Vaccines against the human papilloma virus (HPV), such as Gardasil and Cervarix, seem to have a strange power over people who are otherwise reasonable about science and vaccines. For some reason, HPV vaccines seem to have an uncanny ability to turn such people into raging antivaccinationists almost as loony as the merry band of antivaccine loons over at Age of Autism. At the very least, they seem to make seemingly reasonable people susceptible to blandishments and tropes for which they'd normally otherwise never fall. Truly, Gardasil and Cervarix seem to be vaccines that make reasonable people lose their minds. I tend to think it's about the sex. After all, HPV is largely a sexually-transmitted virus, hence the tendency for fundamentalist Christians to find it particularly objectionable.
Whatever the reason for the outsized negative reaction to Gardasil and Cervarix (and I really do think it's all about the sex, given the prudery of American society), antivaccinationists are aware of it. Indeed, they nurture it and take advantage of the undeservedly bad reputation that HPV vaccines have. Sometimes they are able to take advantage of it in a spectacular way, as they did last week. That's when a board member of the antivaccine Canary Party and the founder of a website so full of antivaccine pseudoscience, quackery, and pure misinformation appeared on the Katie Couric's daytime talk show. Even better for the antivaccine movement (but much worse for the reason-based community), these bits of background were not revealed. What Couric showed her viewers were two mothers, one of whom thinks that Gardasil killed her daughter, the other of whom thought that Gardasil made her daughter ill. Against this sympathetic portrayal, no pediatrician could stand, although Dr. Mallika Marshall valiantly tried at the end.
What was particularly gratifying was how rapid and negative the reaction of the blogosphere was to the episode. Sure, a few antivaccine and quack sites praised Katie for telling the "truth," but virtually all other reaction from mainstream sources, science bloggers (including yours truly), and news publications was relentlessly negative, with one even going so far as to refer to Couric as the "new Jenny McCarthy." That was an obvious shot, but not entirely undeserved. After all, it takes talent and hard work to take a reputation for supporting science-based medicine built up over years of promoting colon cancer awareness and destroy it in a single 25 minute segment on a daytime television show.
It's gratifying to see that Couric and her producers are feeling the heat. It's obvious from a rather blatant notpology that Couric posted on that wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery, The Huffington Post, which she entitled Furthering the Conversation on the HPV Vaccine. I suppose that's what Couric managed to do, but so minimally as to be virtually pointless. Basically, what Couric does is whine, justify, and (sort of) partially apologize for screwing up so royally:
Last week we devoted several segments on my TV talk show to the issues surrounding the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine. Learning about this relatively recent preventive measure is tremendously important, and I felt it was a subject well worth exploring. Following the show, and in fact before it even aired, there was criticism that the program was too anti-vaccine and anti-science, and in retrospect, some of that criticism was valid. We simply spent too much time on the serious adverse events that have been reported in very rare cases following the vaccine. More emphasis should have been given to the safety and efficacy of the HPV vaccines. As someone who has spent the last 15 years relaying important medical information with the goal of improving public health, it is critical to me that people know the facts.
You know, given all of Couric's good work, I bent over backward to give her the benefit of the doubt the first time around, but it was hard, given the sheer level of misinformation and false balance in her HPV segment. After this notpology, I'm having an even harder time. "Some of that criticism was valid"? All of that criticism was valid. OK, I understand. This is about as close to an apology as one can expect after a segment as bad as the HPV segment on Couric's show.
If that were all Couric said, I could accept it for what it is, particularly given how Couric followed it up with a discussion of how the rate of HPV infection has fallen markedly since the introduction of Gardasil and how significant adverse reactions to Gardasil are rare. All of this is true, but then Couric had to come back and try to justify why she had two antivaccine activists on her show to tell stories that blame Gardasil for death and illness when there is no evidence that Gardasil caused either in either girl:
As a journalist, I felt that we couldn't simply ignore these reports. That's why we had two mothers on the show who reported adverse reactions after their daughters had been vaccinated for HPV. One could hardly get out of bed for three years, and the other tragically died. There is no definitive proof that these two situations were related to the vaccine. Every life is important. However, the time spent telling these stories was disproportionate to the statistical risk attendant to the vaccines and greater perspective is needed.
I might not be a journalist, but as a scientist and physician I can tell Couric that she was wrong. Not only is there no "definitive proof" that either of these reported adverse reactions, death and a strange, poorly described chronic illness, had anything to do with Gardasil, there's no evidence whatsoever behind only a vague temporal correlation. As much sympathy as I have for a mother who has lost her child, as Emily Tarsell lost her daughter Christina Tarsell, a journalist, as Couric claims to still be, has a responsibility not just to regurgitate her story for to tug at the heartstrings of her audience. A major claim that goes against what we know about Gardasil has been made. It is a journalist's responsibility to examine not just the story as told by the grieving mother but the evidence supporting whether her story might be correct. Couric and her producers failed epically at this basic task from Journalism 101. Indeed, it was worse than that in that she didn't even require Tarsell to answer a very basic question about what symptoms her daughter noted before her death, letting her demur by refusing to answer because she has a "case pending."
Never mind that it's easy to find all sorts of information about Christina Tarsell's case all over the Internet, mostly told by Mrs. Tarsell herself. For example, it's easy to find this particular document: EMILY TARSELL, As the Executrix of the Estate of CHRISTINA TARSELL…. FINDING OF FACTS. Yes, it's the finding of fact from the Special Master:
On November 20, 2007, Christina saw a doctor for chronic sinus congestion. The doctor detected an irregular pulse rate. Exhibit 4 at 136. An EKG was abnormal, indicating premature atrial contractions and that Christina ’s heart was beating in pairs. Id. at 142.
Approximately one month later, the EKG was repeated. It appears unchanged from the previous one. Id . at 135 and 141. In February 2008, Christina had a transthoracic echocardiogram. It produced normal results. Exhibit 4 at 139.
There are also notations that Christina complained about feeling dizzy and faint. One has to wonder, given this history, whether Christina had an electrical conduction abnormality in her heart. Such abnormalities often have no accompanying detectable abnormality on the echocardiogram, and, although rare, can be a cause of sudden cardiac death in young adults. One also notes that these symptoms occurred several months before the third dose of Gardasil that Mrs. Tarsell blamed for her daughter's death.
If my readers and I can find that with a brief session on Google, why couldn't Couric and her producers find it before letting Tarsell falsely blame Gardasil for the death of her daughter on national TV, aided and abetted by Katie Couric. That's on top of Tarsell's being one of the founders of SaneVax, a group known for peddling a manual for blaming the death of one's child on vaccines and peddling pseudoscientific antivaccine fear mongering. More recently, SaneVax published a guide entitled Gardasil HPV: What to Do If You or Your Daughter Suspect Premature Ovarian Failure. It doesn't matter that convincing evidence supporting a link between premature ovarian failure and Gardasil is basically nonexistent.
Next up, Couric tries to defend herself against charges that Diane Harper, one of the investigators on the original clinical trials that led to FDA approval of Gardasil, spread misinformation:
Another concern expressed was the duration of protection the vaccines offer. An early study showed that they are effective for five years. But more recent research indicates the protection lasts for at least eight years, and potentially well beyond that. The longer the vaccine is available, the more research can be done on its long-term efficacy, and the public will need to be informed.
There is one aspect of the show that I felt was especially critical to communicate to viewers. It is also important for women to have regular Pap smears to detect cell abnormalities that can lead to cervical cancer. There's been troubling research out of Australia that indicates some women are skipping their Pap tests because they have been vaccinated. That's a terrible idea. While the vaccine protects against some of the HPV strains that cause cervical cancers, it doesn't protect against all of them, and regular Pap smears are essential for life-saving diagnoses.
OK, it's true that vaccination against HPV doesn't make Pap smears unnecessary. After all, neither HPV vaccine covers all the potential strains of HPV that can cause cervical cancer, only the most common, but Couric's mentioning it seems like a quick pivot to draw attention away from just how badly Couric screwed up. I'll give you an idea how bad, courtesy of Dr. Jen Gunter, who picked up on something last week that I should have picked up on as well. Oh, well.
To understand the problem, you have to know that one of the claims that Dr. Diane Harper made was that protection from Gardasil only lasts five years. Let's take a look:
A paper authored by Harper (and others) from 2009 published in the Lancet specifically shows that the HPV vaccine (Cervarix) is effective for 6.4 years. Yes, Harper participated in and published a study that shows an HPV vaccine (at the time in 2009) was effective for at least 6.4 years. Dr. Harper has written extensively (and very favorably, at least in 2011) on Cervarix. She writes in a 2011 opinion piece (ISRN Obstetrics and Gynecology, Harper and Vierthaler) that Cervarix offers “protection against HPV 16 and 18 lasting at least 9.4 years.”
If Couric were on her show in any journalistic capacity she should have immediately asked, “Why would you say the HPV vaccine only works for 5 years, Dr. Harper, when in your 2009 publication you write, and I quote, Our findings show excellent long-term efficacy, high and sustained immunogenicity, and favourable safety of the HPV 16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine up to 6.4 years. Is your issue specifically with Gardasil?”
However, studies indicate that Gardasil is also effective for longer than 5 years. Data presented last year from two studies expand the proven effectiveness of Gardasil to 8 years. I’m not sure how Harper could be unaware of this data. It’s not exactly brand new in HPV circles.
I've actually read Dr. Harper's article praising Cervarix before. I read it when I last wrote about Dr. Harper before the latest Katie Couric kerfuffle. Back then, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was her naivete that allowed the antivaccine movement to enlist her statements into the service of their cause. No more. I find it very difficult now not to conclude that Dr. Harper either lied or was so utterly clueless about the scientific literature on HPV and vaccines against the HPV types that cause cancer as to have forfeited any right she previously might have claimed to be considered an expert.
Not only that, but as Jen Gunter points out, Harper's own work indicates that adverse events with both of the vaccines was the same as placebo. One wonders why Katie Couric, former journalist, wasn't aware of these little tidbits of information.
No, actually, one doesn't.
Couric finishes with a self-righteous flourish, writing about how she's personally experienced the "devastating impact that cancer has on people and their loved ones" and has "been a passionate advocate for cancer research, education, and prevention." Fair enough, although she does lay it on a bit thick by talking about being co-founder of the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance and Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C). These are all good things. I hope she continues to do them. However, they do not absolve her of the responsibility for the dangerous misinformation she promoted about vaccines. In one segment, she seriously damaged what has taken many years to build up: Her reputation as a promoter of science-based medicine with respect to cancer. One wonders if she would have aired a similar story if Gardasil protected against an infection that led to colon, rather than cervical, cancer. My guess is that she wouldn't have.
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Couric's comments are a notpology, as they say. She screwed up in several ways and, instead of admitting it when she was called out for it, tries to excuse her actions then points to her work fighting cancer as a way to deflect criticism.
But you didn't give them the facts.
Does anyone have a link to the Gardasil 8 year protection data? I'm having a little tête-a-tête with the boy wonder about this, and while he's reduced to bickering over semantics, the best data I could find was seven years.
Thanks,
Becky
I disagree that this is a notpology. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is about as much of an apology as we could ever expect from a news personality. She makes it exceedingly clear that she focused far too much on individual cases, she points out how she was wrong, she fills her story with the facts which absolutely should have been in her original report, and she even admitted that she was wrong to give those reports so much air time.
Oh, the original report was awful, and I spent more time than I should have on the comment section of that one article in TIME magazine (right until the stupid bitch from AoA started Gish Galloping all over the comments page, at which point I said "fuck it, I have better things to do"). But I think we should accept this apology, and treat Couric's further reporting the way it deserves to be treated - tentative goodwill.
Immunogenicity to 8.4 years for the bivalent vaccine. Submitted 2010 August 3.
I take it he's torturing this to fit into the nominal raison d'être for "Autism Investigated."
You could always toss this at him as well, because, like, failure of a global ban on thimerosal indicates shirking of the White Man's Burden.
Make him say that the vaccine "might be OK" for the women he remembers from the backs of his parents' collection of old copies of National Geographic. Please.
^ I meant to note that Antaeus has already made the point that even a limited window of effectiveness can be significant.
IIRC, Gardasil vaccine manufacturing is quite similar to the rDNA Hepatitis B vaccine manufacturer.
The rDNA Hepatitis B vaccine in use now for ~ 40 years, which has immunized hundreds of millions of infants, children and adults provides immunity which is lifelong (or at least 40 years :-) )
Again, this time with less swearing.
I disagree that this is a notpology. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this is about as much of an apology as we could ever expect from a news personality. She makes it exceedingly clear that she focused far too much on individual cases, she points out how she was wrong, she fills her story with the facts which absolutely should have been in her original report, and she even admitted that she was wrong to give those reports so much air time.
Oh, the original report was awful, and I spent more time than I should have on the comment section of that one article in TIME magazine refuting antivaccers (right until a PR drone from AoA started Gish Galloping all over the comments page, at which point I said “I have better things to do”). But I think we should accept this apology, and treat Couric’s further reporting the way it deserves to be treated – tentative goodwill. And hopefully she'll do us a favor and stay away from vaccines for a while.
@Narad - Thank you. :-)
What is with the "waning immunity" trope anyhow? We now know that only 1 or 2 doses of the vaccine can stimulate adequate immunity, and even were immunity to fade after 10 or 15 years, then.....
...Just give a booster shot!
@Becca
With every year that passes we are likely to see additional data. So it will got from 9 years to 10, then 11 etc.
The immune responses in the FUTURES and PATRICIA studies did not wane after 5 yrs and 6.4 years - they were quite stable and at protective levels (10 fold and 16 fold) at the end of both analyses - even Diane Harper published data corroborating this.
http://www.discoverymedicine.com/Diane-M-Harper/files/2010/07/discovery…
I don't know, but I'd rather have ten shots than one Pap any day.
I think AVers want eternal immunity.
At least the, "just because it prevents precancerous changes doesn't mean it prevents cancer" trope seems to be fading away, now we know that it prevents CIN-3, the immediate precursor to cervical cancer.
I think this vaccine is a brilliant application of science and a public health triumph, and I will continue to trumpet this from the rooftops to anyone who will listen, and especially to those who will not.
@Budget Player Cadet:
It remains a notpology so long as she's apologizing solely to the people who took offence. This is posted to HuffPo, which is hardly the same audience that she lied to on her TV show. If she opens a show saying "Look, we weren't exactly clear about the risks in the vaccines, so here's some science," then maybe I'd consider that an apology.
Basically, she needs to address the 'damaged parties' directly, rather than burying a half-hearted retraction on HuffPo's back pages.
Amen @Richard Murray. The dialogue itself is about as much of an apology as we can expect, and most of it is ok (most). But why isn't it on her show?!?
I'm sure some intern could be tasked to recut it proportionately.
@Richard Murray and AnObservingParty
Exactly. That was probably my biggest criticism of her post, that it was on HuffPo, rather than on her show. Different audiences. Granted, even if she were to do another segment on her show correcting all of the misinformation from the original episode, the damage is still done. There is still this stinking mess out there to be passed around and around and around by anti-vaxers to help scare people away from the vaccine. The best thing they could do, from a public health POV, would be to completely remove the video online (though I'm sure enterprising, forward-thinking AVers will already have downloaded a copy to use later).
Huge journalism fail. Broke journalistic ethics in the first place and only slightly made up for it with the notpology.
@Richard: Fair point.
Also, on a side note, I encountered a fair bit of "Has the HPV vaccine ever been proven to prevent cancer" crap on that TIME article's comments. Honestly, at that point, Antivaccers just make themselves look dumb even to the most oblivious observer. If your argument against the vaccine is "it hasn't prevented cancer yet", but you acknowledge that it prevents a disease which causes cancer, and that we wouldn't expect to see cancer yet given the length of time before it generally shows up, then it doesn't take a genius to notice how dumb you sound.
I agree that Couric needs to make this apology to the same audience that was misled about the HPV vaccine - on TV.
"I might not be a journalist, but as a scientist and physician I can tell Couric that she was wrong."
I am an (ex-) journalist and physician, and I can tell her the same thing. It is also wrong for her to continue to focus only on the vaccine's role in preventing cancer. It also will save millions of women from invasive, painful and potentially fertility-altering procedures aimed at eradicating vaccine-preventable precancers (dysplasias).
Couric went for the ratings, now she's got the fallout. She's only partially dealt with it. It remains to be seen whether she'll surrender to this temptation again.
To be "fair and balanced" -why didn't she have parents of women who died from cervical cancer? Or are currently suffering?
I'm sure if there was a vaccine to prevent colon cancer - her guests would be much different
Hmm, I think this really makes me mad
Don't bother with Jacob Crosby, MPH. He won't listen to reason. He won't listen to his masters. In Crosby's Labyrinth, he and he only is correct. All others are heretics, paid pharma shills, and "mouthpieces" of a vast conspiracy.
@ Rebecca Fisher:
Great work at Jake's! You and Larry call out his distortion which illustrates succinctly how he purveys information while he mimes both science and journalism.
Interestingly, he alllows dissent- which I suppose he is forced to, as his blog exists because of censorship of his comments at AoA. I wonder if he censors other critical comments.Has anyone else tried?
Wouldn't it be fun if more SB folk appeared over there? Not that I believe that anyone could unfreeze his paralysed stance on vaccines, conspiracies and autism.
I might even show up if I can conjure a disposable e-mail address and another nym. I've had lots of fun with Jake already.
"I’m sure if there was a vaccine to prevent colon cancer...."
Now that would have been an excellent line for the paediatrician to have at the ready.
@Ren
Jake still has not responded to me on Twitter when I corrected him about the scientific evidence showing the vaccines last longer than 5 years. He suffers from a severe case of finger-in-ear.
@Todd - he does...and if he has to resort to semantic jumping through hoops to maintain his position, he certainly will.
@ Budget Player Cadet
A few years back, we had a vocal contrary person spouting these exact lines here at Respectful Insolence
In essence, his/her position wayes we have a chain of events connecting HPV to cancer, but no, we can not assert that using something to block/limit HPV infection will lead to less cancer. After all, it(s just a theory, science has been wrong before, and all that.
Sadly, however dumb that position may sound, casting doubts always left something behind.
Jacob Crosby, MPH, has not allowed one single comment of mine through on his blog. He has not answered any emails of mine in the last two years. I've been asking him to give specific examples of how I've threathened him with physical violence since that was the gist of his email to half of the leadership at the health department where I worked, begging them to fire me. Like so many of the anti-vaccine crowd's responses, the silence is deafening. He is not interested in being wrong. He wants to be praised.
He needs praise and admiration like an epidemiologist needs facts.
Re a vaccine that prevents cancer --
Most of you know that we already have a vaccine that prevents cancer.
From the Hepatitis B Foundation:
Worldwide, chronic infection with hepatitis causes 80% of all primary liver cancers and more than 500,000 people die each year from this lethal cancer. Currently, primary liver cancer has a 5-year survival rate of only 10%.
The good news is that there is an effective vaccine against the hepatitis B. In fact, the hepatitis B vaccine was named the first “anti-cancer vaccine” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration because the prevention of chronic hepatitis B infections results in the prevention of primary liver cancer due to hepatitis B
@ Budget Player Cadet
A few years back, we had a vocal contrary person spouting these exact lines here at Respectful Insolence
In essence, his/her position was that yes we have a chain of events connecting HPV to cancer, but no, we can not assert that using something to block/limit HPV infection will lead to less cancer. After all, it's just a theory, science has been wrong before, and all that.
A first article from Australia, showing a lesser number of genital warts and pre-cancerous lesions among vaccinated women was still not enough for this person. Nope, still no evidence the vaccine may be useful.
This person was also very upset whenever we dared to talk about unfortunate outcomes of vaccine-preventable illnesses, be it death or sequels or merely loss of income due to staying home nursing sick kids. Because, you understand, it's just nasty syringe-pushers manipulating your emotions.
Of course, if we are not allowed to say how nasty some virus could be, and how often it happens, that doesn't leave many arguments in favor of countermeasures...
Sadly, however dumb these positions may sound, casting doubts always left something behind. "Médisez, médisez, il en restera toujours quelque chose"
Because from a scientific point of view, we cannot answer "no" to the question "couldn't something go wrong?". At best, we can say "very unlikely", or "less likely compared to that would likely happen if choosing the alternative/doing nothing". And it left enough wriggle room for naysayers to exclaim victoriously "See? Even the vaccines pushers think something will go awry".
The person I'm talking about above was very good at playing Ponce Pilate. Better to do nothing than to risk killing someone by giving her a vaccine. Watching people suffer or die without trying to help them is apparently not a sin.
Who knows? If you insist long enough, maybe Reality will conform to your wishes.
Ah. Apologies for the double post.
More backlash from Time, after Katie Couric issued her nonpologies.on her own website and on the Ho-Po:
http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/10/is-katie-couric-the-next-jenny-mc…
Thanks for confirming what we already knew about Jake's "moderation policy", Ren.
Rebecca Fisher @ #2:
The 8 to 9 year data on Gardasil proper is unpublished but was presented at the 28th International Papilloma Conference last year. The press release is here:
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/studies-demonstrate-gardasil-…
And the abstracts are here:
http://www.hpv2012pr.org/HPV2012_PUERTO_RICO_Abstracts_Epidemiology_Pub…
You can read more about duration of protection in my note here:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/chillin-out-vaxin-relaxin-all-cool/how-l…
Good luck!
@ Ren:
Just as I thought!
He allows one or two dissenting voices ( including a few form AoA) through so that his policy appears to be 'open expression' whilst he blocks our Epi Dude. I think that your characterisatio nof his MO is apropo.
Has anyone else from RI/ SBM tried to comment @ Autism Investigated ( which I abbreviate @ 'AI' - for OBVIOUS reasons). I haven't as yet. There are a few minions I'd really like to see attempt to break through the fog...
altho' his readership appears to be in agreement with him.
If you do, watch which e-mail you use: he likes to investigate his opponents.
@Denise...........hmmmmmmmm..........maybe......... ;-)
What is with the “waning immunity” trope anyhow? We now know that only 1 or 2 doses of the vaccine can stimulate adequate immunity, and even were immunity to fade after 10 or 15 years, then…..
…Just give a booster shot!
Do you know what's really ineffective? Food. I tried eating when hungry, but the food only provides protection from the hunger for a few hours!
...yes, I don't get it either. It's no big deal to get a shot once a year to reduce my risk of influenza - if I had to get a shot once every fifteen years to reduce my risk of cancer? No-brainer.
@ Lawrence:
I understand, Brian.
he likes to investigate his opponents.
Hm, maybe it's time for me to use that IP masking service for something other than watching UK-only content on iPlayer... ;)
One of the perennial whines the antivax idiots have is that all anyone is interested in is making $$$ from vaccines, whatever the human cost.
So that would be why researchers and pharma sponsored studies have been conducted to see if only 1 shot or 2 shots of the vaccine may be sufficient, I guess?
;)
I visited Jake's site.
Under "Science" there was some guff about press releases, and congressional hearings. I got tired searching for any science. Does Jake even understand the concept?
Under "Fraud" I looked for Wakefield. Nada.
What kind of intelligence blackhole is he trying to run?
Couric could perhaps fix this almost properly if she wanted to. Get some experts on. Say how important. Say the words anal cancer, and penile cancer. I would also get some head-and-neck cancer advocates on the show too - likely men, perhaps with electronic gizmo's to help them speak (we've got such at every meeting of our H+N SPORE) - they can leave an impression, and are an inspiration to work harder.
@Denice,
I commented before at AI and so did Narad.
Alain
We've got this blogger on The Daily Kos who is in desperate need of some respectful insolence.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/10/1261733/-Beef-heart-human-dipl…
I posted a comment (on the bottom) and replied to Ralphdog a physician who needs our support.
Take a look at the dreadful poll...being conducted by the blogger...who is not, of course, anti-vaccine.
As an added incentive...one of the groupies at AoA is declaring victory for the Daily Kos blogger.
Not gonna happen, at least not tomorrow, I'm afraid. I have much bigger fish to fry tomorrow than a clueless sod over at DK. Trust me, you'll see why when you see tomorrow's post.
Historically, I think I recall reading that the advent of antibiotics for the effective treatment of STDs also caused and quite an uproar with certain groups!
@ Orac:
Oh boy! I think I know exactly what that fish is! Not to worry, I'll keep it zipped. It'll be important enough to make your many loyal minions remark in unison, melodically:"I TOLD you so!"
Not that we'll enjoy doing so.
At any rate-
Alain, of course I saw both your own and Narad's comments...
@ dingo 199:
You call it an "intelligence blackhole", I call it a "sinkhole of unreason"..
*Vive la difference!*
I'm not part of Orac's inner circle//sigh.
How about some hints about Orac's next topic (fish), Denice?
I can hardly wait...I just hope that it's a post on how karma has finally caught up with somebody vile.
(There's a long list of candidates for that honor, you must admit).
I agree that it's definitely the sex.
Lilady, I know you sometimes feel "technologically challenged", but if you try Twitter (it's not that difficult), you'll see who is the most likely target. Couldn't happen to a more deserving person…
I've never understood the negative reaction to Gardail. I agree it must be about sex - and seeing cancer as a punishment from God for deviant behaviour. I suspect the reason why there hasn't been such a negative reaction is for the following reasons:
1. Our religious right isn't anywhere near as large. They exist, but I suspect the majority of the population simply enjoy laughing at Fred Nile, and get annoyed when other idiots (can't remember his name and won't go looking for it) claim the Black Saturday Bushfires that killed 173 people is God's punishment for thegay. (did not go down well at all, that one)
2. Aussies had a large part in it - we like when Aussies do stuff on that kind of a scale. It's normally sport, but this was a cool exception.
3. It was never really promoted as about a STD, but about Cancer. I think that difference was crucial.
4. It was free for all females under 25. The idea that we could be free of one particular type of cancer within 100yrs made an impact, and financial sense to the health sector.
I continue to maintain that an effective HPV vaccine is likely perceived, if in some cases only dimly, by the antivax brigade as an existential threat. The possibility of a filthy vaccine that appeals to young women, their imagined next crop of recruits, cannot be easy to contemplate. The overt derangement that occurs when someone suggests allowing minors to consent on their own tends to reinforce this idea for me, despite its often enough being couched in a reversion to political atavism.
I used to see this sort of control fetish at MDC, where juvenile celibacy didn't seem to have been the norm among the commentariat. Sex? Who cares when the breeding is like voting in Chicago? But you're not getting vaccinated while you're living under my roof (or circumcised, for that matter). Now extend it to a mindset that thinks of itself in these terms.
Meg - I am not a sociologist, but I suspect some of the reaction is because give our young daughters a shot to prevent a sexually transmitted disease means we think they're going to get a sexually transmitted disease. Not only does that mean you think your 11 year old petit fleur will be sleeping around, she'll be doing it with the sort of guys who also sleep around (otherwise THEY wouldn't have the disease to transmit, now would they?). And if you raised your 11 year old daughter with THOSE kinds of values, well, what does that say about you as a parent?
I would think the reaction might be different if the recommendation for the immunizations came at, say, age 19.
Of course, don't get me started on how a vaccination after age 11 causes you to become autistic at around age 2.
I have never understood how some people apparently believe that cervical cancer can be prevented by surgically removing precancerous lesions, but not by preventing those lesions with a vaccine. The mental gymnastics of the True Believer are a miracle to behold.
Unrelated, I'm very much hoping that Orac's news is not what I suspect it is.
Well, wasn't there was supposed to have been a sexual revolution about 50 years ago? But I imagine that it's still difficult for some doting parents to believe that their innocent babies would be interested in (( shudder)) doing THAT- esp when the possibility of gay activities arises.
But wait, aren't these parents aged 40 years old and up?
Seriously, what were they doing when they were 15 or so?
Perhaps there's a way for parents to accept vaccines against HPV ( exclusive of avowed anti-vaxxers, of course) by saying that-
- sometimes young people are forced into sexual situations
- they might have a serious relationship ( even marriage) with a person who doesn't know that he/she is infected.
Being realistic, we'd have to include the fact that teenagers have sexual relations more frequently than parents may realise and that that alone is reason enough to vaccinate
PLUS barrier methods ( condoms etc) don't always work for HPV.
Yet there are huge obstacles amongst particular groups against being realistic because:
there is often STILL a double standard concerning girls' sexuality
and boys' risks may be thought of as being associated with gay sex more than the so-called 'acceptable' type ( not true).
I can't believe that we're talking this way in 2013.
- sigh-
@ lilady:
HINT: a little bird told me.
@meg
The fact that HPV is sexually transmitted is a huge part of the opposition to the vaccine, but it's not limited to religious people, even people I previously thought were rational refused on the grounds that "my kid won't be behaving like that" line with regards to that and the HBV vaccine. If only shoving your fingers in your ears and screaming "la la la, I can't hear you!" were an effective cancer prevention strategy.
@Mephistopheles
In my personal experience, age doesn't make much of a difference. My family wasn't happy when I told them I got the vaccine and I was 19.
Denice Walter: I'm just going to have to wait.
I'm probably in the minority here and I do acknowledge how some parents are unrealistic about their kids' sexual activities...that silver ring thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Ring_Thing
I've certainly made the rounds of all the blogs, threads, MSM sources and more than 95 percent of the commenters who post supporting Katie Couric are anti-vaxxers.
Who set up Couric to run with this topic? Who was interviewed to claim injuries and a death caused by Gardasil vaccine...and what are their affiliations with crank anti-vaccine organizations?
"I’ve certainly made the rounds of all the blogs, threads, MSM sources and more than 95 percent of the commenters who post supporting Katie Couric are anti-vaxxers.
Who set up Couric to run with this topic? Who was interviewed to claim injuries and a death caused by Gardasil vaccine…and what are their affiliations with crank anti-vaccine organizations?"
Ah, yes... you certainly have been all over the blogs, threads, etc.. about this... In fact, do you have a life outside of posting about vaccines? Also, again, I ask... When does an "anti-vaxxer" become an anti-vaxxer? Specifically, in regards to the hpv vaccine. An anti-vaxxer becomes an anti-vaxxer very often only AFTER their child has a bad reaction / is injured / is permanently damaged. How hard is that to understand? By definition (for the most part), an anti-vaxxer would *never* get an hpv vaccine. Ever. Many of the people who I saw commenting all around the blogosphere were parents, relatives, doctors who had issues with that vaccine. Stop being such a moron. And good one on what crank organizations the posters belong to. Meanwhile, you already admitted to being all over the place AND you belong with this crank site. Pot meet kettle.
Basically its lawyers who get together with their shill doctor and journalists, and place the idea in the media that there is evidence that the vaccine causes damage.
People see these reports and some then say 'this is what did it to my son/daughter etc". Then these people are produced by the lawyers, shill doctors and journalists as the evidence of the proposition they made in the first place.
And so it goes on. The lawyers and shill doctors say the parents have spoken. The parents say that the lawyers and shill doctors have told them its true.
Entirely circular and without evidence.
An anti-vaxxer becomes an anti-vaxxer very often only AFTER their child has a bad reaction / is injured / is permanently damaged. How hard is that to understand?
They why are there so many who say "I have never and will never get any of my children vaccinated!" ? People are fed lies to scare them.
Who set up Couric to run with this topic? Who was interviewed to claim injuries and a death caused by Gardasil vaccine…and what are their affiliations with crank anti-vaccine organizations?”
Producers wanting numbers. Also, see Tarsell and SaneVax as discussed above. Big affliation.
By definition (for the most part), an anti-vaxxer would *never* get an hpv vaccine. Ever. Many of the people who I saw commenting all around the blogosphere were parents, relatives, doctors who had issues with that vaccine. Stop being such a moron.
Please, stop. You just contradicted yourself in a matter of two sentences.
And good one on what crank organizations the posters belong to. Meanwhile, you already admitted to being all over the place AND you belong with this crank site. Pot meet kettle.
Being a comments poster on a SCIENCE-BASED MEDICINE SITE is not the same COI as Tarsell, running an anti-vax propaganda site based on nothing but a temporal association, which really wasn't even that temporal. The difference? Evidence vs. fear-mongering based on nothing.
When he or she exaggerates the risks, minimizes the benefits, denies the science, appeals to authority/popularity/etc instead of demonstrating facts, burns strawmen, and/or continues on a fallacy-filled path to try and win over people to the "do not vaccinate" side.
It would be one thing if the parents of children who had bad reactions were to say, "Hey, my kid had a reaction. Your milage, based on the evidence, will vary, and it is very likely that you won't have a problem." Then they would not be anti-vaccine. They'd be concerned parents.
When they go on blogs, radio, television, put out full-page ads, banners, and tell people to go to anti-vaccine sites like NVIC, Whale.to, or Age of Autism instead of going to science-based sites, and when they say that you will undoubtedly have a bad reaction to a vaccine even when all the evidence shows that you will more than likely won't... That's when they're anti-vaccine.
If someone came up to you and guaranteed you a grand prize lottery win no matter what if you just buy ten $2 tickets, would you believe them?
And have you seen the Daschelbot's activity on line?
“Hey, my kid had a reaction. Your milage, based on the evidence, will vary, and it is very likely that you won’t have a problem.” Then they would not be anti-vaccine. They’d be concerned parents.
Oral polio father did that, and the evidence was there, and he made a difference. I would never consider that man antivax, because he wasn't.
For example, the mother who stated that her daughter was a guinea pig for gardasil was plain wrong. The vaccine had been tested in thousands and thousands of people before her daughter was given it. Is it sad that her daughter died? Yes. Does she have a right to be angry as hell? Absolutely. But her rights as a grieving mother stop when she says with no degree of uncertainty that the vaccine was experimental, or that it was the definitive cause of her daughter's death (against all evidence to the contrary and even the VAERS report to which she points us to read), or that your daughter or my sister will have a severe outcome if they get vaccinated.
That irrationality based on a rare occurrence -- albeit in a very close, personal situation -- "justified" as it may be, is what turns someone into an anti-vaxxer.
@Ren - it is like someone getting into a car accident & then starting a campaign to ban all cars as a result.....
@Lawrence
Yes and no. There are still tens of thousands of deaths and severe injuries from cars the world over.
It's more like choking on an acorn shoved down your throat by a guy in a squirrel suit at a furry convention and then wanting to burn down oak forests because, screw the oxygen they give us, those damn acorns are downright dangerous.
@Ren - yes, actually a much better analogy.
what turns parents into anti-vaxxers?
A parent may have suspicions about vaccines and medicine in general BUT
there is an entire nether world of anti-science which has been evolving** since the earliest days of vaccination and which has become - as part of the natural health movement-an extremely lucrative big business. Despite what they tell you.
Vaccines involve injecting a substance into a human body- which must invoke a primal fear.
Thus pseudo-science relies upon frightening people away from SBM : it is in direct competition for consumers' dollars, pounds and euros ( as well as other currencies). This un-discipline makes use of tracts that cast doubt, by using spurious research, testimonies or made-up concepts, upon any vaccine. Anti-vax is a huge part of alt media which believes that the body should be able to heal itself and that pure foods and supplements boost natural immunity making vaccines unnecessary.
For example, today Mike Adams shrieks about NYC requiring flu vaccines for pre-school children. PRN continuously rants against any and all vaccines.- it's nearly a daily feature. More specifically dedicated websites like AoA and TMR focus upon the evils of vaccination and rail publiicly against any realistic mainstream media coverage. This is the background noise which an uncomfortable parent encounters in contradistinction to SBM.
Parents have a convenient *bete noire* ( SBM) on which to vent their spleen and to blame for their child's condition and have an enabling support system that supports itself by getting parents involved, selling treatments, supplements, books, legal services, their own expertise and even "safer" vaccines.
Many of these proselytisers constantly bark about how pharma and doctors rake in cash because of vaccines which distracts their angered audeince from asking them-
" And how much do YOU earn?"
** I know, not really the best word choice
Denise - I don't know about you, but I certainly didn't engage in behavior likely to transmit HPV at age 15. Not that I didn't wat to ...
@ Mephistopheles:
Maybe that's not really the best nym for you after all.
More seriously, how many 15 year olds now, as well as in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s etc are sexually active?- note that that term includes many activities beyond the most obvious.
Joyous Times,
Perhaps looking at this a different way might help. The death rate for females at the usual age they are vaccinated with Gardasil is about 20 per 100,000 per year (according to the CDC). This means that if 1 million females were vaccinated with Gardasil during the course of 1 year we would expect to see 200 deaths that had nothing at all to do with Gardasil. The chances of one of these deaths happening within 5 days after vaccination is 200 times 1 in 73 (365/5) i.e. 2.7. So among this sample of a million females, we would expect to see about 3 deaths during the 5 days following vaccination by chance alone. Since severe illnesses are much more common than death in this age group, we would expect to see a lot more severe illnesses shortly after Gardasil again by chance alone.
If a teenage girl is vaccinated with Gardasil and two days later she dies or gets very sick, it is quite understandable that her parents might make a connection between the vaccination and their daughter's death or illness. This is even more likely given the publicity that has been given to the idea that Gardasil is dangerous, and that is being spread by you and others. However, many of the deaths that have been reported to VAERS were due to accidents, and others show a clear previous history consistent with a congenital heart defect, or a history of taking the oral contraceptive pill, which we know carries a risk of DVT, and other deaths happened weeks or months after Gardasil.
Given this, and the good safety evidence we have from very large clinical trials and global post-marketing surveillance of millions of women given Gardasil, it is almost certain that the reports of deaths after Gardasil are due to chance. That doesn't mean that parents who report this are stupid, or are cranks, it means they are genuinely mistaken and are understandably looking for some explanation for a tragic event. We should be helping them to understand this, instead of blaming an extremely safe vaccine that has the potential to prevent HPV-related cancers that would otherwise lead to thousands of other parents burying their children prematurely.
So what turns people into anti-antivaxers?
It's things like seeing antivaxers try to get child abusers off the hook for their crimes by blaming vaccines.
Case in point - today's story in NaturalNews about a U.K. case where a man was found to have assaulted and killed a baby in his care. If you believe the NN "investigative reporter" it was really the MMR vaccine that caused her massive head trauma and an innocent man was railroaded.
The reality is just a wee bit different.
"Darryl Elliott, 30, of Stapleford, 'snapped' whilst looking after Amelia and shook her, resulting in a "very, very sick, very damaged brain".
"Elliott initially said Amelia fell from the sofa whilst he was out of the room and later said she had slipped and banged her head whilst being lifted from the bath."
"Prosecuting, Yvonne Coen QC, told the jury at Nottingham Crown Court that Elliott claimed that upon finding Amelia unconscious he had panicked and shook her five or six times in an attempt to revive her and then smacked her on the back but that this account also did not fit the facts."
"Amelia was initially taken to hospital in Grimsby, then transferred to Sheffield Children's Hospital, where she died."
http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/Baby-murderer-jailed-minimum-15-yea…
I await Joyous Times or any other antivaxer denouncing such attempts to excuse these crimes on the basis of "vaccine injuries".
I've been waiting a long time already.
Here's also something to think about:
a rather strait-laced older, person I know well just discovered that she had a lesion related to HPV which had to be removed.
In fact, most people DO contract it at some time in their lives. People over a certain age do not have the opportunity to be vaccinated, younger ones do.
I think we're falling into the biological fallacy. If I didn't do it, or people around me didn't do it, then not that many people did it or no one did it. The problem with that thinking is that enough kids are doing it at the different age ranges to carry it with them and then transmit it later on. So enough kids are getting infected and passing it around at 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, etc.
Hence the need for a vaccine that 1) is given before all of this happens, 2) whose effectiveness is long enough for all the years that the most promiscuous around us are, you know, promiscuous, and 3) covers most (all, if possible) of the strains likely to have the worst outcomes.
Know what I mean, jellybean?
Did anyone here ever counsel teenagers?
Just asking.
#69
quite a few in my experience. age of consent in the UK is 16 and this is widely recognised as being...erm...closing the stable door after the horse has already whittled itself a key to the padlock.
#74 i've done pastoral care as a tutor for older teenagers (17-18). I am not sure if this fits with your definition of counselling?
I'm sure it's not that different.
by 17-18 the number of non-sexually active folk is a distinct minority. Considered unusual unless from a rather extreme relgious background. Even at 15 even in my day there was a lot of "sexual activity" (rather more of that than actual penetrative sex) taking place. As I understand it the age of consent in the US is rather later (is it the same everywhere or is it state by state?) and this is something that I have always found a bit puzzling...are young people so different over there or is this one of those rules that everyone pretends to follow and no-one does?
all that based on my experience by the way- so beware anecdata
incitatus -- the age varies from state to state, but is usually 15, and many states also have other rules concerning adults and minors; a 20 year old sleeping with a 16 year old may still be charged with statuatory rape in some states, despite 15 being the age of consent. It varies.
And don't assume it's just "extreme religious background" that would keep a person a virgin. Shyness can do it too. ;-)
I was saying that extreme religious background was when it wasnt considered unusual, not that it was the only excuse. I found that a combination of dispraxia and misanthropy didnt do much to assist in amorous pursuits. But of course from a UK perspective the definition of an extremely religious background is very different from what it would be in the states. Over here a politician who mentions God in a speech is tacitly assumed to be unbalanced so some of the oratory we see coming across the pond from time to time makes interesting viewing......
cultural differences are interesting at times
@incitatus
some of the oratory we see coming across the pond from time to time makes interesting viewing……
cultural differences are interesting at times
Tell me about it! I've spent 3/4 of my life to date in the USA (the first 1/4 in the UK) and I'm *still* baffled by the place, sometimes.
I've counseled teens, when I worked as a public health nurse. We attended classes to enhance our knowledge about STDs, their routes of transmission, use of condoms and mouth dams, testing and treatments.
In my State, doctors and nurses who worked in public health clinics were required to take courses for certification as HIV counselors, in order to have vulnerable kids and adults agree to HIV testing and in order to counsel patients about HIV test results.
Did anyone here ever counsel teenagers?
Do 18 year old Marines count? Other than making sure they had plenty of condoms when they went out in the ville, there wasn't a whole lot I could do.
Denice Walter: "Did anyone here ever counsel teenagers?"
When I was in 8th grade we had some sex education. The biggest example was the classmate who already had a baby, and was scheduled to get married after she turned fourteen.
I knew of at least a couple of pregnant classmates in tenth grade. And in my last high school many of my classmates were married, to soldiers. Part of the joys of being a military brat and living in places which start with the word "Fort", where booms of artillery fire echo in the distance.
Funny how my comment came after Shay's. Some of those soldiers driving the tanks and aiming the artillery were kids who got married in high school and found the military a way to provide. Unfortunately the low pay does qualify them for food stamps. At least it was thirty five years ago.
Yeah, the subtext wasn't very subtle, I'll admit, incitatus, but I didn't even kiss a guy until adulthood, and I was kinda bristling a little at being told that's unusual. Just because lots of people have sex as teens doesn't mean you should be made to feel weird if you didn't.
@ incitatus:
It's state by state, but they've become pretty uniform. When I was the age where it was relevant, I remember looking it up. Most civilized states the age of consent was 16, in the Deep South it was 12, in Delaware it was 7 (!) There were only a couple of benighted backwaters like California and Alaska where it was 18.
Now it seems to be 18 pretty much everywhere. Different states have different rules about how much older one partner is—if you're not more than two years older then 16 is OK—but some states are straight 18. I don't know what happened.
#80 Or calculated risk avoidance.
I liked having a 0 percent chance of pregnancy and a 0 percent chance of an STD. It beats even a 1 percent chance in terms of being totally worry-free.
I just finished talking to 11-14 year-olds about sexual education at a school in the inner city. Let me tell you... The level of misinformation in those kids. Whew!
At the end of every class, we ask them to write down a question on a 3x5 card and it will be answered the following week. The questions that these kids ask are astounding. Today, though, there was one that took the cake:
"Why does the government find cures for stuff with my money but hide it from us to keep us sick?"
Anyone want to come over next week and answer that one?
The US in general has a very weird prudish right wing Christian culture. I am sure that is the main reason that HPV vaccine is taboo as it talks about the sex. On a side note, I was not sexually active in high school but met my husband my first year in college. I grew up in TX and let me tell you some of the sex 'educators' we had were priceless. Most talks boiled down to 'all sex is evil, if you have sex you will get a nasty squiggly disease, no methods of contraception work, and BTW if you have sex you will definitely toast for eternity in the fires of hell'. What made this all the more surreal was the fact that every time we had a speaker there was at least one (usually more) pregnant female students in the audience. Showing that many of my classmates were already engaging in sex. Without the benefit of a condom which were difficult and expensive to get. No one in my town gave them out for free, and buying them meant eternal embarrassment plus the very high likelihood that someone in the store would see you with the box and promptly tell your parents. I plan to get my son vaccinated as soon as he is 11. I don't want him getting cancer either.
Kiiri, in this year of grace 2013 the only place a teenager can get condoms, no embarrassment and no questions asked, in the small (pop 1100) Illinois village where I live is the lady who runs the town beauty shop.
"I just finished talking to 11-14 year-olds about sexual education at a school in the inner city...The questions that these kids ask are astounding. Today, though, there was one that took the cake:
“Why does the government find cures for stuff with my money but hide it from us to keep us sick?”
Anyone want to come over next week and answer that one?"
Yes. Say kid, would you like to be smarter than the arrested development adult who fed you that line? We've got a couple of great websites for you to hang out at...
I do sometimes wonder what the next generation of Oracolytes will look like?
Kiiri: "I grew up in TX and let me tell you some of the sex ‘educators’ we had were priceless."
Oh, yeah. My last year of high school was in Killeen, TX. It just happens to be right next to one of the largest military bases in the USA. It was a weird place to be a freaky geek, but I survived with the help of other freaky geeky friends.
I turned down a date from a friend's brother, who was a tank gunner. But I did go out with her other brother who was an engineering student. This apparently confused the tank gunner brother.
Shay: Yeah I once got in immense trouble with my sister for telling her soon to be teenaged son that I would buy the condoms and provide them no questions asked as long as he promised to use them for every sexual encounter. Of course his mom now has a daughter just 5 months older than my son (currently 2) and he lived in the house with both small children for a while. He now has graphic proof of why he doesn't want one of his own! Leaving a teenager to care for an infant is the best method of preventing pregnancy. It's all fun and games until your baby sister pukes in your hair. That particular episode left me and my sister in helpless gales of laughter while the teen boy screamed like a little girl shouting "get her off!" over and over. So funny. Did get him to shower and wash his hair though which is a battle we have fought over and over again. The joy of teen boys who think that not showering for three days can be covered up by vigorous spraying of Axe.
Chris: Yeah, I embraced more of my geeky side in college with the help of my uber geek husband but in HS I did have a small group of friends to help combat the generally odd culture. Now I am a certified sci-fi, fantasy, all things Doctor Who, gamer chic. When I get my 2014 calendar up I am going to start counting down to the release date of ESO soon to become our next gaming obsession.
Hey, now, Chris -- Some of my best friends are tankers. My maid of honor was a tanker.
Named Dave.
(this is what you get when you let an infantryman plan a wedding).
Shay, sorry. The choice was a bit frightening for my seventeen year old self. Especially when I was told he leered at me after I left the gathering at their house.
To put it in perspective: my friends and I were in the only physics class in the school of 2000 students. My start of school was delayed by a day because they had too many requests for trigonometry, and had to create another class.
Oh, I did go out with a soldier just a month later in Arizona. Part of my brother's group from his chapel (he was in the Signal Corps). It was interesting, but I much preferred the prospects in college. Even though in a college of engineering the odds are good, the goods are odd (but in the way I like).
Even though in a college of engineering the odds are good, the goods are odd (but in the way I like).
I should feel right at home at McGill's engineering campus in a few years :D
Alain
Ren #73:
That was just a little self-deprecating jest by Mephistopheles. Not that you are incorrect in pointing out that such thinking would be a fallacy, but Mephistopheles wouldn't fall into that error.
What DID I start here? Oh well.
Do parental attitudes about teenage sexuality and HPV vaccination reflect regional/ national differences? Ha.
Ren, I certainly don't envy your position but I have had to educate teens/ at risk populations about hiv a while ago.
Not the worse task in the world.
When anybody says: "My kids would never do that!" ask them: "What about their future husbands?"
I have so many people tell me: "I grew up in ___, I know how to drive in snow!" I always say: "You don't have to run into them, they can run into you."
This is always a completely new thought for them.
Semaphore, or Morse?
my daughter is 8. we have already had preliminary talks with her about sex and sexuality ( 2 of her naming sponsors are gay, which means we had to explain why uncles x and y didnt have aunts in tow) and explained the mechanics. this is because even at her age there is a lot of playground misinfo going around and, frankly, we wanted her to have the facts to be in a position of power. There are some awesome books around that explain it to youngsters.
I have absolutely no problem with doing this- she is bright and knows there is a lot of human behaviour around sex that she doesnt understand. Informing her demystifies it ( as well as making it a little more clear why mummy and daddy prefer to close their bedroom door and have people knock before charging in with teddybears).
I know people who would be shocked at what we talk about, calmly, with her. Who would find it bizarre that we give info to her before she "needs"it. I have to say i find those people to be, in my mind, whack jobs of the highest order. How do you know when she needs it? I dont remember filling in a form for my parents informing them of my intent to canoodle.
Its the same for me with HPV. I frogmarched my neice down to the GP to get hers (her dad was supportive, her mum was of the wait-till camp). I would do the same for my nephew if it was available at the time ( i suspect, from his faebook page, that its WAAAAYY too late now) and my daughter is getting hers asap. For me there isnt a too soon, just a too late.
@ Chris and Shay --
Hey, some tankers happened to have been PC geeks (and therefore defacto company clerks) and then gone on to particularly geeky professions, yanno... :-)
Narad: "Semaphore, or Morse?"
VHF, and then DARPA invented the internet.
Yes, Scottynuke, I am aware of some of that. Most of the technicians you get in any communications company started out as military recruits right out of high school. Which did not exist when I was seventeen years old almost forty years ago.
My point is that kids even way back when we were supposed to be perfect little chaste teenagers who waited until marriage is pure fantasy. It is just that I usually lived near large barracks full of teenagers, and went to high school with some of their wives. (and the barracks now look more like college dorms)
By the way, if anyone ever goes to visit Arizona and is near the Tombstone and Bisbee area, be sure to visit both museums in Ft. Huachuca. The main museum deals with the history of Buffalo Soldiers, and the second is the Army Intelligence Museum.
And since the subject is vaccines, be sure to visit the cemetery. There is a pdf page on its history, but I am getting 503 errors when accessing the ".mil" pages there. It seems their computer grunts are having issues. But here is its Google cache.
Scottynuke -- you were a Remington Raider, then?
incitatus
Titles or authors? I could use some recommendations for those.
LW - thanks for that. You understood completely.
Ren - At no time have I ever said (in this or any other forum) that just because I didn't do it it never happens and is not a significant issue.
Denice - re "Maybe that’s not really the best nym for you after all." I am crushed, crushed to know that I have disappointed you so. I will try to do, er, worse...
@Shay -- Actually, it was an IBM PC, so that would have made me... PC Pirate, mayhap? :-)
@ Mephistopheles:
Next thing you'll be telling me that you're not really a descendant of the 'Great Uniter', Briain.
BUT I'm sure that you're ALREADY doing something bad enough to meet with my approval.
I'm easy enough to please.
Scottynuke: "@Shay — Actually, it was an IBM PC, so that would have made me… PC Pirate, mayhap? :-)"
That is what they turned my brother into! Sure he started out by putting up VHF radio towers, but then he got to drive a PC. The Army paid for his computer science degree.*
He still had to keep up his firearms qualifications.
* As someone who started college right after the end of the Vietnam war, many of my classmates were also going to college with the then version of the GI Bill as veterans... or as active duty servicemen. They came in all sorts of forms, and the first one I met had been a medic and was not happy that folks were surprised that he was going to major in nursing.
In the fourth sentence, the phrase "loose their minds", caused me to stop reading your article.
I'm so impressed that a typo has such a nasty effect on you. You do realize, don't you, that grammar, spelling, and typo flames are the absolutely lamest comments. They contribute nothing and only reveal the person who made them to be a pompous ass.
But, hey, just for you, I fixed it. You can read the article now without your eyes being offended by a typo. Do you have anything substantive to say now?
@Chemmomo: Changing Bodies, Changing Lives (Ruth Bell) was an excellent book for most ages. My daughters read it in elementary (as a CNM it was on the bookshelf and I never restricted their reading) but it had a clear discussion with no judgement on lifestyles. I haven't read it recently and see there is a 3rd edition out, but outside of being a little "crunchy" in areas, I found it excellent and have recommended it many times. (It was inspired by "Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Collective, and is a very similar type book).
Shay -- not only did I have to keep up my personal quals, I still had to crew a tank! *L*
Then the higher-ups figured out I was highly literate and well-spoken and they put me on the radio... the rest is history! :-)
That was actually supposed to be a mildly off-color joke. I hadn't previously known that HF packet radio has the whole 44.0.0.0/8 CIDR netblock, though.
Here's the thing, I had no idea there was an entire program dedicated to those who have adverse reactions to immunizations and vaccines until I began working for a great attorney who has been working with these patients for years in the National Injury Compensation Program. This program is there to help those patients who have experienced these horrendous side effects. There are guidelines and not everyone meets those guidelines. There is a 3 year statute of limitations and symptoms must last for at least 6 months. Those are the two major factors. I am not sure how they decided 3 years was adequate because I speak with a ton of parents whose daughters were vaccinated in 2007-2009 that are having serious symptoms and there is nothing we can do to help them. Plus, these symptoms and adverse reactions are UNDER REPORTED!! The government and manufacturers aren't going to listen to complaints unless they see it on paper and in numbers.
As a mom, my daughter had the vaccine without consequences, but I felt pushed into allowing it because of all of the hype of Gardisil and how it would protect her, etc. As parents AND patients, we are supposed to make decisions based on informed consent. That is generally not what happens. We are not given time to research Influenza vaccines, Tetanus, Dtap, Pertussis and so on.
As a paralegal that works with these patients/clients, we have just as many, if not MORE that experience life-threatening and life altering disease processes, including Guillian Barre (Paralysis) from Influenza vaccines. There are studies that say there is no link to serious or ongoing side effects from Gardisil but there are those that say the exact same thing about Influenza. I talk to people every single day that DO and can prove their symptoms. To spite what 'studies say'.
I can attest to both. Millions of people are vaccinated every day and do just fine. However, there is a small population of people that DO have side effects, horrible ones. And, these symptoms can and are very difficult to diagnose. Many doctors are reluctant to relate it directly to the vaccines. Maybe out of ignorance and lack of knowledge about it or maybe out of fear of being sued. Doctors are not, successfully, sued because they gave vaccinations or immunizations.
Point being, there is no right or wrong as far as what is happening to these girls. I can tell you that thousands of young women are experiencing very similar symptoms and they need help.
It is always prudent to do your own research as a parent and a patient. Be informed. Period. Especially before posting statements that are ridiculous and based on ego and ignorance.
Just sayin...
@jodi Moss:
Three years is a generous length of time. If those girls were vaccinated in 2007-2009, then it is extremely unlikely that the vaccine caused the problem.
Citation needed, especially since VAERS has had false reports inserted into it.
Really? You do not get contacted before your children's vaccination visits to notify you? Or you're contacted such a short time before that you have no time to look it up on the internet or go to the library? Sorry, but I find your claim implausible.
Prove their symptoms? Nice Weasel Words. How many of them have proven their symptoms were caused by the vaccinations? Of those, how many of those cases have you taken to the NVICP, and how many have you won?
Nobody is denying that. Heck, that's why the US has a program to compensate the people who are injured by vaccines.
Here's the thing: there have been loads of cases where the vaccine was blamed for something or other, only for research to find that the vaccine was blameless. Case in point: the DTP vaccine was blamed for seizures which later turned out to have been caused by Dravet Syndrome.
What evidence do you have that vaccines are causing these problems?
My irony and hypocrisy meters just exploded.