So here is the deal:
GARDASIL is the new vaccine, which is creating a lot of buzz these days and for all the wrong reasons.
So let’s recap some facts first:
∑ For it to be effective you must not have contracted certain strains of HPV
∑ GARDASIL is for girls and women ages 9 to 26.
∑ Cervical Cancer kills 10 women a day in the US
∑ One in four women ages 14 to 59 is infected with HPV
∑ GARDASIL protects against the strains of HPV that cause 70% of cervical cancers
∑ GARDASIL was approved by the FDA in 2006
∑ The three dose treatment cost $360
Now, many members of the conservative right in this country are lobbying States hard to not appropriate funds for vaccinating girls or arguing that States should not make vaccination mandatory. This is a vaccine, which can prevent cancer. Let me say that again, this is a vaccine that can prevent cancer, a cancer that kills 10 women in the US a day.
Now the agreement is that if this vaccine, which prevents a cancer that is caused by a sexually transmitted disease, is available to young girls, it will encourage promiscuity and premarital sex. While that is an issue that can be debated, the reality is that these girls and women will at some point, become sexually actively. Some will choose to wait until they are married. Some will not. Some will find a partner who likewise has waited to be sexually active and some will not. Some will find a partner, who decided not to remain faithful or who leaves. A life of choices lays ahead of these young women. No one can predict these women’s futures. However, GARDASIL offers an opportunity to protect their health, potentially for a lifetime, no matter their choices. It is up to parents and other influence people in these young girls lives to shape their choices, but as a society we have an obligation to safe guard their health potentially for a lifetime.
We are talking about preventing a cancer that kills, possibly limits fertility or a woman’s ability to carry a child to term. Is it really worth those risks, when this vaccine could prevent all of this?
STD shot stuck in center of culture war, AP News, via MSNBC.com
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHere are other facts (devoid of Merck spin):
1. This vaccine was never tested for efficacy on young girls.
2. This vaccine was tessted for safety among young girls using just a few hundred children.
3. The FDA acknowledged in its licensure letter to Merck that insufficient safety and efficacy studies had been done on young girls and required them to do more; creating a defacto mass scale human science experiment on young girls.
4. The potential that adverse events were greatly masked in Merck’s clinical trials exists because they used aluminum in the placebo instead of just saline.
5. Five health experts, including two most recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, have issued warnings on Gardasil and exposed Merck’s dramatically exaggerated claims for efficacy.
6. Judicial Watch (yes, a conservative group but I’m a progressive and former Board member of NOW-NYC) has reported, correctly, that 3 females who took Gardasil have died in the U.S., one a 12 year old child and another within 3 hours of receiving the vaccine.
7. The U.S. government’s own web site, Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is showing over 1600 adverse events after receiving Gardasil including one acute kidney failure, one life threatening case of throat swelling, multiple cases of seizures, convulsions and paralysis.
8. These dangers ARE NOT justified for a vaccine which has no long term studies. Merck did not prove that Gardasil prevents cervical cancer because cervical cancer takes 8 to 12 years or longer to develop and its longest studies of Gardasil were 5 years or less.
While there are no long term studies and it is possible that Merck may have distorted the efficacy of the Gardasil vaccine, it still has some efficacy. With regard to safety, the Gardasil vaccine uses a revolutionary method of achieving immunization, preventing any possible transfer of the HPV genetic material (unlike the majority of vaccines, which use live-attenuated viruses). In theory, this should be safer than a normal MMR vaccine.
In addition, HPV, while most often transmitted through sexual activity, can be transmitted by normal skin contact. People can get warts on any part of their body, not just in the genital area, and most of these warts are caused by some form of HPV. In addition, the strains of HPV that Gardasil protects against have been implicated in a number of other rare, but serious, cancers, including a cancer of the tonsils.
HPV is a serious virus, and while much of abstaining from sex, it is unrealistic in today’s society to expect the majority of the population to do so. Even the use of condoms does not give full protection against HPV. Despite the lack of long term studies, this vaccine has been shown to reduce the incidences of HPV contraction, in particular the strains that cause (or a implicated in) every case of cervical cancer. It’s time for people to wake up and recognize that this could save lives.
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