In the extensive clinical studies (on more than 20,000 girls and women) that were performed prior to the FDAs licensing of the vaccine, the vaccine was 100 percent effective, a virtually unprecedented result. How safe is the vaccine? No serious side effects were detected; the most common side effect is soreness, redness and swelling in the arm at the site of the injection. In summary, Gardasil has one of the most favorable risk-benefit ratios of any pharmaceutical.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/277093
I also guess you would think that the Polio and Small Pox vaccines were dangerous. Hit Perry on the mandate, which is not the way to do anything, but let's get some education on the actual vaccine.
Except that children don't get HPV sitting next to someone in class. Whether kids get this vaccine should be solely up to parents. Government needs to butt out.
actually, oral polio vaccines and the smallpox vaccine are both dangerous. Oral polio vaccine in one out of 20 thousand cases evolves back to regular polio virus in the child’s intestines,,, and so every year there were a dozen cases of polio, mainly in moms or grandparents who hadn’t received the vaccine. (it is a problem in Africa when they stop giving the vaccine and then restart it: Lots of unvaccinated kids could catch it)> That’s why your kid now has to get a polio shot instead of a sugar cube.
As for Smallpox, a small percentage of folks end up with the virus infecting their ecsema if the scratch it, but the main danger is if your immune system is bad, from cancer or a similar disease. In that case, you can actually die of the vaccinia virus infection. (half a dozen cases a year way back when)....
Once Smallpox was wiped out, they stopped giving it because the problems were worse than the chance of catching it, except if you are in the military, where the possibility of germ warfare is a real danger.
but it’s a cost benefit ratio: a tiny chance of problems versus the higher chance of getting sick.
The vaccine paranoid types are simply too young to remember when these diseases threatened folks.
When I worked in Africa 30 years ago, I saw polio,tetanus, hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, measles deaths, and whooping cough deaths, but only older docs, like my 80 year old husband, have seen smallpox (he worked in Mindanao as a public health doc in the 1950’s).
So if you visit family overseas, don’t forget your “routine” shots....