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  • HPV VAX UPDATE

    Filed at 6:52 pm under by dcobranchi

    Merck is going to stop pushing (i.e., lobbying) to make Gardasil mandatory. They should have listened to Lydia in the first place. 🙂

    UPDATE: If you haven’t been following the conversation in this thread, Andrea’s comments ought to be must reads.

    13 Responses to “HPV VAX UPDATE”


    Comment by
    Nance Confer
    February 21st, 2007
    at 11:11 am

    I am sitting here laughing my ass off. I tried to read through the discussion on the HEM-Networking list about this issue. What a hoot! But I could only get as far as the poster who used the voice-over actress who did Pocahontas’ voice in the cartoon movie as her source to support not vaccinating. No, really. This is what passes for “research” in some circles. I couldn’t keep reading there — just too funny. I only hope people who read there know that not all hsers are kooks — that that list is just particularly thickly populated with them.

    Some of the other posters, one at least, who vaccinate selectively or not at all were at least able to see both sides of the discussion and not see every interaction with the world as a battle of big business and big government versus all of us poor little people. They were willing to look carefully at the science and make thoughtful decisions.

    Anyway, this vax discussion has brought up one question for me. Maybe Lydia knows the answer, Daryl?

    I have not had the kids vaccinated for the chicken pox because my understanding is that it wears off relatively quickly.

    Somewhere in all this mess, I read that this HPV vaccination also wears off or the life of it is not known? What does Lydia’s research show, if anything, about that issue?

    Thanks.

    Nance


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    February 21st, 2007
    at 1:10 pm

    When Pocahantas-woman called me a liar is when I finally bailed.

    As for your question, Nance, like all new vaccines the lifetime is unknown. It’s always that way. So, if 10 years from now we see the effects wearing off, I’m sure there will be a way to boost it. Just like tetanus (my 15 -year-old son just got his booster yesterday). When that vax came out we didn’t know how long it would last, either.


    Comment by
    JJ Ross
    February 21st, 2007
    at 2:04 pm

    Two probably off-point questions then (yikes!) that hadn’t occurred to me until I saw Nance’s comment:

    1. Why would not getting the vaccine at all be better than having it wear off? (Do you mean you’d rather them just get the disease itself, the way my mom purposely exposed me as a child to all the things you only catch once, so I wouldn’t risk worse effects as an adult?)

    2. How long is the chicken pox vaccine thought to last at this point?


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    February 21st, 2007
    at 2:31 pm

    2. According to this CDC brochure, it seems permanent.

    1. I don’t think any of them have gone quite that far into irrational-land. The arguments (and I use that term very loosely) employed against vaccinating seem to fall into two categories:

    1) We don’t know the long term effects, and the cure might be worse than the disease.

    I don’t buy this one, but it’s at least a legitimate argument. Unscientific, of course.

    2) Merck is a big bad Big Pharma company bent on experimenting on our daughters. There is no science behind the vaccine. It hasn’t been adequately tested or tested at all. Merck rushed this to market to generate billions in sales to make up for Vioxx losses.

    These seemed to be popular among the tin-foil devotees. Anti-scientific, of course. 🙂

    And that anti-scientific bent is what has really surprised me about this discussion. In their own way, many of the anti-vax folks seem every bit as dogmatic and irrational as the most “devout” YEC.


    Comment by
    Andrea
    February 21st, 2007
    at 2:55 pm

    I wanna know how the money-reasoning works up here in Canada. You know, where the doctors get paid regardless of how sick or better we are (and not paid very well, given how many go south) and where the drugs are cheaper and in many cases subsidized.


    Comment by
    Nance Confer
    February 21st, 2007
    at 4:21 pm

    Chicken pox versus cervical cancer — I’m not trying to suggest that they would be equally OK to get. Just that I had read that the chicken pox vax wears off at around college age, I remember the pediatrician confirming that, and that seemed like a bad time to be getting chicken pox when you could just get it as a kid and get over it. Which is not to suggest that any of that thinking applies to the question about a vax against cervical cancer. Just that the same sort of “it’s not a life-long vax” question had come up. Off to read at the CDC link above. . .

    Nance


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    February 21st, 2007
    at 5:15 pm

    More info

    A Second Opinion
    THE BENEFITS OF THE CHICKEN POX VACCINE
    Janet R. Gilsdorf, M.D.
    Professor and interim chair
    Department of Pediatrics
    University of Michigan Medical Center

    Will children need an additional dose of vaccine later? This is a difficult question to answer, as we cannot predict how long immunity from the vaccine will last. Most people don’t get chicken pox a second time because their immunity is constantly boosted by exposure to others with chicken pox; this booster effect will be reduced with widespread use of the vaccine.


    Comment by
    Nadia
    February 21st, 2007
    at 6:29 pm

    Is this a libertarian blog or what? I’m not sure that all of this to-vaccinate or not-to-vaccinate debate would be going on — or certainly it wouldn’t be as vehement and widespread — if it weren’t for the fact that states are trying to make it MANDATORY for girls of a certain age to have the vaccine.

    I’m not anti-vaccine — I’m anti-goverment-in-my-business.

    Of course, I homeschool, so I don’t give a shit what they mandate in order to enroll in school. 🙂


    Comment by
    JJ Ross
    February 21st, 2007
    at 7:26 pm

    Back to the original point of this post. 🙂
    “Merck is going to stop pushing (i.e., lobbying) to make Gardasil mandatory. ”

    So now — theoretically — no one will be stomping around outraged. (yeah, right. . .)


    Comment by
    Nance Confer
    February 21st, 2007
    at 7:33 pm

    Except for me. 🙂

    Because I’m not expecting insurance companies to cover something that’s not mandatory.

    But maybe I’m wrong and the health insurance industry will jump to offer this vaccination to women and girls.

    Nance


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    February 21st, 2007
    at 7:35 pm

    Is this a libertarian blog or what?

    Or what. 🙂

    I’ve stated my opposition to making this mandatory in several places. I think that JJ is right– the compulsory aspect was merely a convenient hook for folks who are opposed to vaccinations for various reasons to hang their opposition upon.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    February 21st, 2007
    at 7:48 pm

    Aetna covered it at 100% with no co-pay.


    Comment by
    Nance Confer
    February 22nd, 2007
    at 10:00 am

    Good to know, Daryl.

    Nance