The HPV vaccine has created much hallabaloo in America.
I would say that Papilloma virus is a bad boy and the high rate of cervical cancer with HPV should be considered, along with the respiratory tract cancers HPV causes.
Report from ACSH, and they are in favor of HPV vaccine.
http://acsh.org/2014/03/study-reports-effectiveness-hpv-vaccine/
Interesting post – bit the real info needed is – what percent of cases of HPV are due to the two strains of HPV covered by the vaccine. If the other strains do not represent a high number (Merck claims its vaccine prevents 70% of current infections) then it may still be worth getting. Though I am sure the other strains will eventually fill the void.
Another issue is each strains relative ability to cause cancer. Sure they can all cause cancer – but if the two strains Merck picked have a much higher incidence of cancer per infection – maybe the vaccine is still a good bet.
You really haven’t answered either of these questions and you are using mathematical slight of hands 2/19 diseases to calculate a percentage when the real question is the percentage of infections each individual strain is responsible for.
Kudos for remembering something from June on a morning show. And thanks for the information.
As far as the hullabaloo, it’s probably going to be introduced with anything that might look involuntary for your own good. Not everything with a benefit side to it needs to be compulsory, but all that is necessary for compulsion is an argument and a vote or, in the hands of autocrats, a flimsy justification and a decision. In either case and a vast majority of the time, compulsion for your own good is flat wrong.
hey burton, pretty serious commentary, indicating a high level of smarts.
So we are always looking for contributors, I am charged by the master to find good posters. You are clearly a good one.
The money is really good–I am now set for life. of course.
The only real difference is you get to initiate your own stuff instead of respond to the pathetic stuff we put up–get it?
Gardasil (the “HPV vaccine”) protects against only a few strains of HPV. According to a U. Washington study (Winer, et al, 2006; see Table 2), most recent HPV infections with “high risk” oncogenic (cancer-causing) strains of HPV are strains that Gardasil does nothing to protect against.
The U. Washington study made headlines because, unlike most other studies, they found that condoms somewhat reduce the risk of HPV infection. But the study’s most important result never made the headlines.
HPV types 16, 18, 26, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 66, 67, 68, 73, and 82 have all been identified as high-risk oncogenic strains, and Gardasil only protects against types 16 and 18. Those two types accounted for just 14 out of 78 high-risk infections detected in the U. Washington study.
82% of the high-risk infections were with HPV strains that Gardasil does not protect against.
The relative prevalence of different HPV strains in the general population varies considerably, both by location and over time, and cervical cancer usually takes a long time to develop. Today’s cervical cancer cases result from the HPV types which were prevalent decades ago — and those are the strains that Gardasil is designed to protect against, not the numerous other high-risk strains which now cause most high-risk HPV infections.
Gardasil is like the Maginot Line: a defense designed for the previous war, but inadequate for the current one.
If young women who get the Gardasil vaccine before they become sexually active erroneously think that they are safe from cervical cancer, they may forgo PAP smears, and, paradoxically, be at greater risk of dying from cervical cancer than if they’d never gotten the vaccine at all.
Women need to know the truth:
1. Gardasil only protects against 2 of the 19 (so far) known high-risk strains of HPV,
2. The vast majority of high-risk HPV infections are with strains that Gardasil does not protect against, and
3. Sexually active women are at risk of cervical & other cancers, and still need regular PAP smears, regardless of whether they’ve had Gardasil.
And it gets worse. A recent CDC study (Markowitz 2013) found that Gardasil-vaccinated girls had slightly higher rates of infection with high-risk HPV strains than did unvaccinated girls!
Part of the problem is exaggeration of the vaccine’s benefits by the manufacturer (Merck), but a big part is wildly inaccurate reporting by the press. For example, on 6/20/2013, on “CBS This Morning,” I heard Holly Phillips, MD, report that Gardasil can “eradicate” (her word) the disease, and that people who get the vaccine will never get HPV-caused cancers. That kind of misinformation may well be causing some women to behave less responsibly, or skip PAP smears, which could cost some of them their lives.
BTW, Markowitz 2013 (J Infect Dis., doi:10.1093/infdis/jit192) is now paywalled, but I have a copy. Let me know if you want it.