Vaccine Prevents Cervical Cancer. So, What's the Down Side?

[lindisfarne]

Based on the article at the link below, some things to think about:
How many women (in the US and world-wide) will die of cervical cancer simply because they couldn't afford the vaccine ($300 to $500 for a series of three shots)? Hopefully, the undeveloped world will follow the AIDS-drug example: ignore the patents. (Will the price for the vaccine be higher in the US than in Canada, Great Britain, France, or Germany?)

In the US, will cervical cancer become a disease mainly affecting either poor women, or women from conservative families (whose parents wouldn't allow the vaccine, and the girl/woman failed to get pap smears regularly in the subsequent years which would have caught the cancer)?

From a "Commentary" article in the NYTimes.
BEN DAITZ, M.D.
Published: May 23, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/health/23comm.html
Increasingly, cervical cancer will become a disease of poor women who have limited or no access to basic health care, much less vaccines expected to cost $300 to $500 for a series of three shots.

Unfortunately, the prospect of the first preventive vaccines for a devastating cancer come with side effects other than just the high cost. The physical side effects of the vaccines themselves are reported as minor, but the immunizations' implications for public health and health policy, for moral and ethical decisions, for religious convictions and ultimately for sexual politics, nationally and globally will be major.

Dr. Wheeler and most other public health specialists argue that vaccinating young girls and eventually, boys, before they become sexually active is the best overall prevention strategy and the most effective way to continue to research the vaccines' efficacy (although no effectiveness studies have yet been done in males). But some conservative Christians oppose mandatory vaccination, and have argued that the vaccine would promote promiscuity and detract from their, and the Bush administration's, abstinence messages in the United States and abroad.

The present cost of screening-prevention methods like Pap smears and colposcopy approaches $6 billion a year in the United States. Those costs will continue in addition to the vaccine expense. Who will pay for cervical cancer prevention for the neediest women and girls?

The scientists and researchers who made and tested these incredibly promising vaccines will probably not be deciding the best way to educate men and women about cervical cancer, or how to plan for affordable global distribution that is now, more than ever, the right thing to do.

[Rottenmac]

1. THEN THEY WILL ALL BE HAVING

sex in the streets like dogs, aborting foetuses on our front lawns, turning into lesbians and wrecking traditional marriage with all the illegal immigrants pouring over our unprotected borders !!!

:sarcasm:

[wakeme2008]

2. Welcome to DU Rottenmac

:hi:

[Gman]

36. You are so right!

Let's pray! Not!

[Lethe]

3. never trust those with the "vaccines"

a "vaccine" will prevent this, a vaccine with prevent that. just take this and you will be fine

right. thats why amish have zero levels of autism and babies born in normal hospitals have sky high rates of ever disease imaginable.

there is an old quaker song called "Simple Gifts"

[REP]

6. And Polio Rates Are Sky-High! Vaccines are Baaaaaaaaad

Uh-huh.

Ever consider that the Amish eschew modern medicine so autism, a fairly new diagnosis, is never diagnosed? What they call 'slow' or 'simple minded' may in fact be autism.

[Name removed]

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[REP]

9. What's Your Point Then?

Diptheria sweeping the nation! Unsafe to swim due to polio! Vaccines are lies!

Yeah, right.

[Lethe]

11. um yeah, actually

the last part, vaccines are lies.

its the exact same as people trying to tell you that raw meat, raw dairy, raw eggs are unsanitary. hey guess what: i've ate raw eggs and dairy for a couple years and never gotten sick. only 1 in 30,000 eggs has a trace of salmanella and to even get symptom from that egg you have to have a weakened immune system

[REP]

26. Anecdote is not The Plural of Data

You go on and eat all the raw meat you want. That, however, has nothing to do with vaccines ... and that you cannot back up your hysteria about them.

[depakid]

35. You will never convince certain types of people

they'll rail on and on despite the scientific evidence.

On the bright side, though- they help make the case for mandatory proof of vaccination or titers before entering elementary or secondary schools or colleges.

[LostinVA]

30. Your posts also prove you know nothing about cervical cancer

It's a horrible cancer that kills so many women every year -- and it can be stopped with a simple vaccine. THIS IS A MIRACLE. Understand that? Know any woman who's died from this? Well, I have. It's an insidious form of cancer.

[tritsofme]

15. Well you've proven at least one thing tonight.

That you're too young to know anyone affected by the scourge of polio before vaccinations became widespread.

[Lethe]

17. i'm not saying all vaccines are bad

you just seriously have to look at the vaccine itself, who is adminstering it, and who created it

there is too much emphasisis on a quick fix medicine solution. just take a few pills or this and that and everything will be fine.

ok. whatever.

[REP]

27. Why Take an Antibiotic When Death is Natural?

Too bad you can never experience first-hand the joy of cervical cancer. HPV can cause penile cancer - the vaccine protects against that, too. Interested now?

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. Then why did you say in post #11

"vaccines are lies"? Are you saying they're a 'good lie'?

[LostinVA]

29. REP isn't a jackass -- he's completely right

Polio, smallpox, diphtheria, measles, etc. All have either been eradicated or controlled because of vaccines. So many unnecessary deaths and disabilities have been stopped because of this modern miracles. And, they are miracles. I'm old enough to know people who were affected by polio, old enough to know people who had a brother play ina pond on a Monday and be dead by Wednesday. Your argument is facile and uninformed.

This has nothing to do with the argument about autism and vaccines. I personally don't believe that link, but the argument FOR the link has to do with the old MMR.

The other poster is correct: no one can claim the Amish have zero autistics when the Amish don't take their children to English doctors who could diagnose autism. It's like saying the Amish have a zero rate of motor vehicle accidents, so that proves no one should drive cars.

Your calling REP a "jackass" for no reason also breaks DU rules.

[REP]

34. That was me, making the point about the Amish and modrn medicine

You know - the jackass! :)

Oh, and I'm a chick who's had cervical cancer. Not as much fun as one might think.

[madokie]

13. You got it.

amish country here and I see, I listen.

[sybylla]

24. self-delete

Responded to wrong post.

[depakid]

33. Polio outbreak among the Amish in Minnesota in 2005

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm54d1014.pdf

BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T TAKE THEIR KIDS TO GET VACCINATED.

I seem to recall a mumps epidemic this year too....

[sybylla]

25. Don't know much about the Amish, I suspect.

I've lived in the middle of an Amish community for almost 16 years. Their babies are, for the most part, born in a hospital, though they have little prenatal care. My closest neighbor has 10 grown children in the area, six of them married. They have one grandchild with cystic fibrosis, one grandchild whose head was misshapen during birth, one grandchild who has some brain disfunction and will probably never walk, one grandchild born deaf, blind and without a stomach who lived all of two days, and another grandchild who burned away his esophagus at the age of 2 when he swallowed a chemical they use to clean the milking equipment in the barn and has had, in the 6 years since, probably 15 corrective surgeries just so he can eat.

Doesn't that all sound like fun?

These Amish neighbors call themselves New Order Amish, they have phones, electricity, drive tractors with rubber tires and, whenever it makes practical sense, make great use of the medical complex nearby. their obviously on the liberal end of the Amish spectrum. Of course, just last year in other more conservative Amish communities in the county, we had a Whooping Cough epidemic spreading rather quickly. I don't remember the exact number but I know it took a couple of young lives as it passed through. And more than a few of those conservative Amish families had their children vaccinated out of fear.

All I can say is no-thank you.

I'll take I'll take vaccinations with all their potential for trouble over praying to god and hoping for the best.

[mcscajun]

38. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is not science.

In simple terms, correlation is not causation.

Mercury toxicity is another suspect, so is fetal alcohol syndrome; the verdict on what definitely causes Autism isn't IN yet.

The Age of Autism: One in 15,000 Amish

WASHINGTON, June 8 (UPI) -- The autism rate for U.S. children is 1 in 166, according to the federal government. The autism rate for the Amish around Middlefield, Ohio, is 1 in 15,000, according to Dr. Heng Wang.

He means that literally: Of 15,000 Amish who live near Middlefield, Wang is aware of just one who has autism. If that figure is anywhere near correct, the autism rate in that community is astonishingly low.

(snip)

Most mainstream medical experts and federal health authorities say a link between thimerosal and autism has been discredited, although the director of the CDC told Congress she is keeping an open mind about the possibility.

(snip)

(A Virginia doctor told UPI he is treating six other Amish children with autism, none of them vaccinated. In four of the six cases he suspects their autism was triggered by mercury toxicity due to environmental pollution.)

http://tinyurl.com/dl8n3

It's possible that it is the entirety of their lifestyle that protects them, not just one element in it. Meanwhile, the close-knit communities are subject to certain genetic disorders (37 mentioned in the article) which due to their isolated gene pool, are not bred out.

[khashka]

4. This is an issue that totally fucks with my head

We have a vaccine. It works. And it means that a lot of women won't die.

But see, cervical cancer is often a sexually transmitted disease. So any woman who gets it is a slut. Yeah right!

Sorry, I'm just so angry about this I can't think straight......

Khash

[Lethe]

5. lies

lies

not the GNR album.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Lethe]

14. Eades research on parasites

hey guess what? every hunter-gatherer society shows evidence of parasites.

these same parasites consume the human's excess iron content and decaying tissue.

[BreweryYardRat]

16. Save the self-righteous "modern medicine BAAAD!!!" crap.

We can cure the fucking bubonic plague with antibiotics now, if we catch it in time. BUBONIC PLAGUE-y'know, the stuff that wiped out a third of Europe's population in the 14th century?

Children don't die from measles or scarlet fever or polio anymore.

Smallpox has been reduced to a couple samples (some of which are missing, but that's another thread). Smallpox had a 33% death rate too.

If people didn't fuck up and misuse medications, we wouldn't have so much trouble these days with resistant strains.

Enjoy your self-righteousness. If you stick to it when you're coming down with something fatal, I'll be amazed.

[Lethe]

18. thx for the vote of confidence

i'm not very self-righteous. in fact i hate myself.

you can attack me all you want, i just think modern medicine is a gigantic hoax

[Virginia Dare]

41. I half agree with you...

I think that modern society as a rule is way too reliant on medications. I myself have to be suffering pretty badly to reach for any sort of over-the-counter medication.

Having said that, I believe completely in vaccinations. Talk to anyone over the age of 60, and they will tell you what it's like to live through an outbreak of polio or measles.

Our grandmothers, great-grandmothers and on back lived in constant fear of losing their children to insidious diseases. Maybe you're correct, and that as a human race, these things are "good" for us, however, I'll take the peace of mind that my child will likely not die from a preventable disease.

By the way, your comment about eggs and raw and undercooked foods is off the mark. Food sources, including poultry and meat are raised, slaughtered and processed completely differently than they were, say 30 years ago. The risk is much higher now, due to that fact. You're playing with fire in my opinion.

[lindisfarne]

21. "Children don't die from measles or scarlet fever or polio anymore."

Unless they haven't been vaccinated (and even those benefit (free-ride) off the fact that most kids have been vaccinated and so these diseases aren't floating around to the degree they used to.)

[tritsofme]

19. Here's what this evil vaccine can prevent:

(from the link in the OP)

"Someone please help me with my daughter!" the middle-aged woman announced in the waiting room of our clinic. "She's in the back of the car and I can't carry her."

I followed the woman to her car. Her daughter, in her late 20's, lay huddled under a blanket in the back seat. Her face was ashen and her body cadaveric, and when I picked her up, she stared at me with hollow, dull eyes as her bones rubbed against my arms. Her mother told me that she'd brought her daughter back on a plane from New York City, where she'd been a ballerina. I had never seen an adult patient so thin, so emaciated.

My patient said she had pain in her abdomen and pelvis, and when I did a pelvic exam, I did not know what I was feeling. I only knew it was very bad.

That was almost 30 years ago, and I was feeling the contours of a cauliflowerlike mass, a so-called fungating carcinoma of the cervix, a cancer every bit as bad as it sounds. It caused my young patient's death several weeks later.

I hope you don't convince any of the women in your life, or anyone else for that matter, of these crazy ideas.

[Lethe]

20. so because someone gets sick it is because they didnt take a vaccine?

first off, how does a vaccine prevent a cancer?

every person must evaluate what their doctor says with what common sense perscribes. this is just what every individual must do, they shouldnt automatically take a vaccine or do exactly what their doctor tells them. they should take all the evidence into account in their own situation and make the determination themselves, independent of a doctor.

[tritsofme]

22. Read up on HPV and its relation to cervical cancer

Before you start making pompous pronouncements on threads.

[Name removed]

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[lindisfarne]

12. To add: HPV is transmissable, even with a condom - a condom might slow

down transmission rates, but HPV is small enough that it can get through the microscopic holes in a condom.

Women's, not men's, lives are threatened by cervical cancer which can result from dysplasia caused by the virus (DYSPLASIA is the presence of abnormal cells on the surface of the skin. Dysplasia is not cancer, but may turn into cancer over a period of years if it is not treated. Treatment gets rid of dysplasia so that the tissue cannot turn into cancer.) A big reason to get regular Pap smears (about 70% of cervical cancer cases result from HPV). (But see this for a possible link of HPV to oral cancer: http://www.rdoc.org.uk/hpv.html and this http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/HPV for possible role in cancer of anus, vulva, vagina, and penis.)

It's very widespread, and unless you're abstinent or in a long-term monogamous relationship (and no one is cheating! even once!) it would be surprising if you *HADN'T* been exposed to it. (Of course, the conservatives will want to use this fact to induce FEAR in teens, but as we all know, teens think they are invincible and are unlikely to allow this fear to stop them from having sex (fear doesn't stop them from driving recklessly and getting killed or killing others).)
==============
"The majority of HPV symptoms are only diagnosable in women. 50% of women never develop symptoms. While men can contract the disease, they are asymptomatic carriers. Men only show symptoms in extreme cases, usually when the disease has developed into genital warts. Even though most men do not show signs of infection, or ever develop a health problem, they can still spread the disease to their partners." http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/sexinfo/?article=stds&refid=037

"Less than one percent of infected people develop serious symptoms that require treatment. These are the signs of genital warts and cancer."

===========
http://obgyn.uihc.uiowa.edu/Patinfo/Adhealth/hpv.htm
Prevention
There are three ways to decrease exposure to HPV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Using condoms (rubbers) during sex.
Monogamy - have sex with only one partner. To be effective, monogamy must include both partners and be long term. It is helpful to discuss this with your partner.
Abstinence - not having sex. This does not mean that other forms of closeness need to be eliminated.
Examination Of Male Sexual Partners
We recommend that male sexual partners of women with genital warts be examined by a physician. If warts are found on exam the partner can be treated. If warts are not found, the male may still carry HPV, but show no signs of it. Some physicians are more knowledgeable about genital warts than others. Dermatology, Family Practice or Urology specialists will likely be most helpful. Ask the nurse or physician if you have more questions.
=================
Some more technical info on the results of one study is here:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514292

In 2005, more than 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the U.S. and about 3,700 women will die of the disease.
========================
Genital HPV infection is the most common sexually transmitted infection for both men and women in the United States. About 20 million Americans at any given point in time are currently infected, and about 5.5 million people become newly infected each year. A recent Duke University estimate suggests that about 80% of sexually active men and women will have acquired genital HPV by age 50. Genital HPV infection is primarily transmitted through sexual intercourse. Most infections are asymptomatic, so the usual source of transmission is an individual who has no idea he or she is infected. The most important predictor of infection for women is young age, followed by number of sex partners. For men, the leading risk factor is number of partners. For both women and men, the risk of acquiring a genital HPV infection generally increases with increasing numbers of lifetime male sex partners. In addition, another factor that increases a woman's risk of HPV infection is the sexual activity of her partner. Several studies have indicated that for a woman, the greater the number of partners that her partner has had, the greater her risk for acquiring HPV--even if she only has sex with that one individual.

http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t040311a.html
(At this link, there is an in-depth discussion of the HPV and a multi-faceted approach to reducing its transmission and cancers resulting from it).

[Mend]

37. Men are getting head and neck cancers linked to HPV possibly

due to oral sex. There are few things as disfiguring as having half your face removed due to cancer.

[lindisfarne]

45. I mentioned that somewhere ... n/t

[xchrom]

28. more examples of fundies thinking about your naughty bits and what

you do with them.

it's not just the uterus that gets the fundies attention -- it's vaginas and penises.

they really do think about what each and every one of us is doing with our naughty bits -- and they think about it all the time.

[seabeyond]

39. i dont want it to be a forced vaccination, up to the parent

and i want to wait and see. i have issue with vaccinations that we give our kids. vaccinations where the odds are if the kid gets the disease they will do just fine. i dont like the govt telling me i have to inject my kid once again, because ogf chicken pox. i the parent didt fear chicken pox for my kids and i didnt need govt making me get them vaccination. again i say, personal experience with oldest son, i have issues with all the vaccinations.

we also hae a new law out these companies dont have to take responsibility if we get vaccinations that hurt the people. they are not liable. so i will wait for all to jump on and get them to see if there are any problems with the vaccination. cause i sure dont trust the govt and really really dont trust the drug company that came up with this

on edit: just had conversation with right wing brother on this too. i will also insist that people have the right to get this vaccination if they want it for their child

[lindisfarne]

43. There isn't a single vaccine in the US which is "forced". Parents always

have the right to opt out of vaccines.

[bedazzled]

40. one thing no one's mentioned - merck = vioxx

the vioxx disaster happened for a reason. my husband worked there for awhile several years ago and neither of us are surprised at the quality of their drugs. i'm not going to give my son (or daughter, if i had one) one of their drugs to be a test case.

i understand that cancer is our enemy, and many people have suffered and lost their lives, but i think that merck is just trying to save its ass. do you folks really trust them, and the fda that much?

[lindisfarne]

44. Then make sure your daughters get annual pap exams throughout

their life, beginning at about age 16 (you can never be sure if your kids are having sex, even if they say not; study after study has shown that kids (even the most religious) lie). See above information on issues regarding transmissibility and prevalence (80% get HPV at some point) in the US. (3700 women in US die annually from cervical cancer, and 1 in 70 women will get cervical cancer within their life).