Hi Becca,

I'd like to bring to your attention that some of the information you presented above about condom usage not preventing HPV is incorrect.

The New England Journal of Medicine, the nations foremost medical journal, had a cover story in June 2006 that stated that regular condom usage actually played a significant role in reducing the thread of HPV. (LINK)

This study was followed up by an additional study done by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota confirming that original study.
(LINK)

Thanks for info and agree condoms might contribute to a lessened risk for vaginal transfer. Little worried as I read about the SINGLE study (didn't see another study by Mayo based on provided links) with only 82 participants versus other previous inconclusive long term studies with 444 or so. The ACTUAL study results seem a bit tilted when you consider the sample size and use of qualified terms like "consistent use of condoms" and "appears". Not a particuarly definitive study result for me. And, of course HPV is still transmitted via surrounding tissues not covered by condoms...

I prefer the broader and more definitive CDC explanation for clinicians based, in part, on the results from the same study: http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/common-infection/CDC_HPV_ClinicianBro_LR.pdf

Dear Patty,
I am concerned that you have the highest trust in our scientists when they can't even fix the common cold, our lawmakers who Mandate vaccines when they have no clue whats in them, and the insurance companies when they don't cover the vaccine costs, especially the government. Even after our Government knew Iraq had no WMDs and still let Dubya have his war? Now you want our children to have one more vaccine out of the 40 something that they already need to attend school? There is no proof that this vaccine(Poison)prevents cancer, it has not been tested long enough. Besides, the FDA is going through a reorganization process because of concerns from kickbacks from Vaccine makers. You should be requesting the vaccine makers to provide the contents of this miraculous cure! They can't because of patent pending laws so therefore we have no idea whats in it. If the FDA and CDC came knocking on your door and said "Here Patty, Here Becca, take this piece of horse manure and gargle it with diet coke because it cures cancer." Would you take it and make it mandatory for everyone else to take it? Have a nice day Patty and Absent Minded Professor Becca.

Hey Euclid, welcome to the 21st century! Here's a news flash: they have to test any new vaccine extensively for several years before it is approved for use in humans. There is actually a "scientific method" that is used to determine if a medication or vaccine causes any undesirable side effects, and whether it actually works as advertised. This testing usually involves animals first, because animals have similar body chemistry to humans (there's another news flash for you!!) and then it is tested on volunteers. Many volunteers are tested, over a period of years. The reason that this hasn't worked against the common cold is that what we call "the common cold" is actually a whole group of several hundred different viruses that all have similar symptoms, but we haven't yet found a single vaccine that works against all of them, or even a majority of them.

Now, I'm all for throwing spears at "Dubya" over the trumped-up evidence of WMD, but what on earth does that have to do with a vaccine for HPV? It's good to be generally skeptical of the government, as long as you don't get downright paranoid. I think your suspicions are getting a bit paranoid.

For those readers who are younger than 40 or so, there was a big scare in the early 60s about putting fluoride in the water being a "commie plot". It eventually blew over, once people realized that there was nothing to it. Now, it's vaccines. Some things never change.

If they have not found a single vaccine to treat the several hundred viruses that cause the similar symptoms and we know that there are some 127 strains of this virus and it only treats 4 of them isn't that the same? Don't viruses continue to mutate just a bit to stay alive?
If HPV can only be contracted sexually why are they not giving this vaccine to the boys? Don't they carry it too? Why are we only willing to treat girls as the guinea pigs? I also believe, that there were no 10 year old girls in the study. These kids have not even gone thru puberty yet. We don't know what the reprocussions will be to kids on something this new.
Remeber hormone replacement therapy? That was supposed to be a great thing for women, it was great if you wanted an increased chance to get breast cancer or ovarian cancer. Study the drug longer and be thorough, don't look for a magical pill to solve the problems of the world. No one will be giving this new "wonder" drug to my 10 year old kid.

I think if this drug were to assure that young women or girls would stay thin, many would take the chance immediately!
It has to do with SEX however, and of course my daughter doesn't do sex. 80% say they do by 17.

Vioxx Recall (Rofecoxib)

Vioxx, known generically as rofecoxib, was recalled in on October 1 in the largest prescription drug withdrawal in history. The withdrawal was prompted after a new study examining Vioxx's impact on bowel cancer found the drug caused an almost twofold increase in heart attacks and strokes.

"Fen-Phen"

Fen-Phen refers to the use in combination of fenfluramine and phentermine. Fenfluramine ("fen") and phentermine ("phen") are prescription medications that were approved by the FDA for many years as appetite suppressants for the short-term management of obesity.

How long would someone have to take Fen-Phen for damage to occur? There is no fixed time frame that indicates when damage will occur.

Don't fool yourself into thinking all FDA approved drugs are safe.

Check out FDA drug recalls.

the vaccine for lymes disease? Heralded as safe, pulled less that 2 years after it hit the market. Wicked side effects.

You first.

How about the Rotavirus vaccine, for infants (newborns!), that has now been introduced and recalled TWICE?

Hello Gump,
I must have done a good job to piss someone off because you replied. You know I did not forget to mention flouride because that is another story and it seems as though you may have flouride poisoning because you cannot remember a darn thing that Patty discussed in her article. If you would have read the article you may have read her discussing the Government. Besides, if you would take your head out of your ass you would have read in the news that the Flouride issue is real and the FDA said so. Also, they did test this HPV vaccine for 18 months but on how many children versus animals? Since your knowledge in vaccines is as wide as a box of chocolates lets discuss what you said. "animals have similar body chemistry to humans (there's another news flash for you!!)" Well... lets see. More than 25,000 patients were part of a double blind placebo clinical trial of Gardasil, but only 1,184 of them were preteen girls (Notice there is no mention of animal testing?). To me that’s a thin base of testing upon which to make a vaccine mandatory. Direct from the CDC's mouth: (Read Gump you might learn something...) "In recent years science has learned that the human immune system is much more complicated than we thought. It is composed of two functional branches (Th1 & Th2) which may work together in a mutually cooperative way or in a mutually antagonistic way depending on the health of the individual.

There is no system of the human being, from mind to muscles to immune system, which gets stronger through avoiding challenges, but only through overcoming challenges. The wise use of vaccinations would be to use them selectively, and not on a mass scale. In order for vaccinations to be helpful and not harmful, we must know beforehand in each individual to be vaccinated whether the Th1 function or the Th2 function of the immune system predominates.

Vaccinations are usually effective in preventing an individual from manifesting a particular illness, but they do not improve the overall strength or health of the individual nor of the immune system. Instead, vaccinations modify the reactivity of the immune system, decreasing acute discharging inflammatory reactions and increasing the tendency to chronic allergic and auto-immune reactions.

Side effects of vaccination are usually allergic or auto-immune inflammatory reactions caused by the shift of the immune system’s reactivity from the Th1 side to the Th2 side. Modern medicine is just beginning to recognize this. Very often the media exaggerate the extent of outbreaks. Each individual should freely decide, based on knowledge and not on fear and hearsay, whether he or she or a child would benefit from a vaccination."
Today, by age six children receive 48 doses of 14 vaccines at a time when their immune systems and brains are developing most rapidly. The tragedy of one-size-fits-all vaccine policies enforced by the law is that an unknown number of vulnerable children are being written off as expendable in the name of the "common good."
Gump, you know what you go ahead and vaccinate your daughter. What do I know since I am some paranoid ignorant concerned about commie plots. Have fun with the side effects. Remember Gump, vaccines are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get.

Euclid,
I'm not pissed off at all. You first post just sounded moronic. Vaccines have saved literally millions of lives in the last 50 years or so. That's not exactly " gargling with horse manure". Fluoridation has also proved to be safe and effective, or else a significant number of the millions in the US population who have been drinking fluoridated water would have had serious problems with it by now. They haven't.

Now, you bring up immune system reactivity and Th-1 vs. Th-2 responses. Your point about the lack of testing on pre-teens is a valid point worthy of further discussion. You suddenly sound a lot more knowledgeable than before. Too bad you didn't make those points to begin with.

I'm not in favor of legislating mandatory HPV vaccines just yet, since it is a relatively new vaccine, and there is the possibility of side effects that we haven't yet discovered, as has been pointed out with Vioxx and other medications. However, I'm also skeptical of people who suddenly become passionate about this one vaccine, since it has to do with sexually transmitted disease. My suspicion is that this controversy is about right-wing conservatives who are against anything that appears to condone premarital sex. That would be a tragedy, if young women end up getting cervical cancer just so the right-wingers make a political statement by blocking this vaccine.

By the way, both of my daughters got all their vaccines, as did I. When I was in the Air Force, we even got some experimental vaccines that the public didn't get, like one for hepatitis called "gamma globulin". That one hurt like hell for about 24 hours, then it gave you flu-like symptoms for about 3 days. Luckily, that shot has been replaced by something much better. My point is that I'm not blindly in favor of vaccines, but let's not make blanket statements about vaccines in general being some evil conspiracy.

The long and short of it is that only healthy females between 18 and 45 years of age were included in the study.

Read it for yourself.

Just in case you didn't know, testing of new drugs on anyone younger than 18 is illegal.

To determine if a drug is safe for children, scientists "Discuss" the known side effects and make a determination if it's safe for a child.

The dosage is a "best guess".

Think back on how long aspirin was given to children based on adult reactions to it. Something on the order of 30 years.

Now tell me what the recommendations are for children and aspirin.

By the way, Gardasil was released to the public just 6 months ago.

bad_ptc, your statements are technically correct but ultimately misleading. It is illegal in the United States to test a vaccine on someone younger than 18.

In South America and Africa, where cervical cancer has a mortality rate of 80%, there is no legal age restrictions. Just yesterday, the government of South Africa terminated a Gardasil study because the vaccine was found to be so successful the government felt it was unfair for those women receiving the placebo to be denied the vaccine!

The vaccine has been tested on thousands of 16 years olds and hundreds of 9 year olds outside the United States. (I realize "hundreds" is not a particularly valid sample). Virtually no adverse effects.

This vaccine appears to have a very bright future. Let's revisit this thread in say, five years. One or the other of us will be wrong!

_______________________________________________
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross" - Upson Sinclair, 1906

Healthy women between the ages of 18 - 45.

What they do in other countries doesn't concern me.

Ask Union Carbide about Bhopal India.

P.S. I hope it's me that's wrong. Either that or hundreds of thousands teenage girls are in trouble.

Why would they do the study "outside" of the United States?

Could it be that the liability was decreased to the lowest extent possible?

They didn't test Viox in SA. Viagra wasn't tested in SA.

Definition of orphan drug.

Now they they think they have something to market they try to pay politicians to make it mandatory.

Bad PR move.

They tested in Columbia, Uganda, Brazil and South Africa because the governments there ASKED them to test there, because 4 out of 5 people who contract cervical cancer die from it in those countries.

_______________________________________________
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross" - Upson Sinclair, 1906

"Columbia, Uganda, Brazil and South Africa" what a true representation of the 8th graders in the United States that was.

I guess that's where AIDS vaccines are tested as well.

Better to kill off someone else in another country then here at home. To much chance for bad publicity.

Was Oklahoma, Virginia, Giorgia or Washington DC to far?

If you're looking for HPV cases DC is the place. New York would have worked just as well. California would have worked too if the population of that state had not been in denial.

I have no problem if you choose to use your daughter as one of their "test subject". That's why they call you the parent.

Tell me bas, have you rushed your daughter out to get this vaccine?

She has an appt for the first of three vaccinations on April 2nd. The vaccine evidently is limited in availability.

I'm doing it because I love my daughter.

_______________________________________________
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross" - Upson Sinclair, 1906