The Truth About HPV Vaccine
Human Papiloma Virus (HPV) is a sexually transmitted disease that has been getting a large amount of attention recently due to a pharmacuetical company developing a vaccine designed to prevent the disease. The vaccine is intended for young girls. The state of Texas signed a Governor's bill into law mandating that all young school girls were to be given the vaccine. An inordinate amount of propaganda has surrounded the HPV vaccine. The drug company's main promotional effort is based on their claim that the HPV vaccine will prevent cervical cancer. After doing some research (unbiased research, as there will be no monetary profit from the effort), here are the facts concerning HPV. HPV infection is naturally cleared by more than 90% of sexually active women and men but, rarely, HPV infection can become chronic. High risk factors for HPV are smoking, having herpes, HIV or Chlamydia, long term use of birth control pills and multiple births. Women who have chronic HPV and do not get pre-canerous cervical lesions identified and treated (via regular Pap test screening), can get cervical cancer and die. After pap test screening became routine in the 1950's, cervical cancer cases dropped 74%. Less than one percent of all diagnosed cancer cases and cancer deaths in the United States every year involve cervical cancer. Merck's Gardasil vaccine was studied for several years in less than 1200 girls under age 16 and a few hundred girls age 11 or younger. Gardasil vaccine only contains 2 of the 15 HPV types associated with cervical cancer and it is unknown if it will prevent cervical cancer in the long term. Reported Gardasil reactions include sudden collapse, seizures, facial paralysis, arthritis and Guillain Barre Syndrome. It is unknown if Gardasil will casue infertility, cancer or damage genes. There is also no pre-licensure data proving it is safe to give Gardasil with most of the other vaccines given to children. This information was found at the National Vaccine Information Center in Virginia. It is very important, when making health care decisions for your children, all of the facts are at your disposal. If the only information presented to you is sensationalized "news" reports put out by the industry manufacturing the drug, it is impossible to make an educated health care decision.
Thought for the Week: "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is condemnation without investigation." ------ Spencer
Chiropractic Tip of the Week: "Disease is a term used in medicine for sickness, it is an entity that one can have and is worthy of a name, hence the term diagnosis. In chiropractic, the term dis-ease is used and means lack of ease in the body. Dis-ease is indicative of the body being minus something that should be restored, in order to make it normal. The body lacks ease which must be brought up to 100% or restored. The aim of chiropractic is not the treatment of disease, but the restoration of ease." ---- R.W Stephenson, D.C.
posted by Dr. J. Zimmerman @ 6:45 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Here is just a bit more grist for your GARDASIL mill.
To summarize this published, peer-reviewed medical journal article:
1. In the FUTURE I trial, GARDASIL demonstrated no clinical efficacy among the general subject population for overall reduction in the rates of grade 2 and grade 3 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and adenocarcinoma — the only recognized precursors to cervical cancer.
2. In the larger FUTURE II trial, GARDASIL demonstrated no clinical efficacy among the general subject population for overall reduction in the rates of grade 3 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and adenocarcinoma — the strongest (and many would argue only valid) precursors to cervical cancer.
3. GARDASIL’s protection against cancer associated HPV strains 16 and 18 appears to cause a disproportionate increase in of pre-cancerous dysplasias associated with other HPV strains associated with cervical cancer “raising the possibility that other oncogenic HPV types eventually filled the biologic niche left behind after the elimination of HPV types 16 and 18.”
4. Even if look only at the FUTURE II results (in which for some reason GARDASIL performed better among the general female population), we are talking about just a 17% decrease in all high grade dysplasias — many of which would spontaneously regress without treatment. So we would have vaccinate 129 women (at about $500 for the three shot regimen) to avoid a single, eminently treatable dysplasia. That’s about $60,000 per dysplasia prevented.
This is all directly from the article linked above.
I myself would add that we currently have only 3 years of follow up to go on in terms of both GARDASIL’s safety and efficacy among the 16 to 26 year female population, no data concerning its efficacy among 9 to 12 year old girls and only 18 months of follow up on less than 600 total preteen girls in terms of safety data about GARDASIL within its targeted population.
Also see : The Journal of the American Medical Association and The Wall Street Journal
It appears that the vaccinated cohort sees a 20%+ increase in high grade cervical dysplasias caused by cancer-associated HPV strains other than HPV 16 and 18. One possible explanation is that HPV 6 or HPV 11 infections are antagonistic to more dangerous HPV infections.
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