[Classic spoiler to a media article criticising HPV (Gardasil Cervarix). So many lies here it's hard to know where to start.]
MOTHERS SHOULD LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS NOT DR GOOGLE
Cervical cancer is one of the few cancers we can prevent, which is why this vaccination programme is so important and why all parents should ensure their daughters receive this potentially life-saving inoculation, writes Dr David Robert Grimes, Science Writer and Cancer Researcher at the University of Oxford.
Gardasil, the form of the vaccine currently used in the UK, has been extensively tested for years and recipients constantly monitored for potential adverse effects.
More than 200 million doses have been administered over the past ten years, with research and trials dating back to 1991. The vaccine has proved to be a safe and effective intervention with an extremely low complication rate.
Only last year, a report based on data from more than a million recipients concluded the vaccine had a ‘favourable safety profile’. But still claims of ‘vaccine damage’ continue to circulate online, to be stumbled upon by the many who daily consult Dr Google, instead of turning to highly trained health professionals for advice.
Much of it comes from anti-vaccine campaigners, not content with the damage already done by the discredited, downright dangerous claims linking the MMR vaccine to autism. Among the groundless assertions are that the HPV vaccine causes thrombosis and chronic fatigue.
I cannot blame anyone whose child becomes ill or permanently exhausted for searching for an explanation and cause.
However, if you are giving a medical intervention to everyone at a certain age, as in this case, it is a medical certainty that some people get sick in the days, weeks or months afterwards. It would, of course, have happened whether or not they had received the treatment. It is merely Coincidence.
Perhaps another issue with the vaccine, for some parents at least, is having to face up to the fact that their children will likely become sexually active in the not-too- distant future.
But, although pretty natural, such squeamishness doesn’t give you the right to deny your child, or the people they may become intimate with, the protection provided by this vaccine.
This most recent scaremongering, from the American College of Paediatricians concerning a risk of premature menopause, is equally without merit.
This is not some august medical body (in fact, that’s the American Academy of Pediatrics), but rather a group of conservative activists opposed to abortion rights, gay marriage and pre-marital sex.
Their claim is motivated more by ideology than by any evidence, and is simply not supported by the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence. There is no link between the HPV virus and premature ovarian failure, so it makes no sense to suggest that the vaccine may cause this condition.
Yet still, there have been a number of legal challenges mounted against the manufacturers of Gardasil, supported by the ‘Regret’ group in Ireland.
The case made it all the way to the Irish High Court, and although it was refused, the movement shows no signs of abating.
We need only cast our minds back to the damage done by scare stories about the MMR vaccine to be reminded how dangerous this can be.
Those who are not vaccinated against the HPV will have a much higher risk of contracting cancer than they would have of becoming ill as a result of having the jab, so, from a parenting perspective, it’s a no-brainer.
What we must avoid at all costs are these tales of personal misfortune, which are ultimately unrelated to the vaccine, getting in the way of an inoculation programme that could save many thousands of lives.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3984248/Melinda-Messenger-stopped-little-girl-having-cervical-cancer-jab.html#ixzz4RbYAEvKy
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