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Posted on 12/22/2011 5:35:47 AM PST by markomalley
“Really?”
Absolutely. I can’t speak for other people, but personally, HPV is a complete non-issue for me.
“I’ve never had the flu. I rarely ever even catch a cold. But I’ve had HPV.”
Perhaps that’s because you engage in activities in which you are likely to contract HPV.
“FYI, warts are caused by HPV. It seems like *everyone* gets HPV.”
You are, again, grossly misinformed. No, ‘everyone’ does not contract HPV. If that were so, then your argument that they have to be ‘virgins’ to be inoculated does not work.
You are assuming that sexual contact is required in order to contract HPV, and yet at the same time you are saying that this is not the case?
So which is it?
“Are you so sure of that?”
Yes.
“There are over 100 strains of HPV, and they use a variety of transmission methods.”
Generally they require sexual intercourse or direct contact with the afflicted area. Neither of which would qualify as casual contact.
“babies can get them from their mothers during birth.”
Again, this isn’t casual contact. Many STDs can be transmitted to the child in the womb.
“You’re so right, I’m horribly misinformed.”
Yes, on this matter, you are misinformed.
“Instead of reading sensationalist and factually questionable stories on the internet”
You find the CDC citations and studies to be ‘factually questionable’ and ‘sensationalist’?
I’m not sure what I’ve cited that’s qualified as either. You might disagree with their assessment, but that’s not sensationalist by any means.
“I engaged in actual medical research using genuine PAP samples from real HPV infected women, collected by a real gynecologist.”
Yet you seem to be willing to ignore information contrary to your beliefs. That doesn’t suggest to me that you are following any empirical basis in your assessment of HPV.
“That’s because the virus lives inside cells, where the immune system does not see it.”
And when the flare ups return, the vaccine gives the cells the tools they need to combat them.
“For this reason, it is preferable”
Again, the vaccine has been shownt to be both effective and safe in older women who have already been exposed to HPV. Ergo, I must conclude that it is unnecessary to vaccinate children.
It may be preferable to some, but that is entirely subjective, and should be left up to the individual, and not the health authorities to make this decision.
“Um, how are you going to test that person?”
The same way they test for HIV, etc. They go in, they get checked out, we go from there.
“Last, stop applying your own personal definition to the word ‘communicable.’ “
There’s a difference between communicable diseases and sexually transmitted diseases. They tend to be treated differently when it comes to immunization. They do not mean the same thing. HPV is firmly in the second category, Influenza, Dipthteria, Pertussis, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, are all in the other category.
This is significant in this particular case because we are arguing over how the shots ought to be administered. I see no justification for a mandatory shot, and I believe that it is entirely appropriate to let young women choose, as an adult, to get them done. That way they can make their own decision, properly informed of the risks associated.
I think we owe it to young women to give them that choice.
Oy, oy, oy. Your first two sentences make my head spin. How does a company show that a drug is safe? By showing that it is not dangerous. It is impossible to separate the two, since they are opposites.
Your understanding of the scientific method is obviously lacking. Science is based on evidence, established carefully through experiments and statistical analysis. The VAERS is a first alert system: by documenting adverse events that occur after vaccination, researchers are alerted that further analysis is needed, and what that further analysis should be.
Just because an event occurred after a vaccination does not mean that it was caused by the vaccine. If a girl receives a vaccine, and later that day, she is run over by a drunk driver running a red light, was that accident caused by the vaccine?
Correlation is not causation. I don't know why that is so hard to understand.
"Trust" (of the government, drug companies, or whatever) isn't a consideration. Either the scientific method was correctly applied, or it wasn't, and I can tell which is the case by reading the research reports.
My information comes from doing research in the field, both in the lab and through reading hundreds of original research articles and reviews on the subject, whereas yours comes from anecdotal stories you find on the internet. As long as people like you insist on spreading anecdotal stories and cherry-picked sentences gleaned from the CDC in support of falsehoods, I will attempt to counter them with the truth.
Absolutely. I can’t speak for other people, but personally, HPV is a complete non-issue for me.
How wonderful that you can be so certain of that. By that, I guess you mean that you are celibate and NEVER have contact of ANY sort with other people. If that's how you want to live, fine, but it's highly unrealistic to expect OTHER people to live that way.
Perhaps that’s because you engage in activities in which you are likely to contract HPV.
Yes, I do, as do most people. Have you ever had warts? Then you've also had HPV.
You are, again, grossly misinformed. No, ‘everyone’ does not contract HPV. If that were so, then your argument that they have to be ‘virgins’ to be inoculated does not work.
You are assuming that sexual contact is required in order to contract HPV, and yet at the same time you are saying that this is not the case?
So which is it?
I will attempt to explain, even though you do not appear to be able to grasp the finer details.
There are over 100 strains of HPV. Some infect epidermal tissue (e.g., exterior skin), causing warts. Some infect mucous membranes (such as the lining of the nose), causing dysplasias. Each HPV strain has a preferred tissue that it infects--but nothing prevents it from infecting similar tissues elsewhere in the body. Since they are all highly communicable, their route of transmission depends on where the infection is. Thus, warts on the fingers are readily spread by handshakes.
HPV-16 and HPV-18 (the two oncogenic viruses targeted by the vaccines) infect mucous membranes. While they *prefer* the genital tract, they can and do infect other mucous membranes. They have been implicated in oral, nasal, esophageal, bladder, and other cancers of mucous tissues. Their most likely route of transmission is sexual, but they are not limited to that route. Consider this scenario--you go to a family reunion, and your cousins greet you with pecks on the cheek. One of them has oral HPV-16, and when she kissed you, neither of you noticed that a tiny droplet of saliva from her mouth landed on your lips, which you licked shortly after. A year later, you notice a reddish lesion inside your cheek. You go have it checked by a doctor; tests are done, the result comes back that you have oral HPV-16. Your cousin's infection, meanwhile, cleared up without treatment. So, here you are, after patting yourself on the back for all these years for remaining a virgin, suddenly finding out you have HPV-16, and you have no idea how you acquired it and no way to find out.
And when the flare ups return, the vaccine gives the cells the tools they need to combat them.
No, it doesn't. The vaccine only enables the body to recognize and neutralize viral particles. It cannot teach the body to recognize infected cells that may not have viral proteins on their surface at all. As far as the immune system is concerned, those infected cells look like normal, healthy cells all the way up to the time death from cancer occurs.
There’s a difference between communicable diseases and sexually transmitted diseases.
Still trying to use your own personal definition for "communicable," I see. If you are trying to make the point that you don't think it is moral to vaccinate against sexually transmissible diseases, just come out and say it. You don't need to misuse words to make that point.
This is significant in this particular case because we are arguing over how the shots ought to be administered. I see no justification for a mandatory shot, and I believe that it is entirely appropriate to let young women choose, as an adult, to get them done. That way they can make their own decision, properly informed of the risks associated.
Parents make the decision to vaccinate their children without the children's knowledge or consent all the time. Unlike you, I don't have any moral objection to vaccinating a young child against a disease they may not be exposed to until their late teens or twenties, just because they don't understand what the vaccine is about. Chances are, they've been receiving vaccines their whole life that they didn't consent to.
“My information comes from doing research in the field, both in the lab and through reading hundreds of original research articles and reviews on the subject”
Then why, when I actually checked out your source, I found that it did not say what you said it did. My research demonstrated, quite conclusively, that Gardasil works just fine in women up to 45. Even your own source, the CDC confirmed this, that while it was approved at present up to 27, it had been shown in several studies to be safe for older women too.
It is unnecessary to vaccinate children. You admitted that when you stated that it was personal preference to vaccinate them, but there is a difference between necessity and personal preference.
“whereas yours comes from anecdotal stories you find on the internet.”
My research comes from the only source of data that we possess on adverse reactions to the Gardasil shot. The VEARS database. I’ve compiled it for my own research, and for the benefit of others wishing for a more in-depth look into the problems associated with Gardasil.
It’s probably not a wise decision to assume that you can rely upon arguments from authority to try to steamroll inconvenient data.
“As long as people like you insist on spreading anecdotal stories and cherry-picked sentences gleaned from the CDC in support of falsehoods, I will attempt to counter them with the truth.”
VEARS is not ‘anecdotal stories’ nor is it ‘cherry picked’. It is, quite frankly, the best data that we have. VEARS indicates that there are serious problems with the shot, that were not caught prior to the rollout because the shot was not adequately tested beforehand.
The good thing is that the database is publicly available so that people can make an informed decision based on the actual risks, rather then rely upon ‘experts’ to make that decision for them.
“How wonderful that you can be so certain of that.”
I like my life, what can I say. :)
“By that, I guess you mean that you are celibate and NEVER have contact of ANY sort with other people.”
You might wish to consult a dictionary again as to what celibate means. I presume you mean chaste? No, I am most certainly not celibate, nor have I contracted, or been at risk to contract HPV.
“If that’s how you want to live, fine, but it’s highly unrealistic to expect OTHER people to live that way.”
You asked me why I, personally, was not concerned about contracting HPV. I responded saying, that I was not at risk to contract it because of how I choose to live my life.
I do not expect others to live as I do. However, if people do not wish to contract HPV and they wish to engage in activies that they may contract HPV, there are precautions (such as testing), that they can take beforehand. I believe I even said that this is what people should do. I think they should be free to get the HPV shot when they are old enough to make that decision for themselves. Adults can do that you know.
“Yes, I do, as do most people. Have you ever had warts? Then you’ve also had HPV.”
No, ma’am. I have not.
“Since they are all highly communicable”
I do not believe that word means what you think it means. What is the most likely way to contract HPV, ma’am? You’ve said it yourself. It is most likely to be contracted through sexual conduct, either through fluid exchange or direct contact with the lesions. This can be avoided rather easily.
“Consider this scenario—you go to a family reunion, and your cousins greet you with pecks on the cheek. One of them has oral HPV-16, and when she kissed you, neither of you noticed that a tiny droplet of saliva from her mouth landed on your lips, which you licked shortly after. A year later, you notice a reddish lesion inside your cheek. You go have it checked by a doctor; tests are done, the result comes back that you have oral HPV-16. Your cousin’s infection, meanwhile, cleared up without treatment. So, here you are, after patting yourself on the back for all these years for remaining a virgin, suddenly finding out you have HPV-16, and you have no idea how you acquired it and no way to find out.”
You should write fiction. I’ll call up Agatha Christie.
“It cannot teach the body to recognize infected cells that may not have viral proteins on their surface at all. As far as the immune system is concerned, those infected cells look like normal, healthy cells all the way up to the time death from cancer occurs.”
And what percentage of cells express these characteristics during flare ups? The vaccine, will teach the cells to recognise those that do.
“Still trying to use your own personal definition”
No, ma’am. That is the definition used in immunology. Communicable diseases are those that are transmitted through casual contact. Non-communicable diseases, include sexually transmitted diseases. The reason, is because communicable diseases require isolation for treatment, whereas non-communicable diseases do not.
Surely you can see this difference? Or perhaps you would insist that hospitals treat HPV infections through isolation? I’m not sure. Maybe the hot nurses can be a part of your next murder mystery, “and then there were two”. It’ll be a best seller.
“If you are trying to make the point that you don’t think it is moral to vaccinate against sexually transmissible diseases, just come out and say it. You don’t need to misuse words to make that point.”
Then feel free to quote me where I have said this. I have no problem with immunization for sexually transmitted diseases, provided it is voluntary, and undertaken on adults only, who choose to undergo the injection themselves.
I believe I’ve even stated this several times already. What, is my real position too difficult to argue against, so you have to make up a fantasy?
“Parents make the decision to vaccinate their children without the children’s knowledge or consent all the time.”
For which diseases? DPT and MMR. The only one which isn’t communicable is tetanus. This is the argument I already made a long time ago.
All of these diseases have similar characteristics. They readily demonstrate a high affinity for herd immunity. This is why these 6 were selected for the shots that are done. They are also fatal diseases that have significant mortality if left untreated.
Neither of these are true for HPV.
“Unlike you, I don’t have any moral objection to vaccinating a young child”
Good for you. I do, when there are young girls dying of the shot.
With every drug, there is a risk/benefit assessment. In the case of Vioxx, it turned out that there was a small increased risk of a cardiovascular event among those taking the drug, and the decision was made that this risk outweighed the benefits. With other drugs, the same level of risk might be deemed acceptable with regard to the benefit.
In the case of Gardasil, the risk is no higher or different than the risk for any other vaccine. The risk of a sore arm is judged acceptable in view of the benefit of decreased disease and healthcare costs.
I hardly consider 250,000 to 1 million new cases of cervical dysplasia per year a "small group of girls." In terms of health care costs, long-term health risks, and risks to fertility, that's a huge number. Personally, I think it's atrocious that parents would expose their children to painful medical procedures and permanent damage to their reproductive organs because of unfounded rumors and fears.
Since you seem to think that the only driving factor is profit (as if profiting by providing a life-saving service is somehow immoral), keep in mind that it is far more profitable to not vaccinate, and let women develop the disease. A diagnostic colposcopy with biopsy would cost roughly $1000. The treatment method and price depend on the biopsy results, but can range up into several thousand dollars. If the disease progresses to metastatic cancer, then the prices rise even more. In contrast, the Gardasil vaccine series costs $360 plus doctor fees. For less than the cost of a colposcopy, the need for one can be decreased by about 70%. Price isn't the only consideration--the colposcopy and subsequent treatment are incredibly painful.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Wrong. Illogic makes my head spin.
Working to save lives, protect health, and educate people is never shameful.
And for that fondness you willfully discredit the available evidence of correlation. VAERs is meaningless to you.
Many, many things are correlated that are not caused by each other. The VAERS website specifically states:
Guide to Interpreting VAERS Case Report Information
When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.
(Underlining mine.)
Guide to Interpreting VAERS Case Report InformationLet's try to see both sides of the coin. VAERs is a valuable resource and its not fair to attempt to discredit it by emphasizing only half of a level-headed cautionary statement.
When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.
You be sure to get back to the rest of us when the CDC ACTUALLY prints information that discredits vaccines and the damage they do!
It's not fair to attempt to read significance into VAERS disclaimers that simply does not exist.
I suspect that no amount of explaining the scientific method or significance of statistical analysis is going to make any difference with you. You don't want to hear it.
The thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of cancers and dysplasias that occur every year in the US don't bother you at all, do they? Because, as far as you're concerned, everyone who gets an HPV disease deserves it for their sinful behavior, right? Even the babies who get it from their mothers deserve it because of their mothers' past sins, right?
According to the American Cancer Society:
--Eighty percent of all people develop a primarily sexually transmitted HPV infection during their life.
--About one of every twenty women will develop cervical dysplasia or cancer during her life (you probably know at least one of them)
--Around 11,000 new cervical cancers, and 15,000 other HPV caused cancers are diagnosed every year in the US. The death rate is about 35%.
Since a safe, relatively inexpensive, and effective preventative for the most common kinds of oncogenic HPV exists, I see no reason not to use it.
Since a safe, relatively inexpensive, and effective preventative for the most common kinds of oncogenic HPV exists, I see no reason not to use it.No one here is advocating that you not be allowed to pursue vaccination for yourself. Certainly not I. Feel free and I sincerely hope you never find yourself regretting the decision. But if you do come to regret it, I hope you too will enter a VAERs report.
No, you didn't mention those. But I can find no other logical explanation for why you are so totally against a vaccine that is as safe as any other vaccine on the market, and which protects against the strains of HPV responsible for about 70% of all HPV-related dysplasias and cancers. I really don't know why anyone would be against protecting people from real disease and saving real lives in favor of fear-mongering. The worst part about the fear-mongering is that in its worst-case scenarios, the alleged death toll from the vaccine isn't even a fraction of the real death toll from HPV every year. And you *still* don't want people to be vaccinated.
The American Cancer Society page you've linked does not detail the statistics you've listed.
Actually, it does. I skipped the part where I used a calculator to come up with percentages and so forth. But my numbers were *all* from that website. Your computer has a calculator, too; you can derive the same numbers from that data.
"HPV is rarely passed from a mother to her baby. The rare cases where this has happened do not involve the types of HPV that can cause cancer." This indicates your "babies who get it from their mothers" scenario is little more than outlandish fear mongering on your part.
Then I guess that the gynecologist I worked with who told me about the babies--some of whom she delivered--who had extensive HPV infections in their mouths and throats requiring, in some cases, upwards of 100 surgeries to scrape warts from their throats so they could breathe was just being sensationalist. Yes, those were babies who acquired HPV from their mothers during birth, just like I said. I suppose I should dismiss all the other stories she told me about her HPV patients, as well. Like the 19 year old hysterectomy patient, or the 67 year old patient who, even after a hysterectomy, STILL had HPV lesions. And the pictures she showed me of cervixes so disfigured by HPV that they look more like a mass of hamburger than a discreet body part were just photoshopped, right?
No one here is advocating that you not be allowed to pursue vaccination for yourself. Certainly not I. Feel free and I sincerely hope you never find yourself regretting the decision.
Oh, I'm well past the age at which an HPV vaccination would do me any good. I sure as heck wish it would have been available when I was young enough to benefit. The pain of HPV treatment isn't just physical, you know. Once you've had a dysplasia, then every time you go to the doctor, there's a fear. There's a knot in your stomach when you are awaiting the results of the PAP test, because you never again can be confident that it's just a "routine" test. What if it's abnormal again? What if the dysplasia is more extensive this time? What if a carcinoma is found? I think every woman that's had a dysplasia (or worse yet, cancer) lives with those fears for the rest of her life.
A few years ago, when my 17 year old intern complained that her arm was sore after receiving her third Gardasil shot, I was happy for her, because her chances of developing dysplasia or cancer are so much lower now that she's protected against HPV-16 and HPV-18. The discomfort of a localized vaccine reaction (common to many vaccines) is NOTHING next to the pain of a colposcopy or dysplasia surgery.
Dr. Diane Harper was part of the team that carried out the safety and efficacy studies for Gardasil that helped to get it approved (click). You may find her grasp of the scientific method exceeds your own and certainly her statistical analysis is more sound.
In that whole article, I saw nothing that indicates how well Dr. Harper understands the scientific method, nor did I see a single statistical analysis. What I saw was that whatever Dr. Harper might have said was exceedingly difficult to discern because most science reporters have only a vague grasp of the subjects being discussed, and their interpretation ends up being an unscientific muddled mess that bears little resemblance to the original subject. (Note: that article *does* remind me of why I do not read articles about scientific matters that are directed towards the general public.) If you think that that article represented solid scientific method or sound statistical analyses, then that only reflects that your understanding of either is rudimentary, at best.
The Huffington Post is not a peer-reviewed journal. Its muddled account of what this scientist said does not constitute "solid scientific method and statistical analysis." Although you claim you "trust her documented and reviewed assessment far more than I do your sensationalism", have you actually read any of Dr. Harper's work published in a peer-reviewed medical journal? I seriously doubt it. Nor do I think you'd understand it if you had. You might like to know that, while you're dragging Dr. Harper's name around to try to support your anti-vaccination opinion, in actual peer-review literature, Dr. Harper promotes both HPV vaccines and PAP testing.
Merely throwing the words "scientific method" and "statistical analysis" around does not prove anything. You have not demonstrated that you understand what either term means. Can you explain, in general terms, what the scientific method is? Do you know anything about statistics? Can you explain when, for example, applying Student's t-test to a data set is appropriate, when it would be more appropriate to apply the ANOVA test, or when the data requires a different test to get the same kind of result? Do you know what regression analysis and confidence intervals are, and what they are supposed to show?
And congratulations, for having found the names of two girls who allegedly died, coincidentally after receiving a Gardasil vaccine. Guess what--putting names to girls that die of unrelated causes after receiving Gardasil STILL does not indict the Gardasil vaccine. I, of course, cannot publish names of any of the hundreds of thousands of people who develop HPV disease every year, or of the thousands of people who die of HPV caused cancer every year--as a medical professional, I would go to jail for doing that. Their anonymity doesn't make them any less real, or their suffering any less tragic.
I'll just point out here that your mathematical ability must be incredibly weak. Most grade-schoolers have the intellectual ability to pick up on the fact that thousands of deaths per year is, in fact, more deaths than the 71 that are reported to have occurred after HPV vaccinations (but were caused by unrelated medical issues). Either your math ability really is that weak, or my first hypothesis about your motives is correct: you don't care how much death and disease HPV causes, because you believe that people only get it by having immoral physical encounters outside of marriage, and they therefore deserve whatever happens to them as a result.
Your argument that children should only be vaccinated against HPV when they are old enough to understand the miniscule risks from the vaccine is hogwash. Parents make the life-saving decision to vaccinate their children against deadly diseases all the time. Logically, there is no reason for them not to decide to have this vaccine administered, as well. And parents *are* deciding to protect their children from this life-threatening disease: 40 million doses have been administered so far.
Oh, and I'll finish with a little light reading for you. This is an abstract taken from a recent peer-reviewed paper co-authored by Dr. Harper:
In the Phase III PATRICIA study (NCT00122681), the human papillomavirus (HPV)-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine (Cervarix(®) , GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals) was highly efficacious against HPV-16/18 infections and precancerous lesions in women HPV-16/18 deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) negative and seronegative at baseline. We present further data on vaccine efficacy (VE) against HPV-16/18 in the total vaccinated cohort including women who may have been exposed to HPV-16/18 infection before vaccination. In women with no evidence of current or previous HPV-16/18 infection (DNA negative and seronegative), VE was 90.3% (96.1% confidence interval: 87.3-92.6) against 6-month persistent infection (PI), 91.9% (84.6-96.2) against cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN)1+ and 94.6% (86.3-98.4) against CIN2+ [97.7% (91.1-99.8) when using the HPV type assignment algorithm (TAA)]. In women HPV-16/18 DNA negative but with serological evidence of previous HPV-16/18 infection (seropositive), VE was 72.3% (53.0-84.5) against 6-month PI, 67.2% (10.9-89.9) against CIN1+, and 68.8% (-28.3-95.0) against CIN2+ [88.5% (10.8-99.8) when using TAA]. In women with no evidence of current HPV-16/18 infection (DNA negative), regardless of their baseline HPV-16/18 serological status, VE was 88.7% (85.7-91.1) against 6-month PI, 89.1% (81.6-94.0) against CIN1+ and 92.4% (84.0-97.0) against CIN2+ [97.0% (90.6-99.5) when using TAA]. In women who were DNA positive for one vaccine type, the vaccine was efficacious against the other vaccine type. The vaccine did not impact the outcome of HPV-16/18 infections present at the time of vaccination. Vaccination was generally well tolerated regardless of the woman's HPV-16/18 DNA or serological status at entry. (Int J Cancer. 2011 Aug 19. doi: 10.1002/ijc.26362. )
Get back to me when you figure out what that abstract actually means, okay?
You *have* said such a thing. Not in one statement, but that attitude comes across when you say that there’s no way you will vaccinate your children, but if an adult wants that vaccine series, you’re okay with it. You most certainly *are* saying that you don’t want children to be vaccinated. Didn’t you ever learn reading comprehension in school?
And don’t be stupid with “I take it you have not scheduled your own shot sequence yet and would rather attack me than face your own hypocrisy.” As I pointed out earlier, I’m way past the age at which the vaccination is effective (and I’ve already been exposed to the virus anyway). It’s recommended for 9-26 year olds. What part of “I’m too old for it” do you not understand?
If anyone is failing to read before firing off non-sensical postings, it’s you.
By the way, did you read that abstract from Dr. Harper’s peer-reviewed paper yet? Do you have any idea of what it says?
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