Posted on 05/14/2007 9:15:48 AM PDT by bedolido
Plans to vaccinate young girls against the sexually-transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer have been blocked in several US states by conservative groups, who say that doing so would encourage promiscuity.
Advocates of the vaccine point out that the jabs work against human papillomavirus (HPV) - which causes virtually all cases of cervical cancer - and are safe.
The latest data from a large clinical trial of Merck's cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, found it offered 100% protection against cervical, vulval and vaginal diseases, caused by HPV (types 6, 11, 16 and 18) and 98% protection against advanced pre-cancers caused by HPV types 16 and 18 (New England Journal of Medicine: vol 356, p1915).
After around three years of the four-year trial, almost all girls who received the vaccine before being exposed to HPV 16 or 18 appear to be protected. Those who had already been exposed to the viruses received little benefit, but by vaccinating early on, perhaps at 11 years of age, most girls could be protected.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Did you tell your kids they could now become intravenous drug users because they got the Hepatitis vaccine?
I am more concerned about whether the vaccine is safe and if it has been tested enough to know that it is, in fact, safe.
Conservatives do not want to pay for this vaccine, anyone is free to get the vaccine, we just do not desire to pay for this.
However, the article is false. No one anywhere is preventing the use of this vaccine. There has been, however, resistance to forcing families to get 11 and 12 year olds vaccinated, particularly since there's a strong indication that all the effect will be lost from the body by the age of 17 or 18 right when unprotected sexual promiscuity might well begin in susceptible young females.
This is not a cancer vaccine.
George Sawaya, a gynaecologist at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco, notes that the trial still has another year to run. Surprises often appear late on in such studies and Sawaya says he thinks the CDC should have waited until all the data was available before taking a stance on the vaccine.
and
Public health experts are also divided, though. Some question whether the relatively small numbers of lives that would be saved are justified by the significant cost of a vaccine programme. Merck will charge around $360 for the three-doses needed.
The “scientists” at newscientist.com can’t even get the basics on this topic correct.
The Merck vaccine is NOT a “cancer vaccine.”
It is a vaccine dealing with a specific virus
and NOT a “cancer vaccine” as their headline states.
Bogus statistics, clever marketing, and a great big rip-off!
If you research the full statistics, you’ll see that most cases of HPV-caused cervical cancer are caused by strains of HPV that Gardasil doesn’t even protect against!
This is not a vaccine against all, nor even MOST of the strains that cause cervical cancer. It’s a very expensive vaccine that only offers protection from a few strains of the virus.
I just don’t understand the entitlement mentality that requires taxpayers to fund birth control, abortion and now this virus vaccine.
When I was younger and I wanted birth control, I waited till I was working and could afford whatever I needed myself. I wouldn’t think of asking my parents (who would have kicked my sorry rear to the curb) or trying to get these things from government entitlement.
In my view, if you are going to have sex before marriage or whatever it is you are doing, it should be up to you to buy yourself whatever protection you need. If you can’t afford it, then keep your pants zipped.
Oh yeah. I missed this too.
“PERHAPS at 11 years of age”
Perhaps?
Conservatives do not want to pay for this vaccine, anyone is free to get the vaccine, we just do not desire to pay for this."
Do you think it would cost the taxpayers less to treat uninsured or Medicare cancer-stricken women, whether promiscuous or not, with surgery and long hospital stays and provide free prescriptions and taxpayer funded home care nurses and social workers to provide care-giving during recovery ? That's the way the system works now, and this taxpayer opts for the 'right to choose' - choose the vaccine that is.
Is drug industry giant Merck placing articles in the “New Scientist” now?
This is a rather thorny issue, isn’t it? The Federal Government is too blunt an instrument to insert it routinely into our daily lives.
School nurses were finding an alarming number of neurological anomalies, never seen before in those children who received the first trial of Hep B and were entering school for the first time.(i.e., seizure disorders, learning disabilities, vision/hearing loss, etc.) *www.vaccinationnews.com*
Like you.....I would want to see the long-term effects of a vaccine (and not just the research by the drug companies who developed them) before I would want it imposed on the public at large.
Of course the media distorts the real problem. It isn't that conservatives are blocking the vaccine, they do not want it to be mandatory. The only way to transmit HPV is through sexual contact. If you feel that you are not a ho, then you might not want to be forced to pay $360 for something you don't need.
I have to say "tsk-tsk-tsk" at Merck for this one as well. With Zocor's patent expired and Fosamax's patent ending in February, they are needing ways to keep there revenue high. Nothing like government mandated purchases to secure revenue.
It’s not a cancer vaccine, it’s a slut vaccine. This is telling girls as young as 10, 11, 12, 13 that they can get laid without fear of getting this sexually transmitted form of cancer. It’s a vaccine that, like abortion, is a way of negating personal responsibility.
Well, there is one thing that works better than this friggin liberal invented shot. ABSTINANCE!!! As with pregnancy and all other STDs, abstinance is 100% effective, and there is no shot required. As far as I’m concerned, any girl that young that’s sleepnig around, if she gets that cancer, she can blame herself and the guy that gave i to her. We don’t need more ways to flaunt morality and personal responsibility. The whole concept of this shot makes me want to puke.
I'd like to see those indications. From the APIC:
An immune challenge study was conducted to determine the presence of immune memory responses. The presence of immune memory is the hallmark of hepatitis B and other long-term protective vaccines. An immune memory response will allow women with low, negligible or non-detectable anti-HPV levels to mount an extremely robust anti-HPV response and abort infections. In the immune challenge study, a dose of GARDASIL® was given to ~240 subjects in the vaccine and placebo groups who had been followed for five years. The results demonstrated that administration of GARDASIL® induced robust immune memory and a strong anamnestic response to HPV 6/11/16/18.
Last month, Merck applied for a supplemental license from FDA with more data on immune memory, evidence it's even more effective against cervical cancer than previously claimed, and evidence that it offers some protection against vaginal and vulvar cancer. The last part isn't a surprise, but they have to wait for data before they can make that claim. HPV causes lots of nasty diseases to people of both sexes, virgins (e.g. RRP) or sexually active people, and the sooner it's approved for wider use the better.
Wiping out debilitating, expensive diseases is a Good Thing. Think of it as a long-term investment, like building an aircraft carrier. It may hurt now, but you'll be grateful you have it a few years from now -- and you'll be grateful we did it ourselves, instead of selling the technology to the Chinese.
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