Adults ages 27 to 45 advised to get HPV vaccination

[RedBottoms]

My sons have already had the first round of Gardsil for males and will be getting their second at 12 year check up. No problem with it

[Deleted User 1039]

Of course, they are which means more money for vaccine makers. The reason the vaccine was marketed to 11 year-olds, to begin with, was the fact that there are so many adults who already have a HPV virus and the vaccine would be useless to them. The only reason the new recommendation has come out is money.

I don't love Big Pharma, either, but I also haven't ever seen medical recommendations made solely to create profits for them. Recommendations are research based. In this case, it was a study of 3200 women ages 27-45 who were followed for 3.5 years. They found that getting Gardasil 9 was significantly beneficial (88% effective) in preventing persistent infection, precancerous lesions, and cancer caused by the HPV strains it prevents against.

Sometimes it just does happen that evidence-based recommendations will make money for a manufacturer. That's not a reason to doubt the evidence. Do you refuse all vaccines based on the fact that the manufacturers make money on them, therefore that must be the ONLY reason to recommend them?

That is one vaccine that my daughter did not get. I won't be getting it either.

That’s your choice. My choice is to live an evidence-based life. I had doubts, so I read the actual research. My oldest is vaccinated and my two little boys will be as well.

[Deleted User 670]

I don't love Big Pharma, either, but I also haven't ever seen medical recommendations made solely to create profits for them. Recommendations are research based. In this case, it was a study of 3200 women ages 27-45 who were followed for 3.5 years. They found that getting Gardasil 9 was significantly beneficial (88% effective) in preventing persistent infection, precancerous lesions, and cancer caused by the HPV strains it prevents against.

Sometimes it just does happen that evidence-based recommendations will make money for a manufacturer. That's not a reason to doubt the evidence. Do you refuse all vaccines based on the fact that the manufacturers make money on them, therefore that must be the ONLY reason to recommend them?

That is one vaccine that my daughter did not get. I won't be getting it either.

That’s your choice. My choice is to live an evidence-based life. I had doubts, so I read the actual research. My oldest is vaccinated and my two little boys will be as well.

Yeah, I read the actual research too. The vaccine was too new and not enough was/is known about it long term. There have been cases of spontaneous ovarian failure in girls following the vaccine too. And the vaccine is not for a communicable disease in the way that measles or polio is and there already is a mechanism to catch cervical cancer: annual pap smear. Which it does quite well.

[mommy_jules]

Nope. f**k that. My kids won't get it either. I'm not against vaccines, but I feel like this is an instance where regular screening is the better way to go.

What about the cancers HPV can cause that have no regular screening? HPV+ Oropharyngeal cancers are in the rise, especially in males. There is no screening process for them either. More often than not they aren't caught until the later stages.

[leadfoot40]

Nope

[mommy_jules]

Why not after age 45?

It hasn't been studied in people over the age of 45, but probably also the thought that older sexually active adults are more likely to have been already exposed thus lower the efficacy of the vaccine in older individuals.

[AllofFive19]

Nope

[Deleted User 1039]

That is one vaccine that my daughter did not get. I won't be getting it either.

That’s your choice. My choice is to live an evidence-based life. I had doubts, so I read the actual research. My oldest is vaccinated and my two little boys will be as well.

Yeah, I read the actual research too. The vaccine was too new and not enough was/is known about it long term. There have been cases of spontaneous ovarian failure in girls following the vaccine too. And the vaccine is not for a communicable disease in the way that measles or polio is and there already is a mechanism to catch cervical cancer: annual pap smear. Which it does quite well.

Yes, but there have also been reports of sudden death after eating broccoli. People die, and sometimes they do it after eating broccoli. Of course, that doesn't mean that there's any connection between the two things. That's why it's unwise to put too much weight into case studies.

There's no evidence of a connection between Gardasil and premature ovarian failure, and a huge retrospective study published last year found no difference in the rates of ovarian failure between those who got Gardasil and those who did not.

Unfortunately, Pap smears aren't as great as you think they are. False negatives are common (meaning the result says 'everything is fine' but in fact everything is not fine), and though it's hard to know for sure, false negative rates may be as high as 50%. 30% of cervical cancer patients had a false negative on a Pap smear.

For one thing, it's highly prone to human error. Not only does it rely on your OB getting the right cells in the sample and then sending a good sample to pathology, but then it's a 100% subjective process once it gets to the pathologist. One study found that pathologists agreed on the grading of the same samples less than 50% of the time. HPV screening is proving to be more accurate, though that's still not that accurate (somewhere between 5-10% false negative rate).


Regardless, detecting existing cancer is a totally different ball game than PREVENTING cancer in the first place. There's no comparison between the two. If you could get vaccinated against diabetes, would you say "meh, I'll just get my A1C checked every year instead, then just treat the diabetes when I get it"?

I'm honestly scratching my head over here as to how someone could assert that cancer treatment is just as good as cancer prevention.

[xsxpxixdxexrxsx]

Nope. f**k that. My kids won't get it either. I'm not against vaccines, but I feel like this is an instance where regular screening is the better way to go.

What about the cancers HPV can cause that have no regular screening? HPV+ Oropharyngeal cancers are in the rise, especially in males. There is no screening process for them either. More often than not they aren't caught until the later stages.

They can choose to get it when they're old enough to make their own medical decisions if they choose to. I'm not 100% sold on this vaccine, so I'd rather not.

[Anonymous 3]

No but my youngest 3 got it