I don’t have a problem with the Physicians Desk Reference being used as part of the decision making process. That is a good suggestion, but I do want to advise folks that trial studies are nowhere near as reliable as broad spectrum populace exposure.
People may have been able to read up on Gardasil at places like WebMD too. I would also advise people to access Medcape, another fine medical research source. There are ‘free’ apps out there for the iPhone and iPad, and there might be ones other handhelds as well.
When new medications come out, people should consider them to be like the first model of a new car line. A lot of people would be suspect of buying a new car that hadn’t had all the kinks worked out yet. It’s more important when you’re talking about your body, long term health. General medications are problematic enough, especially these days. I would urge far more hesitation when it comes to new vaccines.
As a rule of thumb, I take no medication at all I can survive without. Everything you put in your body has good and bad effects.
While some problems may show up in limited studies, the massive inoculations of the public, is where you’re finally going to see if there are real problems or not.
It wouldn’t have hurt these girls at all, to wait a couple of years to evaluate Gardasil after a large segment of the public had been exposed.
The decision with this vaccine is a tough one. I don’t know any parent that wouldn’t be mortified to know they had told their daughter to take this med, and she had dropped dead, developed severe immune deficiency, or long term rashes and allergic reactions.
You also have to take a look at the percentage of women who actually contract serious problems from the things Gardasil actually protects against.
Most people would say, only around 20,000 adverse reactions isn’t much when you think about the number of vaccines given. Okay, along the same lines, the numbers of women who actually become afflicted with what Gardasil prevents, may be very small compared to the complete female populace at large too.
There are a number of ways to look at all this.
You make sense, but just about any literature made public will not be as informative as the PDR. I have Web MD and the Mayo clinic sites on my favorites but even they do not go into the depth that the PDR will. If the subject was OPT IN and not OPT OUT I would have no problem with it...Each parent can decide if they want to put their daughters at risk after having FULL information. :O)