23 thoughts on “HPV vaccine follow up”

1. danaoshee 06/05/2008 at 18:46

   I’m so torn on this type of thing.
   On the one hand, if there are more adverse reactions then statistically expected and reported in the warning sheets, it’s a problem and should be reported.

   On the other hand, the part of me that’s been dealing for years with idiots saying things like “antibiotics are a ploy by big pharma to make money, you’d be healthier never taking them, just have these vitamins!” wants to yell “this is why we can’t have nice things!”
   And by nice things, I mean vaccines against all the other common communicable viruses.

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   1. Krissy Gibbs Post author06/05/2008 at 18:51

      I understand where you are coming from. I also believe that medication is vastly over-prescribed and that often it causes as many problems as it helps with. I think that medication is under-tested before it is given out en mass. Like Depo Provera, which I was an early adopter of. Now they realize that it is causing really serious problems. There were a lot of early vaccines that caused massive problems.

      I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t like being a guinea pig. I think that we give out way the fuck too much medication.

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2. essaying 06/05/2008 at 18:54

   I’m thinking this is an inevitable backlash to the marketing of these vaccines as anti-cervical cancer, when in fact they’re anti-HPV. HPV is not the sole cause of cervical cancer, and cervical cancer is not the only negative outcome of HPV… but because people won’t agree to have their teenaged girls vaccinated against an STD, the vaccine is being sold as a preventive for cervical cancer.

   All vaccines cause some deaths — there are a gazillion anti-infant-vaccination websites that will happily share all the gruesome details. The question is, do they save more lives than they take?, and the answer is, of course, by a factor of many-many.

   I’m a bit too young to have lost anyone to smallpox or polio, but I’ve had some friends whose quality of life was permanently damaged by polio, back in the good old pre-vaccination days. And I suffered miserably through the childhood diseases that used to be rites of passage — measles, mumps, rubella et al. *And* I have HPV — which is hardly unusual in this day and age, but is still a goddamn nuisance, although Dr. C says that my particular strain isn’t one of the ones that goes with cervical cancer.

   Whether or not it prevents every single case of cervical cancer, the vaccine will prevent untold numbers of women from suffering through unsightly, uncomfortable, contagious and incurable Nasty Bumps On The Privates. And, as a lovely side benefit, it will also prevent a great many cases of cervical cancer.

   Perhaps Ms. Klein and Ms. Bickel would like to experience a yearly visit to the gynecologist to have bumps cauterized off their labia so that they can enjoy intercourse once again; once they’ve been through that a dozen or so times, I’ll be more interested in their views on the vaccine.

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3. terralthra 06/05/2008 at 18:59

   I read through a lot of their site, and it’s a very typical response to over-marketing by big pharma: alarmism and panic. Australia may, indeed, have jumped the gun by mandating every girl between 12 and 14 receive the vaccine, but extending that note of caution to the degree advocated by that site is sophistic at best. 400 women died of cervical cancer in Australia in 2006. How many were diagnosed and treated for it with current cancer treatments (surgery, chemo, radiotherapy) is a completely unknown quantity. 496 girls suffering temporary side effects (out of 2.2 million who received the vaccine) is .0225%. 1 out of 5,000.

   So, out of mass immunization, slightly more suffered dizzy spells and a passing hallucination TOTAL from a shot immunizing from the virus which seems to cause the disease than died THAT ONE YEAR from the disease. Quite frankly, if you offer me a shot that has a chance of giving me temporary paralysis, nausea, and hallucination roughly equivalent to my chances of DYING from the disease it’s immunizing me against, I’ll take the shot.

   Of course, advertising campaigns are full of shit; that’s part of the reason why commercialized for-profit healthcare blows. That’s not, on its own, enough reason to completely abstain from the medicines it has invented. Continue to do research. Restrict and regulate paid advertisements by for-profit health care.

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   1. Krissy Gibbs Post author06/05/2008 at 19:01

      I’m still recommending that girls get the shots. But I think reporting problems so that the fact sheets contain more accurate information is very reasonable.

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      1. terpsichoros 06/05/2008 at 19:20

         Reporting side effects to the doctor or clinic who gave the injection is worthwhile. Reporting side effects to a front for trial lawyers who are planning to sue the vaccine maker for millions of dollars is not worthwhile.

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         1. Krissy Gibbs Post author06/05/2008 at 19:22

            Uhm, you may have a point there.

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         2. luna_torquill 07/05/2008 at 19:07

            Exactly what I was thinking.

            And if someone starts on the line “but what if the authorities ignore it/say it never happened?” I’ll start thinking “conspiracy theory”. I still don’t believe that Big Pharma can manage to get everybody in the health care industry into their pocket.

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4. bellaballanda 06/05/2008 at 23:59

   it hurts…like the shot… worse than tetanus…. but…. i’m a germ a phobe… if there’s a vaccine, I’m getting it…..

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5. blacksheep_lj 07/05/2008 at 00:31

   Can anyone explain to me why only GIRLS get the shots, since clearly the disease is spread between men and women? Sure, only girls get the cancer potential, but doesn’t it seem more effective to try to prevent the disease in everyone, rather than continue ot spread it around?

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   1. terralthra 07/05/2008 at 01:44

      Same bullshit sensibilities that have it marketed as a cancer vaccine instead of an HPV vaccine to begin with.

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      1. bellaballanda 07/05/2008 at 18:22

         I don’t know (and i may be wrong) but isn’t there no way to test men for HPV?

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         1. Krissy Gibbs Post author07/05/2008 at 19:10

            That is what I know.

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   2. luna_torquill 07/05/2008 at 19:10

      The vaccine hasn’t been shown to be effective on men yet. (That hasn’t stopped some men from getting it, but doctors do need to follow the trail of published studies.) I’ve heard that a vaccine for men is currently in the pipeline, but the biggest push was (understandably) to vaccinate women first.

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6. sleek_imager 07/05/2008 at 10:16

   Ignore it. It’s crap.

   Here’s part of the “evidence”: http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2007/GardasilVAERSUpdatedDeaths0907.pdf

   You’ll see from a casual read that there’s no clear causal connection between the innoculations and the deaths, and there’s no real pattern, either (Some fatalities occur within a day or two of the injection, some within two or three weeks).

   What’s happening is that ill informed or politically motivated people are looking for _anything_ that may create a case against the drug company, so they can further their own agendas. So they interrogate the reporting database, and allege causality, even though there’s nothing to strongly connect the two.

   I’d be willing to bet that much MORE THAN 11 deaths occurred within four weeks after innoculation, and a similar number occurred within four weeks prior to it. Obviously, the deaths prior don’t get reported, and the vast majority of deaths after innoculation DON’T get reported because they are obviously unrelated (e.g. they care caused by traffic accidents). Only a fool would conclude that innoculation causes traffic accidents…

   What that database IS, is a dumping ground for serious researchers. MAYBE something will appear, in time, that connects the dots, or maybe not. We should collect all the data (including the very weak entries, such as those where someone told someone else who heard about a situation), because if we don’t, we can’t know.

   Oh, and the reason why females get the innoculation and not males (yet) is that the worst consequences of HPV for females is far more common and more likely to be fatal than the worst consequences for males. So they targetted the people who get the cancers… they _are_ investigating innoculation for males, but there’s no rush (which is a good thing).

   Malc.

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   1. Krissy Gibbs Post author07/05/2008 at 19:12

      As usual you have some really excellent points and you are making me think good stuff.

      I want to be a shit for just one second though and say deaths prior to the innoculation uhm… well…. those people probably weren’t given shots. 🙂

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      1. sleek_imager 07/05/2008 at 22:55

         That’s true (your desire to be a shit for a second) if you’re looking at individuals, but for epidemiology (which is what is relevant here) you look instead at populations! So you can do things like arbitrarily say that a school-full of kids will get innoculated on July 4th (unlikely, sure), and look at the statistics before-and-after.

         Interestingly, the phenomenon illustrated by efforts to assign causality to only potentially connected events (such as these innoculation-is-bad campaigns) is pretty ancient: it used to be that cures were credited to religious pilgrimages and shrines, while now it is deaths that are are blamed on innoculations. In both cases, there’s no science to support the attribution.

         Malc.

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         1. Krissy Gibbs Post author07/05/2008 at 23:28

            I guessed what you actually meant and I understand your point. It was just fun to be a shit. 🙂

            So, are you married yet? I’m kind of out of the loop.

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            1. sleek_imager 08/05/2008 at 00:38

               No, not married yet, that’s for the 25th (although we leave for England on the 17th, which leaves us just 10 days or so to get everything done that needs doing).

               So, are you still pregnant…?

               Malc.
            2. Krissy Gibbs Post author08/05/2008 at 01:10

               Indeed. You are the second wedding happening on my due date. 🙂 I’m hoping the kid comes a little earlier than that though.

               Pregnancy has actually been a neat ride. 🙂 If you look at a later post in my journal you can see how big I am. 🙂
            3. sleek_imager 08/05/2008 at 01:22

               I suspect we’re actually the first wedding on the date, since 2pm UK time is 6AM in California… (just to be a _little_ snotty…)

               Malc.
            4. Krissy Gibbs Post author08/05/2008 at 01:24

               *grin* Excellent point. You are just the second I have been told of. You will be the first in actual time.
7. rbus 10/05/2008 at 23:39

   darling daughter has had hers at the age of 15.5.
   if they had one for boys, stunning son would have his, too.

   moms and dads now-a-days don’t remember what it was like
   to have entire classes out with the measles or mumps
   or whooping cough.

   i recall the days of the polio vaccine,
   drops of medicine on sugar cubes in 1st grade.
   my mom cried with joy because such miracles were available.

   had an aunt with polio.
   and friends, too.
   now have friends suffering from post-polio syndrome.

   and what about that measles outbreak?
   all for lack of inoculation.

   idiots!

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