Gardasil: A Reminder Of The Real Facts

(from an HSI Newsletter)
Dear Reader,
Ignorance is not bliss. Not even close. Ignore potential danger, and bliss does not follow.
Virtually all drugs have one type of danger — adverse side effects. But Gardasil, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, has an additional danger: misinformation.
That’s why nobody should EVER tell a young woman who’s received this vaccine that she’s blissfully free of cervical cancer danger.
You might as well send her off to go dance in a minefield.
Get real
Recently, I told you about a new Gardasil study. Supposedly, it puts parents’ fears to rest.
Here’s how the “fear” thinking goes… Girls get the vaccine. Doctors tell them it protects against sexually transmitted HPV. Released from HPV fear, the girls think they are protected from other sexually transmitted diseases.
The flaw in the study is glaring. Researchers examined sexual activity among the LEAST sexually active age groups.
Hmmm. Do you think that “flaw” might have been intentional? It certainly produced Gardasil-friendly results.
Even though this is a rubber-stamp study, it bugs Lindsay Abrams — a columnist for The Atlantic magazine. Abrams is irritated that such a study is even necessary. The article’s headline sums up her take on the vaccine…
“Can We Just Vaccinate Our Kids Against HPV Already?”
In her article, Abrams totally buys the “fear” study results. She says the vaccine doesn’t turn girls into “sex maniacs.” AND, she adds, “It protects from cancer.”
Then she goes one step further. She states that the “real comfort” should come from knowing that when vaccinated girls grow up, “they’ll have one less thing to be threatened by.”
Pure hogwash.
More importantly, that’s a reckless message.
Laying down the facts
Gardasil is not a cancer shot. End of story. It’s supposed to protect against some strains of HPV. In other words, a girl can get the vaccine and still get cervical cancer.
So if you tell girls and young women that they have “one less thing to be threatened by,” they might feel it’s not necessary to get an annual Pap smear. As I’ve mentioned before, that’s the ONE guaranteed way to reduce cervical cancer deaths.
A pap smear reveals cervical cancer in the earliest stage when it’s least dangerous and highly treatable. If a woman passes on the Pap smear because she believes she has some kind of a cervical cancer shield, she literally puts her life at risk.
The message from our side remains clear: Gardasil is not a risk-free silver bullet that defeats cervical cancer… neither is it safe and side effect-free.