fwdailynews.com features an article today about Diane M. Harper who is speaking out about the lies being told about the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination. Harper is a scientist, professor and director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire.
The article starts
A lead researcher who spent 20 years developing the vaccine for humanpapilloma virus says the HPV vaccine is not for younger girls, and that it is "silly" for states to be mandating it for them.
Not only that, she says it's not been tested for effectiveness in younger girls, and administering the vaccine to girls as young as 9 may not even protect them at all. And, in the worst-case scenario, instead of serving to reduce the numbers of cervical cancers within 25 years, such a vaccination crusade actually could cause the numbers to go up.
"Giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment,"
Is Harper a Right-wing wacko like me? Her qualifications:
Internationally recognized as a pioneer in the field, Harper has been studying HPV and a possible vaccine for several of the more than 100 strains of HPV for 20 years - most of her adult life.
The article points out that the vaccine doesn't protect against all strains of HPV, which could lead parents and girls with a false sense of security.
She also points out that the drug has not been tested on girls as young as the vaccine is being recommended for (11 or in some cases 9 years of age).
A number of people have repeated the fallacy that the vaccine is a "vaccine against cancer," but the "mainstream" media should know better than this. The fact that a number of articles have called Gardasil a vaccine against cancer is either sloppy journalism or pure propaganda, because reporters are in a position to know better--and should be doing better research. But as the article says from Harper:
It is not a cancer vaccine or cure. It is a prophylactic - preventative - vaccine for a virus that can cause cancer.
It is not 100 percent effective against all HPVs. It is 100 percent effective against two types that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers.
The actual tests on the younger girls, ages 9 to 15, were only for safety and immune response, Harper said, and then only as a shot by itself, or in combination with only one other vaccine, Hepatitis B. It has not been tested in conjunction with any other shots a girl receives at about age 11, Harper said.
So far more than 40 cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome - a dangerous immune disorder that causes tingling, numbness and even paralysis of the muscles have been reported in girls who have received the HPV vaccine in combination with the meningitis vaccine.
Again, this is not just some Right-wing pro-family sex-hater saying this (actually I LOVE sex--in the right circumstances), but a scientist:
In the end, inoculating young girls may backfire because it will give them a false sense of protection. And, for both young girls and women, because the vaccine's purpose has been so misinterpreted - and mis-marketed - Harper feels that too many girls and women who have had the vaccine will develop a false sense of security, believing they are immune to cancer when they are not, and failing to continue with their annual Pap exams, are crucial to diagnosing dysplasia before it can develop into cancer.
This is an another important point which is not brought out in most of these HPV vaccination discussions: Pap exams will stop most cervical cancers, without exposing young girls to dangerous drugs and a false sense of security that may promote promiscuity.
Another important consideration not mentioned in this article is that Merck, the manufacturer, is only counting on the vaccine to be effective for 5 years. If you vaccinate a girl at 11 (the min. age for the South Dakota initiative), when may it wear off? When she's 16. If girls are going to become sexually active before marriage, when is that likely to happen? High school and college.
Hmmm....
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