GARDASIL (HPV) vaccination for teenage girls? what to do?

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I'd love some opinions on this. I know some feel these vaccinations (including all the ones most of us got for our kids when they were babies) could be related to autism. The HPV isn't required in our state as it is in Texas but I need to decide if my daughter should get it.
Thanks!

I've never heard of someone becoming autistic as a teenager, for whatever reason. There is also no hard evidence for a link between vaccines (administered at any age) and autism. Autism is an inherited condition, caused by an accumulation of related genes in the affected individual.

Ten to twenty years from now someone will be telling us that there is no hard evidence for the connection between Gardasil and the increasing number of cases of infectious sterility in American females. This will be even after someone has collected thousands of pages of evidence for such a connection.

I don't think you should be worried about getting autism from this vaccine though it does have mercury in it. What a person should be worried about if considering the HPV vaccine is - is it really safe? It was hurried onto the market and not tested well. It could cause the cancer for what anyone knows. Also what does it do to the immune system? There are articles stating all the vaccines Americans are given could be the reason for the huge increase in autoimmune diseases.

Another thing is what happens if someone who has already been exposed to HPV gets the vaccine? Could it cause cancer in them? A lot of girls are raped as small children and may have been exposed to the virus. Still others may be sexually active already and they will never tell you.

Let me just remind you of another vaccine called Lymrixs that was hurried onto the market for both humans and dogs only to be quietly taken off the market within a few years after they discovered it CAUSED Lyme disease instead of PREVENTING it. So it all depends whether you want to make your child a guiena pig or not.

I would think it's worth it though.

A Wikipedia article estimates that about 4,000 women per year die of cervical cancer. That's roughly one in over 30,000 women. Exposing 30,000 women to the risks of the vaccine for every one that we try to safe is an idea that takes very careful examination, and the maker of the vaccine seems to be in an awful hurry to make this thing mandatory. It simply isn't in the same category as the times when there wasn't a family that hadn't lost someone to smallpox.

I have never heard of a vaccine causing autism in a teenager, but I know I heard of a person who blamed their MS on a series of Hepititus C vaccines...

It seems the fatality rates are low from Cervical Cancer, but that said, how many get it and survive it? I sure know that I would want to avoid contracting any form of cancer, even if the odds are in favour of surviving it.

Then again, I am weary of being anyones guinea pig, as for reasons already stated. I think I would want a few more years research between this vaccine hitting the market and taking it myself or giving it to my kids.

There certainly are a lot of questions to ask and it is not an easy decision to make. Maybe you need to include your daughter in the decision, afterall it is her body?

I don't get my kids any vaccines unless there is a history of epidemics of the illness. I am currently working toward my natural practitioner diploma and the concern with vaccines in that field is the effect of vaccines on the immune system. Humans have a strong immune system that has been designed to naturally fight off illness. It stands to reason that if you begin forcing the body to have an immune response to too many things, it will eventually lose the ability to fight by itself. It may make us more susceptible to those viruses such as colds and influenza viruses. There is also a rise in auto-immune diseases where the body has lost it's ability to tell between a virus and it's own tissue. This may also be because the body has been been forced to react and lost it's balance.
Not all people who carry HPV will get cervical cancer, just as not all cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV. Teaching and pracricing safe sex is also the best answer as with any STD.

Just a note to Earthcalling- you mentioned you would want more research before getting the vaccine yourself or giving to your kids. Understand that the vaccine is not suppose to be given to anyone who has already had sex as they don't know what would happen if someone already is carrying HPV and gets the vaccine whether it would trigger the virus to become active or what. The vaccine is only being recommended for young girls who are not already sexually active with males.

It doesn't make sense to me why the transmitter of HPV is not the one being targeted for treatment preventative or otherwise and that would be males.

The theory with immunizations was that, in infancy, some people might be extraordinarily sensitive to certain forms of mercury for genetic reasons. The mercury concerned was thimerosal (merthiolate), which was used in trace amounts as a preservative in vaccinations when they were stored in multiple-dose vials. Thimerosal is no longer found in vaccinations for infants or small children, but it is still found in vaccinations for adolescents and adults, since (as someone else pointed out) nobody seems to become autistic that late in life.

If you're worried about thimerosal, just ask that your daughter be given the immunization from a single-dose vial. It's a little more expensive in that form (which is why pharmaceutical companies began using thimerosal in the first place -- to cut costs), but your doctor should be able to get it.

70% of adults in the US have been exposed to HPV. About a dozen of the around a hundred known strains cause virtually all cases of cervical cancer. Those strains are the ones targeted by vaccines. Personally, I consider this a huge breakthrough, and wouldn't hesitate to have my kids immunized, particularly in a thimerosal-free form.

Last edited by geek on 06 May 2007, 4:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know women who have gotten HPV from other women, both from sex and from other contact, like sharing a towel. While I strongly approve of both genders getting the vaccine, I can kind of understand why, at the high prices that the vaccine goes for, it would be recommended for girls only. HPV can also give guys penile cancer, and while that sounds pretty horrible, it is almost never fatal, and is very rare. So you give the vaccine to the people whose lives might be saved. I hope that they get around to the boys later, when price and availability aren't so much of an issue.

Doesn't one in 30,000 per year count as rare?

Actually it is quite rare. I have an autoimmune illness called CREST which is occurs in something like 1 in every 30,000. But nobody has ever heard of that including most of the drs I have seen. You don't hear people getting worked into a tizzy over autoimmune illness which is becoming more widespread. Things like Lupus and MS are becoming epidemic in the female population over 30.

There's a number of things that are getting epidemic that you don't hear anyone worrying over. Like 13 million Americans have undiagnosed hypothyroidism. But people think that doesn't matter because all it does is make a person heavy. Wrong! Slow or fast thyroids can destroy the heart! And its thought several million people have Lyme disease undiagnosed. That's a whole lot more people than have cervical cancer, but you don't hear anyone worrying if their child might have that!

Put this in perspective people and quit bowing down to media frenzy. The HPV vaccine above all is a marketing gimic to feed off uneducated people who like to jump on the bandwagon.

Anyone who would give their child this vaccine before proper studies have been done on it does not truly care for their child. Again look at Lymrix and how that vaccine has maimed people for life. There are even studies coming out linking the polio vaccine with causing AIDS in humans since the vaccine was grown in monkeys. AIDS is a Simian virus. It will be interesting in 20 yrs to see how many girls sue their parents for harming them with the HPV vaccine when women start getting sick from it. The FDA is letting things get on the market without proper studies. Look at Celebrex and Bectra. And look at the black box warnings coming out on SSRI's. Why? Because it is harming people. 30 years ago women couldn't wait to take DES and then a few yrs later they figure out DES caused deformed babies and cancer in the mother and offspring. I am a DES baby and my twin brother died from the deformities it caused.

If parents would teach their children some abstainence and not sleeping with multitudes of sex partners and being good examples to their children by not bedhopping themselves that would lower the HPV rate even more.

It only takes one man for a woman to get HPV. And even if they're abstinent until marriage, she can still get it from her husband

About vaccines and autism, I thought it was old news that there is no link.

Here's a weblink to neurodiversity.com's link to an FDA article about thimerosol. Please note that Neurodiversity.com is rich with autism/asperger resources:
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/115/

Maybe she should insist on him being tested before getting married. Still not many people die of it compared to other things no one thinks to test their kids for.