Posted on 08/26/2009 5:11:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
I sat at a picnic table listening to various mothers discussing their hectic schedules trying to keep up with teenage daughters, all on the same sports team. When one mother told of squeezing in an appointment that morning to get her daughter the HPV shot that her doctor recommended, the conversation turned to the necessity to "protect" their girls in such troubling times. I stayed quiet, hoping to learn the values guiding these parents' decisions. Predictably, they had not thought through the issues, nor did they know the facts.
Those mothers were merely following doctors' recommendations and that of all the experts. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, was approved in 2006 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for females as young as nine and up to age 26. It has been marketed as a protection against four types of the human papillomavirus (HPV). Merck, the company that makes Gardasil, claims that the drug will protect against two types of HPV that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers and two types that cause 90 percent of genital warts. Every federal health authority recommends the shots and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about a quarter of the nation's 13-17 year olds have received the immunizations. The vaccine is on the CDC's vaccine schedule for 11- and 12-year-old girls, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends it.
Even so, some physicians remain wary of the trend to give young children a new, largely untried drug. A study in a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research revealed that about half of the doctors in a survey of over a thousand physicians in Texas did not routinely recommend Gardasil for their pre-teen patients.
What those Texas doctors suspected, we now know for sure - that serious concerns are legitimate regarding the use of Gardasil. The highly-promoted, so-called breakthrough vaccine that was recommended for all girls and given to numerous children and teens to prevent possible future cases of cervical cancer, is related to "adverse events" experienced by thousands of girls after taking the vaccine.
In a just-released article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, federal researchers report that after analyzing 12,424 "adverse events" [out of the 13,758 reports of problems as of May 1] voluntarily reported by girls vaccinated with Gardasil that two problems are common. One - fainting - is not inherently serious, but can be if the girl falls and hits her head. The other side effect - "dangerous blood clots" - is quite troubling. Most of the problems with Gardasil (93 percent) are minor: headache, nausea, and fever. But a disturbing seven percent included hospitalization, permanent disability, life-threatening illness, or death.
"Adverse events" is a terribly clinical sounding description of such tragic outcomes. Perhaps more people should read the personal account of Jenny, a University of California, Berkeley professor's daughter who lost her life after getting the shot. (See Jenny's blog here)
Few parents would want their child to be among the 39 deaths to girls who had just taken the Gardasil shot. Nor would most parents want their child to take the risk of hospitalization, disability, or a life-threatening illness. Accurate information has not been forthcoming, including the fact that many additional reported cases of "adverse effects" had too few details. Thus, those cases were excluded from the study.
Even with the new information, numerous questions remain about the safety as well as the efficacy of the drug. Further, there are questions about the marketing of the drug. In fact, cervical cancer is relatively uncommon in the United States. The American Cancer Society reports under 4,000 deaths per year compared to the 250,000 deaths in other areas of the world, primarily in poor countries.
Plus, there are questions about Merck's grants to professional medical associations who promoted the vaccine's use without fully explaining the risks involved with taking the drug. Some doctors ask if the big push to sell Gardasil is Merck's method of making up the lost sales after their popular anti-pain medication Vioxx was banned. These facts raise questions about the appropriateness of recommending such a high-risk drug for widespread use among American children and teenagers.
In the wake of all the side effects, Merck has added warnings to the label on the drug. The warnings on all the labels state that some children receiving Gardasil have subsequent problems, such as autoimmune diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, paralysis, and seizures. Further, some doctors worry that not enough young girls were included in the clinical trials of the drug; they believe that there is really no way to know how pre-teen and teenage girls will react to such a high-powered vaccine. Merck acknowledges that the drug is effective for only five years, so giving the drug to 11 to 12 year olds hardly seems warranted.
Critics are especially concerned about the risk-benefit ratio of taking the HPV vaccine. Gardasil is very costly and most physicians recommend that women continue to get Pap smears, even if they have taken Gardasil. The known benefit of the regular Pap smear screening in preventing most cases of cervical cancer makes the benefit of the HPV risk uncertain.
In fact, Those mothers around that picnic table and the thousands of other parents concerned about the well-being of their daughters need to have all the facts and know the risks involved before subjecting their little girls to this new vaccine. States need to have these facts before discussing the possibility of mandating the vaccines for all pre-teen and teenage girls.
BFL
My granddaughter watches the 'kiddie channels'...on TV....entertainment for toddlers...and up to 4,5 yr olds...
I've noticed a commercial for this very vaccine on this channel geared to little kids.
Whenever she visits, I change the channel or mute the sound.
She has no idea what they're talking about, but I find it repulsive to advertise this to little kids.
It's a scary enough world without exploiting little kids watching The Backyardians or Spongebob Squarepants.
ping
The marketing is another example of the sexualization of our youth and reinforces the “no consequences” mentality.
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms out there for this vaccine but "no consequences" sex isn't one of them.
Most moms want to do everything they should for their kids health, vaccines are routine. My daughters don’t want the vaccine because of what they think it says about their virtue and plans for continued virtue. I am concerned about the safety of the vaccine and I don’t think it is a great benefit considering the cost. I know the arguments but I have watched doctors push other preventive treatments like hormone therapy. I resisted that push for several reasons and my instincts were somewhat confirmed. Same here.
Here's a fact I hadn't seen before.
So they're wanting to give a vaccine to 9-year-olds, even though its effectiveness will expire when she's 14. Presumably they expect the young girls to be exposed to HPV at 11 or 12?
This is not a disease issue - it's a child-abuse issue!
“The marketing is another example of the sexualization of our youth and reinforces the “no consequences” mentality.”
I don’t really see it the same way as you. A girl who has refrained from premarital sex is still at risk for HPV exposure when she gets married, unless she marries a guy who’s never had sex before. Even if the prospective husband claims that he’s never had sex, he could be lying, so the girl, through no fault of her own, could be exposed to the virus. A sexually innocent girl could also be exposed through rape. The most important issue for me is whether the vaccine is safe or not. My doctor says that any vaccine, including Gardisil, has risks, but that Gardisil is probably safer than most other vaccines (such as DTP for instance). I’m not sure he’s right about Gardisil being safer than most other vaccines, and this is what I want to find out before I’m comfortable with the idea of my teenage daughter getting this vaccine.
This should be a NO BRAINER, parents!
Out of the millions of girls who have received the vaccine, a small percentage of those had ANY problems whatsoever, and only 7% of those who HAD problems died as a result.
Put in perspective, you put your child at far GREATER risk if you EVER let her ride in the car with you on America's highways. That's a risk you're willing to take with her life every single day, just for convenience. Why not accept a SMALLER risk to save her from CANCER???
Vaccinate your daughters.
I hadn’t seen that so specifically spelled out, although I have read that Merch “wasn’t sure” how long it was effective.
My doctor does not recommend it, most especially in prementrual girls like my 11 year old, even though Virginia “mandates” it for girls entering 6th grade. The gal who is head of the school nurses for our district and happens to be a friend from church. She agrees with me, and the Doc, and says the “mandate” is more a joke than anything. The way I opt out of it is to just not get it. LOL!!!
39 deaths from the vaccine. Less than 4000 total deaths a year from Cervical Cancer. The vaccine doesn’t prevent all cervical cancer, and the vaccine is only good for 5 years (I didn’t know that).
Other deaths coinciding with the vaccine have been excluded because the information about them was incomplete.
The cervical cancer prevented by the vaccine can also be prevented by safe sex or abstinence. Neither of those have killed anybody.
So it is not as “no-brainer” as you think. The relative risks are within a few orders of magnitude, and the relative risks among some subclasses are about even, so if you are in those subclasses you might well just ignore the vaccine.
On the other hand, the risks of the vaccine, while much greater than “promised”, are not so far showing up as bad as feared. A few more years and we’ll know more about long-term effects. But for now, there is still the risk of the unknown which isn’t factored into the 39 deaths number.
As to your example of riding in a car, that is also more of a risk than of getting cervical cancer in this country.
She is devoutly Catholic and completely chaste, but that doesn't always make a difference. Rape happens, husbands cheating happens (or husbands carrying a time bomb that they don't even know about from before the marriage). A friend of a friend got a very nasty (and incurable) STD from a husband that she didn't know was into the Midtown bathhouse scene (none of us knew - he hid it VERY well).
Daughter had a heart-to-heart with her pediatrician, who is a fine young man and a very good doctor. He is the protege of our former pediatrician, now deceased, who was the best and wisest doctor I knew. He recommended that she get the vaccine. Unfortunately all vaccines have risks - but some of us remember the days before the polio vaccine when the swimming pools closed and people kept their kids home from school. A boy in my elementary school class was one of the last to be crippled by polio -- his mama didn't get him vaccinated, for whatever reason, and he wore braces for the rest of his life (he was killed in a car wreck when we were in high school).
Our pediatrician laid out all the pros and cons, and concluded that the benefits outweighed the risks. . . . and you know, that's what he went through med school and residency for, and that's why we go to him . . . .
In no way does this vaccine PREVENT your daughters from getting cancer. please don’t presume to speak down to those of us who are educated, intelligent and well-informed about this particular vaccine and choose NOT to have our daughters vaccinated. It is a choice for each parent to make after informing themselves accordingly.
Have you even seen the commercials for the vaccination? Your comment suggests that you have not. Mentioning a cervix is not sexual.
Sex is not mentioned at all, nothing suggestive, unless you think the sight of a mother wanting to protect her daughter from cervical cancer is somehow suggestive of sex to you.
Should not be mandatory, but IMO, thinking this vaccination is about no consequences sex is pretty shortsighted.
Full disclosure: Both of my daughters received the vaccination.
In fact, cervical cancer is relatively uncommon in the United States.
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I came of age at the dawn of the sexual revolution, so many of my friends fell for it, hook, line and sinker. As time marched on I noticed that many of the most promiscuious girls were having problems with cancerous cells and very many that I knew well and just knew of had to have early hysterectomies. Many were only able to have one child and some wern’t able to have any. I put 2 and 2 together and came up with the promiscuity somehow being at fault. I had already noticed how that promiscuity harmed their personalities, it just isn’t good for you.
It wasn’t until about 8 yrs ago that I heard about HPV and how it often went undiagnosed and the results. It was something I had often wondered about and I finally had an answer.
My granddaughter is almost 16, she and her mother decided that she wasn’t going to get the shot and I was very glad. Just from my lifetime of observation, she doesn’t have the personality to be promiscuous, but she has been educated so that she does know the serious consequences to her own psyche and her body.
Yeah, actually it does. Sorry that offends your sensibilities.
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