Here's an article from forbes refuting much of that menta
This afternoon, Katie Couric ran a long segment on her daytime talk show, Katie, about what she called the “controversy” over the vaccines against human papilloma virus, or HPV, an infection that causes cervical, throat, penile, and anal cancers. She featured one mother who says that Gardasil, the HPV vaccine made by Merck , killed her daughter, and a young woman, seated with her mother, who said that Gardasil had caused years of illness that made her think she might die. (GlaxoSmithKline GSK +0.5% makes another HPV vaccine, Cervarix, that is less commonly used in the U.S.)
Alongside those stories, Couric also featured two medical experts: Dr. Diane Harper, the chair of family and geriatric medicine at the University of Louisville, who helped test Gardasil but has since argued that the vaccine has been over-marketed and its benefits oversold; and Mallika Marshall, a Harvard Medical School doctor who is Couric’s in-house medical correspondent. Marshall defended the vaccine; strangely, only her arguments appear on the show’s Web site.
Despite the attempt at balance, I think most viewers will be left with the impression that the vaccine is dangerous and that its benefits don’t outweigh its risks – a conclusion that is not shared by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
Here’s how Couric stacked the deck against the HPV vaccine:
1. By downplaying the effectiveness of the vaccine: Harper argued that HPV vaccines offer only short-term protection, lasting just five years. This elicited a shocked reaction from Couric – understandably. Why would national guidelines recommend that 11-year-old girls and boys get a vaccine that wears off by the time they are sixteen?
But the statement isn’t true. It’s more true to say that the vaccine’s effectiveness can only be measured using the data we have so far, which at one point was only five years. A recent analysis of 4,900 women in Nordic countries, which use more robust medical records systems than the United States, found Gardasil “is effective up to 6 years following vaccination with a trend of continuing protection up to 8 years following vaccination.” A second analysis, conducted by Merck, also indicates that people still have immune responses 8 years after getting the shot.
“The antibody levels would indicate that immunity is going to be for many, many years beyond five years,” says William Schaffner, a professor of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt Medical School. “We don’t know for how long.”
It’s possible that Gardasil could offer lifetime protection; or patients may need a booster shot. HPV is also different than many other infections, because it takes decades to cause cancer, so protection over the short term may actually be enough.
2. By overplaying the power of Pap smears: Harper also argued that the combination of Pap smears and HPV DNA testing could catch all cervical cancer cases – she said they were 100% accurate. The tests are really incredibly accurate, and women should get them regardless of whether or not they have had the HPV vaccine. But nothing is perfectly effective, and some women will fail to get regular screening, so a vaccine may still help. “That’s a remarkable statement because that is incorrect,” says Schaffner. “She overstated the case enormously.”
3. By underplaying the risk of cancer: Harper dismissed other cancers caused by HPV as extremely rare, implying that they shouldn’t be part of a risk-benefit calculus about the vaccine. But that’s not fair. Between 2004 and 2008, the CDC estimates that there were 11,967 cases of cervical cancer caused by HPV each year and 11,726 cases of head and neck cancer, meaning they could be seen as equally big problems. Work by authors including Maura Gillison of Ohio State University, a pioneer in studying the HPV/throat cancer link, indicates that by 2025 HPV throat cancer will be more common than cervical cancer, thanks largely to pap smears and HPV DNA tests. The CDC estimates that HPV causes 26,000 cases of different cancers each year.
A caveat: use of HPV vaccines to prevent head and neck cancer has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and it probably never will be, because the studies would be too difficult to conduct. In cervical cancer, researchers could look for precancerous lesions; these are harder to detect in the tonsils, where throat cancer starts.
4. By pulling viewers’ heartstrings: Couric told moving stories about vaccine risks using live interviews with people who said they had been harmed. Defenses of Gardasil were offered in dry platitudes. There were no interviews with people who suffered from cancer that might have been prevented by the vaccine.
I started writing about the link between HPV and throat cancer in 2009. Generally speaking, head-and-neck cancer caused by HPV is less deadly than other types of head-and-neck cancer. But the patient I spoke to for that story – an economist named Martin Duffy who had run 40 consecutive Boston marathons – was killed by his disease. “I made my living as a public speaker,” he told me before he died. “Now I sound like Daffy Duck.” Without his voice, he asked, “How do you tell the people that you love you love them?”
Funny how u say that the rate of infection is decreasing, just what you'd expect from a successful vaccine I guess. This is what the cdc say about that
New study shows HPV vaccine helping lower HPV infection rates in teen girls A new study looking at the prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) infections in girls and women before and after the introduction of the HPV vaccine shows a significant reduction in vaccine-type HPV in U.S. teens. The study, published in [the June issue of] The Journal of Infectious Diseases reveals that since the vaccine was introduced in 2006, vaccine-type HPV prevalence decreased 56 percent among female teenagers 14-19 years of age. About 79 million Americans, most in their late teens and early 20s, are infected with HPV. Each year, about 14 million people become newly infected. “This report shows that HPV vaccine works well, and the report should be a wake-up call to our nation to protect the next generation by increasing HPV vaccination rates,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “Unfortunately only one third of girls aged 13-17 have been fully vaccinated with HPV vaccine. Countries such as Rwanda have vaccinated more than 80 percent of their teen girls. Our low vaccination rates represent 50,000 preventable tragedies – 50,000 girls alive today will develop cervical cancer over their lifetime that would have been prevented if we reach 80 percent vaccination rates. For every year we delay in doing so, another 4,400 girls will develop cervical cancer in their lifetimes.” According to CDC, each year in the United States, about 19,000 cancers caused by HPV occur in women, and cervical cancer is the most common. About 8,000 cancers caused by HPV occur each year in men in the United States, and oropharyngeal (throat) cancers are the most common. The study by Dr. Lauri Markowitz and colleagues at the CDC used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data to compare prevalence—or proportion of girls and women aged 14-59 years with certain types of HPV—before the start of the HPV vaccination program (2003-2006) with the prevalence after vaccine introduction (2007-2010). As expected from clinical trials before the vaccine was licensed, the study also showed that the vaccine is highly effective. “The decline in vaccine type prevalence is higher than expected and could be due to factors such as to herd immunity, high effectiveness with less than a complete three-dose series and/or changes in sexual behavior we could not measure,” said Dr. Markowitz. “This decline is encouraging, given the substantial health and economic burden of HPV-associated disease.”
