On the “STD vaccine” and cervical cancer
So my outrage about mandated vaccines to address cooked-up “epidemics” isn’t going away, which I think is a good thing. Being outraged is healthy.
How many incidents of cervical cancer are there? Try fewer than 8.5 for every 100,000 women, as of 2002. (And the trend continues downward.) So the comparison to the polio vaccine doesn’t hold water. In 1952 alone, when polio infection was at its height just before Salk released his vaccine, there were 58,000 new cases of polio. There are fewer than 11,000 cervical cancer incidents a year, and our population has grown by 40%, from 157 million to 260 million.
So much for the “epidemic.”
I do enjoy the immediate response of many parents in Texas to this forced vaccination: the equivalent of “over my dead body.”
February 6th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
My mother told me that she decided not to vaccinate my two sisters and I after the neighbors son came down with polio after receiving the polio vaccine. When my kids were born, I decided not to vaccinate them either. A friend of mine told me I had lost my mind. She had taken her baby in for all the shots and he only had one more left to go. After that last vaccine -DPT- her baby died in twenty four hours. My kids have never had a vaccine and besides one or two light cold symptoms, they’ve NEVER been sick and they are now in college! All this new crap they come up with is all about putting money in the drug companies pockets!
February 6th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
I don’t believe in mandatory vaccination, but parents should certainly be made aware of this vaccine for their adolescent daughters (it’s being recommended for girls and young women 9-26). The vaccine doesn’t just project against cervical cancer, it targets HPV – which ends up infecting 80% of all women. HPV doesn’t cause symptoms in men, but it can lead to several forms of cancer in women, including cervical, as well as genital warts.
If you had a daughter, you might worry about the 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer in the U.S. each year, as well as the 3700 women annually who die from it. (Worldwide there are 493,000 new cases a year and 274,000 women die.) A vaccine seems to me to be a simple precaution to keep one’s daughter from being one of those statistics!
February 6th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Vaccinating more than 130 million people in order to head off 10,000 potential new illnesses doesn’t seem like the best use of funding. I wonder how much of this expense could go toward health care with broader implications. (And I say this knowing it’s cold comfort if you or someone you love is one of the 10,000.)
I have no problem with making a vaccine available. I’m glad that there’s a vaccine available. I have major problems with the state mandating it because the manufacturer behind it has successfully lobbied them to do so.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:14 pm
[…] Turns out I wasn’t alone in my outrage over Merck’s lobbying efforts to mandate STD shots (using their own drug, naturally) for kids, a marketing putsch I frothed over here, and here, and here. Bowing to pressure from parents, the company is immediately suspending this effort, as reported by Associated Press. […]