cancer.

Maybe that'll get your attention. Here's the latest info on HPV and cancer:

HPVs are now recognized as the major cause of cervical cancer. In 2006, an estimated 10,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with this type of cancer and nearly 4,000 will die from it. Cervical cancer strikes nearly half a million women each year worldwide, claiming a quarter of a million lives. Studies also suggest that HPVs may play a role in cancers of the anus, vulva, vagina, and some cancers of the oropharynx (the middle part of the throat that includes the soft palate, the base of the tongue, and the tonsils) (1). Data from several studies also suggest that infection with HPV is a risk factor for penile cancer (cancer of the penis).

Now, I'm sure you see this as no big deal, but as someone who's dealt with this myself--thank GOD mine was caught when it was still in the precancerous stage--I think it's pretty fucking significant, and I'm apalled at the people on this thread who think the death rates from this are "acceptable." Fuck that, and fuck everyone who says so.

Edited to add link to National Cancer Institute page on HPV and cancer:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/HPV

[Jcrowley]

225. Coercive policy

Sex vaccine for girls: by law in Michigan
Michigan legislation introduced to coerce use of cancer vaccine

Michigan Republican state senator Beverly Hammerstrom introduced legislation today at the state capitol that would require all girls to be vaccinated for cervical cancer unless specifically exempted. This would make Michigan the first state in the union to require the vaccination against a cervical cancer, usually spread through via sexual contact, as a requirement of attending public or private schools.

http://www.speroforum.com/blog/

You can be pro or con vaccinations but this as a requisite is just another of the thousand steps towards authoritarian control.

[Marie26]

231. Do you believe

that polio, mumps & measles vaccinations should also be voluntary?

[Jcrowley]

232. Yes

n/t

[fujiyama]

234. .

[Marie26]

236. OK

And you realize, that if polio, mumps, plague etc. vaccinations were not required, those diseases would probably still be with us today? If one person refuses a vaccine, & later catches the disease, that person can act as a carrier to transmit the disease to many, many, other people - spurring an epidemic. It's a chain. Mass vaccinations work because when everyone is vaccinated, no one can carry the virus, & the virus is eventually eradicated. The chain of infection is broken, stopping the virus & saving lives. If girls are vaccinated now, they won't become infected w/HPV, & won't transmit it to others. And the 90% of cervical cancer cases caused by HPV are prevented. If it's voluntary, many women won't receive the vaccine, & HPV will continue to spread & cause deaths from cancer. By vaccinating girls now, it is saving thousands of lives later. If an AIDS vaccine is ever found, I would hope it'd be mandatory. Vaccines aren't a cure - they have to be administered before someone has the disease, and they have to widely issued to stop the spread of disease. A completely voluntary program won't accomplish this - especially because so many conservative families won't allow their daughters to be vaccinated for this disease.

[Recursion]

238. Except that infection and mortality rates for all those diseases...

...began their decline decades (or, in the case of polio, 5 years) before vaccines for them were developed.

Certainly vaccines seem to have played a role, but hygiene, sanitation, and nutrition seem to have played a larger role.

Single pathogen solutions are sexy and make the industry a lot of money; but they aren't what we need for our health problems anymore. The days of cholera and TB epidemics are over, but better sewage systems, public hygiene, and the large-scale eradication of malnutrition in the industrialized world (with notable exceptions -- which, btw, are populations in which these diseases are still at troubling levels) seem to have had as much to do with this as vaccination.

Now, do you want me to agree that it's messed up that fundie fathers are so terrified of their daughters' sexuality that they would deny them medical treatment? Yes, I agree with that 100%. What I don't agree with is that the state can effectively solve this problem through mandating that person X must receive medical treatment Y. Through education? yes. Through non-coercive incentives? yes. But ultimately, a patient's body is his or her own and you can't decide what happens to him or her, and as much as it may stick in your craw, you don't get to make a parent's medical decisions for his or her child either: that is the responsibility and right of the parent.

[iverglas]

248. and that is right-wing claptrap

you don't get to make a parent's medical decisions for his or her child either: that is the responsibility and right of the parent.

Along with all the other wonderful bits of social progress you cited -- sewage systems and suchlike -- came the marvellous notion that children are not chattel.

Parents do not possess either their children or their children's rights. Children are human beings with human rights. Parents are normally expected to exercise their children's rights on the children's behalf, in the children's best interests, *not* in the parents' interests or according to the parents' whim.

I doubt that you would say that no one gets to make a parent's liberty decisions for the parent's child, and thus the parent may choose to lock the child in a closet until the child is 16.

I doubt that you would say that a parent is entitled to send the ambulance away when the child whom the parent refused to secure in a child safety seat in a car is thrown through the windshield. But maybe you would.

Perhaps you would say that a parent who believes that playing with loaded firearms builds character is entitled to make that decision for his or her four-year-old. I dunno.

The fact remains that modern societies, or at least those segments of modern societies that are not mired in the twin uglinesses of misogyny and patriarchy, do not believe that children are objects without rights of their own; modern societies recognize children as subjects of their own lives like anyone else, and while parents will have considerable discretion in deciding what is in their children's interests, they do not have absolute discretion. Oversight is exercised by society, whether you like any particular instance of that oversight or not.

That said, this particular instance is somewhat different from vaccinations against run of the mill communicable diseases. There is a rational connection between compelling vaccination against measles and allowing public school attendance. Measles is spread by casual social contact. HPV is not. HPV is not communicable in the classroom. (Okay -- as they used to say about syphilis and toilet seats: unless you prefer that position.) There really is not a rational connection between mandatory vaccination and school attendance in this instance.

On the other hand, measles is not commonly a life-threatening illness in children. So while the risk of infecting others in a casual social setting is not present for HPV, the risk of death is not present for measles. It would be difficult to justify mandating measles vaccination other than by the risk of contagion in the schools, where the sheer numbers of possible infectees, including adults, raises the risk of serious outcomes. Even the risk of less serious outcomes should not have to be borne by others -- on that point, I'd just mention that I had measles twice as a child (before the vaccine was available), something that is rare to the point of being generally thought not possible, and when tested as an adult was not immune; it would seem that even being vaccinated one's self is not a guarantee of protection, and so a high rate of immunity in the people around one is very useful added protection. That's why I had myself immunized at the age of about 30: so that I would not pose a risk to pregnant women of my acquaintance should I be exposed to and contract measles.

HPV is not spread by casual social contact, but infection is epidemic and the risk of exposure is nonetheless extremely high for anyone who engages in even one sexual contact with someone who has had a previous partner. The fact that the source of the infection is not obvious or even ascertainable, and the consequences of infection are not immediate, as they are with, say, smallpox, makes it too easy to put it to the back of one's mind. If 3900 women and girls a year in the US had symptoms of, and were diagnosed with, a life-threatening disease three days after a sexual contact, at the age of 20 or 16 or 12, the whole thing might look a little different. But in fact it would be just the same.

Half of cervical cancers are diagnosed in women between 35 and 55. Women 35 to 55 make up about 15% of the US population -- about 45 million at present. With nearly 4,000 women dying of the disease every year, that's 2,000 out of 45,000,000 -- nearly 1 out of 20,000 women 35-55. Per year. Plus another 2,000 in other age groups. Standardized, for the entire population, a little over 1/100,000. Plus all the women who do not die but who undergo surgery, and all the personal and social costs associated with that, as has been pointed out.

The rate of drowning deaths per year in the US is about 1.5/100,000. About 1,000 kids under 20 drown every year -- an age group that is almost identical in size to the group of women 35-55: 1/2 as many as women in that age group, and 1/4 as many as all women who die of cervical cancer. Far less worrisome.

If a parent could immunize his or her kid against death by drowning before growing up, what parent wouldn't? What sane, responsible parent would rely on his/her kids following all those instructions about not swimming unsupervised, or on his/her own ability to never leave a kid in the bathtub while answering the phone? So what sane, responsible parent would rely on all that abstinence education to keep his/her daughter out of a deadly virus's way, or expect the pink unicorn to protect his/her daughter against sexual assault or abuse or exploitation?


Forget mandating the vaccination for public school attendance; mandate it universally as a matter of public health and protection of the lives of little human beings who are not competent to make life-saving decisions for themselves.



population data:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_S0101&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_

[Recursion]

271. The hell it is

There are risks and contraindications for any vaccine. Hell, there are risks and contraindications for the simple act of injection in the first place. So it's ultimately a judgment and weighing of risk, and that judgment has to be made by the patient and doctor (and patient's parents if the patient is a minor), not by a public health official.

[iverglas]

284. Well, I'm sorry, but:

There are risks and contraindications for any vaccine. Hell, there are risks and contraindications for the simple act of injection in the first place. So it's ultimately a judgment and weighing of risk, and that judgment has to be made by the patient and doctor (and patient's parents if the patient is a minor), not by a public health official.

Sez you.

It's quite beside the point for my purposes, but: no one here, or anywhere else that I've seen, has raised a single solitary "risk" or "contraindication" for this vaccination. And if you're seriously going to suggest that the act of jabbing is itself a risk or contraindication, I can only imagine what else you'd object to. Surely the act of requiring your kid to sit still and learn arithmetic is no less risky or contraindicated.

I don't think the proposal involves injections being given by school nurses on school premises. (I'd understand such an objection; I have two friends who recently died of Hep C from tainted blood -- the first from the tainted blood he received during the act of giving blood, because of inadaequately cleaned equipment.) It involves individuals receiving the injection from their own physicians, or whatever physician they chose to go to for a publicly paid-for vaccination. Heck; bring yer own disposable syringe.

We have a little test we use for these things up here in the weird and wonderful North; it's called the Oakes test, as developed some years ago by the Supreme Court to assess alleged violations of constitutional rights and determine what violations are justified, and it's similar in principle to the tests applied by the US SC in its various levels of scrutiny.

One of the elements of the test is proportionality. How huge is the interest of the individual, and how huge the violation of a right, versus the interest of the public and the harm that is being addressed?

How huge is the interest of an 11-yr-old girl (or boy) in not getting a jab? When no ill effects of the procedure or the treatment can be cited, whatsoever? Versus the public's interest in protecting the women whom little girls will become, and the women in their chain of sexual contacts, from cervical cancer? It's a liberty / security of the person interest. (Up here, we don't twist ourselves into knots saying that people have a "privacy" interest in not having things stuck into their bodies; we just spell it out in the constitution: everyone has a right to security of the person.) The rights that protect those interests are interfered with all the time. Seatbelts. Pros and cons from the individual's perspective, no argument brooked by the state because of its overriding interest in protecting members of the public from very foreseeable major harm (and the state from huge economic costs) by requiring them to accept a minuscule risk.

This is the sort of thing, indeed, that some litigious soul in Canada will without a doubt litigate if the vaccination is mandated here. We are an enormously litigious lot when it comes to constitutional rights; that's where same-sex marriage came from, of course. And as I said in another post, the arguments that support mandatory smallpox vaccination won't really apply. I'm sure we have deserters from that boat too, people who refuse to have their children vaccinated, but I figure a blind eye is mostly turned: the child itself is not at greater risk, as long as everybody else is vaccinated, and as long as everybody else is vaccinated, nobody's at risk from the child. Minor deviant behaviour is generally tolerable. But that behaviour, in the case of HPV, would -- in the minds of the scientific community on which I'm quite sure the SCC would rely here -- put the child itself at risk, and also create risks for other people at least for the phasing-in period, which I think would be rather long.

So it's "ultimately a judgment and weighing of risk" not only to the child, but to the public also. And there is absolutely nothing written on any stone table anywhere, in any event, that says that parents have exclusive authority to weigh risks to their children and make decisions accordingly. Our societies defer to parents quite a bit, and allow quite a lot of room for parental discretion, largely because we don't have overwhelming consensus on many aspects of childrearing. But denying a child a simple treatment that cuts her risk of developing a potentially fatal cancer by a more than significant proportion -- based on nothing but hypothetical and completely unidentified risks alleged to be associated with the treatment? I'm thinking not.

That's not to say that the proposal would fly, politically, even if the SCC, up here say, would be 99% certain to approve it. I doubt that it would, or that it will be tried, even in provinces and territories with relatively progressive governments. I just hope that it will be placed on the schedule of covered services (as "medically necessary"), and a huge campaign to include girls in the program is undertaken. I'm also seeing potentially prohibitive costs, although a wildly rough estimate would be that there are not many more than 50,000 11-yr-old girls in Ontario, e.g., so it isn't completely off the wall, especially if we strike one of our historically good bargains.

Why wouldn't it fly, though?

Because of the same ideology-couched-as-science I see all over this thread. Never trust The Man. Well, up here, only right-wingers and loons have that knee-jerk reaction to government policy proposals and social/health services programs. We've figured out that although Stephen Harper may be in power, that really just doesn't have a lot of effect on the physical scientists and social scientists and the like, beavering away in their public service workplaces on their public service projects. We don't find it all that difficult to look at something a govt is proposing and decide whether it's in our interests or not, and of course generally expect, nay, demand, that the government do things in our interests in the social/health services realm.

And looking south, what I see is a whole big lot of straining at gnats and swallowing SUVs. Of all the things that a Bush administration might concoct to git ya, vaccinating little girls against HPV just wouldn't be in the top 100 that would spring to my mind. Unless there were some tin foil deflecting thoughts into my head from somewhere.

[LostinVA]

283. Good post n/t

[Marie26]

297. Hygiene plays a larger role than vaccines?

Are you kidding? You may have jumped the logical shark here. Americans in the 1950's lived pretty much the same as today, w/public hygiene, running water, etc. - and polio, measles, & mumps ran rampant. Those diseases were only eradicated after public vaccinations. The same for the plague. The plague vaccine was distributed throughout the world, & in many desperately poor countries. Those people did not have sanitation, good nutrition, running water, etc.; and most still do not today. Yet the plague was completeley eradicated around the world - because everybody received the plague vaccine. According to you, the plague should still be alive & well in poorer countries, yet it is not, because the vaccine was what stopped it. Good nutrition, sanitation, etc. alone won't stop a virus - just like it hasn't stopped the cold & flu viruses from sweeping the industrialized US every year. Vaccines will, indisputably. Someone who gets a flu vaccine won't get the flu. Someone who gets an HPV vaccine won't get HPV.

There's NOTHING else that will stop the spread of HPV. Your argument regarding improved nutrition, sanitation, etc. is completely moot here. The US already has all these things, & that hasn't stopped HPV from becoming an epidemic. The only thing that will stop it is an effective vaccine - and we've got that. And we have a responsibility to use it. W/o mandatory vaccinations, girls will be punished w/cancer for their fundie parents' beliefs. Doesn't seem fair. Also, girls from poor families will get cancer because their parents couldn't afford to pay for the vaccine. Also pretty unfair. A mandated vaccine for public school students eliminates these problems by allowing everyone to get the vaccine.

As much as it may stick in your craw, parents cannot do whatever they like regarding their children - children are citizens too, and have rights as well. If a parent decides that the child should be beaten every day, or deprived of an education, or receive a deadly treatment, they lose the right to decide pretty quickly. A parent's responsibility is to always act in the child's best interests. And every medical authority agrees that this virus is in the child's best interest. Hysteria, quack quotes, & wild speculation don't change the essential facts here. This vaccine prevents HPV. HPV causes at least 70% of cervical cancer cases. Therefore, vaccinating girls against HPV now will prevent 70% of cervical cancer cases later. Maybe someday, cervical cancer will be as rare as the mumps is today, and it will be thanks to this vaccine. Assuming, that is, that the fundies & vaccine-haters aren't able to stop the vaccine first.

[Jcrowley]

262. You are mistaken here

Even Salk recognized that there were numerous other factors involved in the reduction of polio. Read the post beneath yours for some words on this.

The paradigm of vaccination is profoundly misunderstood.

What we are looking at here is a forced program of the State. One would be wise to be wary of that to say the least.

[iverglas]

263. Fine. Now:

Even Salk recognized that there were numerous other factors involved in the reduction of polio.

Which of those factors apply in the case of HPV / cervical cancer?
Public sanitation services? Any other publicly controlled/organized behaviours like that?

Not hardly. The behaviours in question are virtually exclusively individual, not collective. Engaging in sexual contact -- without the use of a condom, specifically -- that's the behaviour in question. And huh:
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/epiu-aepi/std-mts/hpv_e.html

Condoms may reduce your chances of getting HPV, and should be used to prevent transmission of other STIs, such as chlamydia and gonorrhea. However condoms do not provide absolute protection because HPV is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, and the virus is small enough to pass through a condom.

So much for that plan.

In any event, condom use has been somewhat increased with public information and education campaigns warning of the dangers of sexually transmitted infection and of pregnancy, and explaining how to reduce those risks. Will knowledge of the relatively low risk of cervical cancer 20 years down the line likely improve rates of compliance with the recommended actions -- where warnings of the very much more immediate consequence of pregnancy, and the considerably more immediate risk of HIV infectin, have failed?

How exactly does the "paradigm of vaccination" come into play here?

The very large and significant difference between HPV vaccination and, say, polio vaccination is that any given individual is less likely, in the HPV case, to be protected by vaccinations administered to other people than in the polio case. People receive protection from polio by virtue of the fact that the people alongside them in the classroom and on the bus are not agents of contagion. They are protected from infection not only because they themselves have immunity to it, but also because they are not exposed to it.

In the case of HPV, particularly if only girls are vaccinated against it, at least for the first stage (and I wonder why boys would not be vaccinated, as potential carriers, even if no link to adverse health outcomes in men is established), each girl/woman will need to have her own immunity to the virus, and will not receive any protection from the widespread immunity of girls and women around her. Yes, the risk of a man with whom she has sexual contact having the disease will eventually be lower, if fewer women carry the virus. But that effect is going to be quite some time coming -- a generation just to start. An 11-yr-old girl today is at high risk of having sexual contact with a man, in her lifetime, who had sexual contact with a woman who had already contracted the HPV virus before the vaccine was available, or who was not vaccinated once it was available before becoming sexually active. No level of immunity in the girls in her cohort is going to protect her in the way that we are protected against smallpox by the vaccination of the people with whom we come into casual social contact.

This new vaccine isn't really much like many of our older ones, like polio and smallpox. They weren't subject to lengthy testing to determine their efficacy. No studies were done to try to isolate the effects of the vaccine from the effects of other factors, like improved sanitation, back when they were first being implemented. Remember, smallpox vaccination began over 150 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine

Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat polio. The first was invented by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952 and announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955. It consists of an injected dose of killed polio virus. Thereafter, Albert Sabin produced an oral polio vaccine using live but weakened (attenuated) virus. Human trials of Sabin's vaccine began in 1957 and it was licensed in 1962.

Hardly like the research that has gone into this one.

When the live-virus Sabin vaccine was developed, it spread in popularity for several reasons. First, it can 'infect' other, non-vaccinated individuals with whom the vaccinated person has close contact and confer some immunity to them. Second, because the oral vaccine acts in the gut, it confers immunity there and reduces the spread of the wild virus. The injected vaccine, acting through the bloodstream, immunizes the individual but does not reduce his ability to spread the wild virus.

Again, there seems to be no reason to think that there will be "contagious immunity" in the case of the HPV vaccine. Just as there would be no reason to think that better sanitation services would affect rate of infection wtih HPV.

If I step on a rusty nail, I'm not going to rely on environmental factors to protect me against tetanus. I'm going to get a tetanus shot. At least, every 10 years I will. (From personal experience, I do not recommend having one two years in a row, as I did when I had a shot in Havana after a fall and then in a mass polio booster-shot program at home the next year, even though I said "yes" when asked whether I'd recently had one. But an aching arm compared to an outbreak of polio ... I'll take the ache.)

If a girl or young woman does the equivalent of stepping on a rusty nail -- has sexual contact with an HPV infected man -- it's too late. At least until they come up with a "morning after" HPV shot. And it really is going to be a couple of generations before this vaccine brings the infection rate in the population down to a level where the risk to any particular sexually active woman is minimal ... and even then, it's a risk, and why take it?

Worse: why decide to subject one's daughter to the risk, knowing the very high chance that the risk will materialize before the girl is in a position to take preventive action herself? I just do not get it.

[LostinVA]

282. What a dangerous, dangerous attitude

You should be grateful you live in a time and place that gives you the luxury of having that incredible dangerous, selfish opinion.

[Recursion]

237. I'm sorry... are you saying there is *any* medical treatment...

...that should not be voluntary? Because if you are, I don't see how your opinion is any different from Bill Frist or some pro-life wingnut. My body is my own and you cannot tell me what treatment I will and will not receive.

[Marie26]

290. Not treatments, or medications - vaccines

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Bill Frist on this one. Bill Frist's official position is that girls shouldn't receive this HPV vaccine because they should just be abstinent instead - all their life. If they aren't, and they get cancer, that's just too bad according to the fundies. So ironically, on this issue, you are in agreement w/Bill Frist as to what vaccines should be used. I DON'T understand the uproar on this particular vaccination. It isn't required of all children, just all children entering public school - just as polio, mumps, etc. vacccines are required before any child can enter public school. Yet I don't see a huge anti-polio vaccine movement. Why not? Isn't that also the gov. telling you what treatment to receive? Or is it that the postive results of that vaccine are so obvious that it'd be silly to try to argue against it. There aren't any children w/polio in iron lungs anymore. Mass vaccinations work, and are almost the only thing that works against viruses. The plague was eradicated in the 20th century because of mass vaccinations of people around the world by the World Health Organization. Vaccines save lives - and yes, I am in favor of policies that save lives.

There's a consistent conflating of terms here - it isn't a treatment, and it isn't a medication. It's a vaccine, administered to everybody before someone can catch the disease. To be effective, vaccines need to be widely administered, as has been explained many times. So yeah, if a vaccine exists against a deadly disease, it should be given to any child (as long as it's safe.) I have a feeling the same people (fundies & anti-vaccine people) would be against using an AIDS vaccine if one is ever developed, & that's a little scary. It is a public health issue, and this vaccine would potentially save the lives of thousands of women, & protect millions more from a dangerous disease. It's been widely studied, and approved, by the leading medical organizations & scientific research. Weigh that against - what? Hypotheticals about mercury (that isn't used), or potential speculated long-term effects (that haven't been shown)? Hmmm. That's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

[LostinVA]

281. Not a SEX vaccine, a cancer vaccine

Good frigging grief.

I think some posters have fallen down the rabbit hole today....

[iverglas]

285. that's quite the site

http://www.speroforum.com/

I spent a while trying to decide whether it was parody ... a sort of duller Westboro Baptist ... but I think it isn't. A lof of it is just pirated media reports with catchy headlines attached, but it seems finally to come down on the wrong side of most everything.

It really is amazing where some people manage to get their news and views, with the whole bit world wide web out there, isn't it?

[Marie26]

292. Too funny. nt

[conflictgirl]

239. Inject kids with a new vaccine introduced now?

I'm skeptical about new vaccines (remember the rotavirus one that was hastily approved, then pulled from the market not long after because some babies died of bowel obstructions resulting from the vaccine) and I had a child who had a severe reaction to a vaccine. But even if I were the most pro-vaccine person out there, I can't imagine injecting my theoretical daughter (I only have boys) with a vaccine introduced by the Bush administration that is in any way related to sexual behavior. NO WAY.

I understand fully why HPV is potentially very serious and why it's a good thing that a vaccine has been created. But I adamantly do not believe that new vaccines should ever be mandated. I'll give it a few years and see what happens, but I would be willing to bet this is not the last we'll hear about this vaccine. Maybe everything we'll hear about it in the future will lead me to think my current cynicism is a little silly. I hope so. But I prefer to give vaccines many years of use before mandating them for all, and definitely believe exemptions should be available (which, in Michigan and some other states, they currently are.)

[philosophie_en_rose]

240. Cervical Cancer isn't the measles.

On the one hand, kids aren't catching cervical cancer or HPV aren't contagious in the same widespread way as measles or smallpox. The vaccine is rather new, and I would seriously question a doctor about possible side effects. I would also respect parents that choose to waive this requirement, as other vaccines can be waived as well.

On the other, cervical cancer kills. If the vaccine works, it is an amazing gift to give young women. Making it a school requirement seems excessive. (Does the school really need to know who has the HPV vaccine?) But at least it's an opportunity for parents and young women to learn about the vaccine.

[Justitia]

242. I know one of the virologists who was one of the original developers of

this vaccine, from the team at the University of Rochester.

They have been working on this vaccine in it's various stages for almost 20 YEARS.

They have also been working with probably at least 1000 other doctors around the world for about that same length of time, who having been conducting clinical trials across the globe from the get-go.

Folks, cervical cancer kills 4000 women in the USA every year, and about 300,000 in the developing world EVERY YEAR. 500,000 women are diagnosed every year.

The reason it is favored to be a mandated vaccine is because that is the only way it will be mandated to be covered (and paid for) by health insurance, both public and private. The poor in society will never be able to afford this vaccine if it is not a mandated vaccine (& thereby covered by public health programs). Hell, a lot of people with good health care coverage couldn't afford it either if their plans were not mandated to cover it.

Anyway, if the skeptics in this thread could see the monumental amount of lifetime work that has gone into making this vaccine and the truly altruistic scientists who devoted the majority of their careers into seeing it through, I think you would erase the slightest bit of doubt you had.

Let's hope we get it out there quickly and completely enough to save the lives of MILLIONS of women around the globe.

Thank God (or whomever) for these absolutely devoted scientists, who have given so much of themselves to saving the lives of women everywhere.

[Shakespeare]

244. Thank you so much for this post.

As someone who's had a bad HPV/cancer scare (and still fret yearly until I get pap results back), I'm deeply appreciative of the work your friend has done. You make an excellent point about the reasons behind mandating it--how obscene it would be for the poor in this country to be denied a potentially life-saving vaccination.

[iverglas]

254. and pass on my/our thanks to your friend

Like Shakespeare, I went through the anxiety and the surgery, in my case 20 years ago before the HPV connection was widely known. ("Multiple sexual partners" and early sexual activity were known to be risk factors.)

Not being in the US, I never think immediately of things like the prohibitive cost of health care, which Shakespeare raised here. In Canada, if a treatment is efficacious, it is covered, basically. (Prescription drugs aren't publicly covered in most places for most people, but that's another question.) When the vaccine is approved here -- aha! it has been:

http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/07/18/cervical-cancer.html?ref=rss

Last Updated Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:47:02 EDT
CBC News

Health Canada has approved a vaccine that protects against the human papilloma virus, or HPV, which is responsible for most cases of cervical cancer, the vaccine's manufacturer announced Tuesday.

... This year in Canada, nearly 1,400 new cases of cervical cancer are expected and approximately 390 women will die from the disease.

... After the U.S. announcement, Canada's advisory committee on immunization started discussing whether to employ Gardasil in school-based vaccine programs. "The issues now are not medicine and science," said Dr. Simon Sutcliffe, who heads the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control. "They are pracitical, logistical and ethical issues about population vaccination."

... It will be up to the provinces to decide who should receive the vaccine, how to deliver it, and how to pay for it.

No news yet on what the provinces are doing. This could be problematic, now that I see the cost; of course, Canada does do a good job of negotiating prices with drug companies. ;) I'll be watching for a campaign to get the provinces on board.

Back to our sheep -- thanks to your researcher friend and to you for the info.

[Posteritatis]

294. The 'skeptics' likely won't, sadly

Going by the comments in this thread, a lot of them are in "no mere fact can convince me" mode and are going to be rejecting the evidence of absolutely anything in favor of it as ZOMG PHARMA PLOT. It's sad, especially since they're recycling century-old pseudoscience at points. ;P

That said, this thing seeing widespread use would be fantastic, primarily for the health benefits, but I admit watching the moralist brigade shit a tractor over it would be great too.

[noonwitch]

267. I think it should be left up to the parents.

The reason schools require vaccination for polio, diptheria, measles, etc., is that these are diseases that are spread through casual contact. If one kid gets it, he can spread it throughout the school quickly, and then there's an epidemic.

HPV is spread through sexual activity. It should be up to the parents to decide whether to have their kid receive it. If I had a 12 year old girl, I would get her vaccinated, but it still would not be the school's business one way or another.

[Javaman]

272. Just my two cents...

nowadays, vaccines and the controversy surrounding them are broken down into two groups, those who like them and those who don't.

Granted given the recent history of the pharmaceutical industry, trusting one of their vaccines always brings suspect.

But with that in mind, read up on the history of measles and how it was basically a death sentence just over 100 years ago. Now, people get the vaccine and when a kid gets the measles, we all sort of joke about it or have some story to tell from our childhood or exclaim, "I'm glad I got my shot". That last phrase is the hypocrisy of it all.

People scream and moan about not trusting the pharms, but when they contract some sort of disease; ie: measles, polio, chicken pox, mumps, etc, they all say it's because of this reason or that reason, but never because they didn't get a shot. I find that really odd.

but at the same time, people also say that there are more cases of adverse reactions because of the shots. This may or may not be true. I don't know, but what I do know is this, as long as there have been vaccines, there have always been adverse reactions. Just a statistical fact.

The reality as we all know in this day in age is; drugs are money. Making them producing them selling them. However, what is at risk here is not a crooked pharma company per say, but the means by which they produce and sell them.

All pharmaceutical companies are corporations bound to their stock holders to produce products that sell and earn them money. The incredible amount of pressure placed upon these companies is unbelievable. This is why, more often than not drugs and vaccines are rushed to market with out the once high level of testing that was fairly common in the industry.

So given all of these things, is it possible to have a drug that actually works? Sure it is. Not everything they put out is sugar pills. I just believe that they have to employ the same levels of quality controls that was once the standard.

I don't necessarily trust the pharma companies any more than anyone else, but I too have been following this latest vaccine and you know what? I think it's a good thing. I believe they have done their homework.

Just my opinion.

[greccogirl]

287. Between the religious nuts

who think girls shouldn't have this because of sex, and the others who think it's another conspiracy to kill people with vaccines, well I'm at a loss. I have no daughters but you could bet you last dollar they'd get this vaccine if I did. I can't believe people would not want to have this!! HPV causes cancer for God's sake.