8 More Deaths Caused by Gardasil Bringing Total Number To 11

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
The vaccinations which are mandatory, DPT, MMR they do prevent all the strains of the disease they are talking about. You get a measles shot you aren't going to get sick with measles later on. Same with whooping cough.

Other shots, like the flu shot, they are not mandatory, and they target certain strains. You can get sick with a different strain of influenza.

This is why we should treat the HPV shot like the flu shot. It should be available to anyone who wants it but it should not be mandatory. The shot will not inoculate you from HPV

I'm not arguing whether HPV should be mandatory or not, but I don't accept that whether it is mandatory or not should be based on how many strains within the family it is effective against. If it is effective against even just one persistant strain and we could wipe it out... I would support it being mandatory though.

When you say "HPV" you are talking about a family of viruses. When you say "polio" you are talking about a specific strain. To illustrate the problem with your argument, consider that the common cold (Rhinovirus) is a member of the Picornaviridae family, to which Poliovirus also belongs.

Simply because curing polio didn't cure all the other viruses in that family, like the common cold, does not mean we shouldn't have wiped out polio.

[Straybow]

Irrelevant comparison.

[Gibsie]

If you think it's irrelevent, you must just be confused by the big long words.

The key falsehood in Ben's argument is "By making mandatory shots, we are promising immunity". We are not promising immunity, that's a blatant strawman, we are trying to get rid of the 70% of cases of cervical cancer that can be prevented by the vaccine. I still don't think it should be mandatory, but certainly encouraged and freedly available.

Just to illustrate how bogus your argument is, Ben. Imagine there were 20 types of HPV. One strain caused 99% of cervical cancers, the other 19 do did not. Would you still argue that only 5% of the strains it protects against cause cancer?

Changing the numbers to 15% of strains and 70% of cancers is a significant difference of coruse, but it's a difference that will damn well matter to anyone who ever develops cervical cancer when it could have been prevented.

Perhaps a more simplistic analogy would be wearing your seatbelt: it won't save your life from every crash, but it'll damn well help. Mind you, I've seen some on this forum argue against laws for wearing seatbelts as well

[Apocalypse]

I believe it is good for a vaccine to be giving to young women, but if the lead researcher said it wasn't tested, then this particular one shouldn't be used.

[Ben Kenobi]

I still don't think it should be mandatory, but certainly encouraged and freedly available.

Which is exactly what I've been saying.

I have no problem with the shot being voluntary. The only trouble I have is making it mandatory. People should be able to choose the shot, they should not be forced to take the shot.

Just to illustrate how bogus your argument is, Ben. Imagine there were 20 types of HPV. One strain caused 99% of cervical cancers, the other 19 do did not. Would you still argue that only 5% of the strains it protects against cause cancer?

Yes. Re-read your argument. You'll have to clarify for me which you mean. You've made a typo here.

Is it A:

1. Assume the HPV vaccine works for all strains.
2. One strain causes 99 percent of cervical cancers
3. There are 20 strains of HPV.

Therefore of the 20 strains the shot treats, only 5 percent of the strains actually cause cancer.

Now, if

1. The HPV vaccine treats only one strain.
2. One strain causes 99 percent of cervical cancers.
3. There are 20 strains of HPV

Therefore of the one strain that is treated, you have 100 percent of the strains that it treats cause cancer.

All I am saying that the shot treats 15 percent of HPV cases, of which we believe those 15 percent constitute 70 percent of the cervical cancer cases caused by HPV.

Changing the numbers to 15% of strains and 70% of cancers is a significant difference of coruse, but it's a difference that will damn well matter to anyone who ever develops cervical cancer when it could have been prevented.

Which is why the shot should be voluntary for people to use if they wish. I have not said the shot is worthless, all I have said are two facts.

1. This shot will not protect you from HPV. It's like a flu shot. You can still easily get infected with HPV after the shot.

2. This shot will not protect you from cervical cancer. All the public health authorities are warning women to continue to take pap smears.

Perhaps a more simplistic analogy would be wearing your seatbelt: it won't save your life from every crash, but it'll damn well help. Mind you, I've seen some on this forum argue against laws for wearing seatbelts as well

I'm not sure why you are arguing against me Gibsie, if you really believe the shot should be voluntary. We have exactly the same position...

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


How is that relevant?

Do we give all teenage girls the pill to prevent teenage pregnancy?

[Gibsie]

Pregnancy doesn't kill thousands of women a year, indeed, pregnancy usually increases the number of living humans

Seriously though, we're not talking about something that is done to allow teenagers to go out and have irresponsible sex. HPV is acquired by 80% of all humans in their lifetime, so it is something that most women will be subjected to at some point, no matter how sexually wholesome they might be. Protecting against the most pathogenic strains is key. I expect you don't know the exact workings of cervical cancer, but it is preceded by a few stages of pre-cancers, the vaccine only preventing the pre-cancerous state. Thus the key to the vaccine's success is that it must be given before women become sexually active, i.e. the best group to protect with the vaccine are young girls.

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
I'm not sure why you are arguing against me Gibsie, if you really believe the shot should be voluntary. We have exactly the same position...

It's mostly the stats you used that set me off. Whether intentional or not it is misleading to suggest that the virus is ineffective since it only protects against 15% of the types, whilst glossing over the fact that 70% of cervical cancers are caused by the types that the vaccine protects against.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Wezil
Do we give all teenage girls the pill to prevent teenage pregnancy?

Pregnancy isn't contagious, last time I checked.

[Wezil]

Pregegnany can kill teens. It can also severely srew up their lives. Let's prevent this by prescribing the pill to all females over say what? 12?

No pregnancy is not contagious but neither is HPV without sex. I can catch the flu from the person standing next to me. Not HPV.

You try to make this vac mandatory and the public outcry will be HUGE.

[Kuciwalker]

No pregnancy is not contagious but neither is HPV without sex.

So? Even with sex pregnancy isn't contagious, last time I checked.

Your analogy sucks.

[Ben Kenobi]

I expect you don't know the exact workings of cervical cancer, but it is preceded by a few stages of pre-cancers, the vaccine only preventing the pre-cancerous state. Thus the key to the vaccine's success is that it must be given before women become sexually active, i.e. the best group to protect with the vaccine are young girls.

True, the shot won't prevent you from getting cervical cancer if you already have cervical cancer. However, there are a great number of women who have HPV but not cervical cancer, and we don't know whether or not the shot will be effective.

It hasn't even been tested on older ladies, they would have to test first before they can say that it's only effective on young girls. We don't even know if it's effective on boys or not.

It's mostly the stats you used that set me off. Whether intentional or not it is misleading to suggest that the virus is ineffective since it only protects against 15% of the types, whilst glossing over the fact that 70% of cervical cancers are caused by the types that the vaccine protects against.

It is ineffective at preventing HPV, which is the disease that the shot is supposed to treat.

The facts are there, kids will get HPV after the shot in the best case scenario, they will still need to get pap smears to protect against cervical cancer.

This is the reason why it shouldn't be mandatory, because it will not prevent you from getting either HPV or cervical cancer. It should be up to the women themselves to decide if they want the shot.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

No pregnancy is not contagious but neither is HPV without sex.

So? Even with sex pregnancy isn't contagious, last time I checked.

Your analogy sucks.

Sorry you don't like it. It causes you problems apparently.

How else does one contract HPV besides sex? If the only way to spread this disease is sex then it fits the birth control analogy perfectly. You must have sex to end up either with HPV or pregnancy...

Seems to me there is a gauranteed preventative (more successful than your vac) that you want to override by forcing medicine on people. Some of these people won't need or want it.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Wezil


Sorry you don't like it. It causes you problems apparently.

How else does one contract HPV besides sex? If the only way to spread this disease is sex then it fits the birth control analogy perfectly. You must have sex to end up either with HPV or pregnancy...

Seems to me there is a gauranteed preventative (more successful than your vac) that you want to override by forcing medicine on people. Some of these people won't need or want it.

This is the comment that started this whole sub-discussion:

Originally posted by Wezil

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Mandatory vaccinations are good public policy. Making them optional creates a free-rider problem.

This is not quite the same though. Correct me if I'm wrong but the disease we are protecting against here can only be acquired sexually...?

I think you may not be aware, but a "free-rider" in this context is a semi-technical term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem

and in this particular context, it only applies to contagious disease, therefore your analogy IS irrelevant for this sub-discussion.

You bringing sexuality into it shows you missed the point you quoted from Kuci.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


MMR and DPT have around 90+ rates of effectiveness. Far cry from the 15 percent here from HPV. Kids are still gonna get sick with HPV after the shot, in the best of circumstances. What are we going to say to them?

To have a free rider problem, you actually have to prevent the disease in the first place.

It shouldn't be mandatory until the effectiveness rates go up. I don't see how you can force people to take a shot that isn't going to cure them of HPV or protect them from the disease.

You are getting mangled by definitions.

Aeson explained (at least twice at that), yet you keep repeating the same mistake.


Here we go :

Suppose that MMR is a vaccine worth making mandatory. That is its cost (money, side effects, whatever you want) is lower than its benefit.

Then I suddenly decide that MMR should cure cancer, heck I even ask it to prevent drowning and car accidents.
Oh no! It's rate of effectiveness suddenly drops to 0.1%!!!!
But wait! It's still the SAME EXACT VACCINE, WITH THE SAME COST AND BENEFITS!! Therefore it's still just as valid to make it mandatory, with the same target population as before!!! Even with an abysmal rate of effectiveness.



Conclusion:
The rate of effectiveness has nothing to do with whether a vaccine should be made mandatory as it's not even a property of the vaccine itself, but a property of the vaccine COUPLED with goals.

The real question is whether costs are greater than gains. This is hard to determine and is what the debate SHOULD be.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


The vaccinations which are mandatory, DPT, MMR they do prevent all the strains of the disease they are talking about. You get a measles shot you aren't going to get sick with measles later on. Same with whooping cough.

Do you realize that this is just a naming convention?
What is a "disease" as opposed to a "strain".
If we decided to call the strains of the current disease into different diseases, then your argument would fall apart. The vaccine should now become mandatory, by your own logic, even though it's the same vaccine, has the same side effects, costs, etc...
Similarly, if I decide to call cancer a strain of measles, then by your argument, we should stop giving the shot for measles, even though it's still as effective as before!!!

You may argue those names might be silly, and you may be right.

Even more silly (to the point of dangerous), though, is deciding policy based on naming conventions, which are arbitrary, instead of actual medical (or other) net-gain, (side effects vs results etc..). Reality if you allow me


Your continued emphasis on the fact that this vaccine doesn't cure certain strains is mind-boggling. Hypothetically, if we had a free (to make and to use) and side-effect less vaccine with a 100% success rate against a couple of strains of a disease which account for 5% of the case, you'd be pretty dumb not to make it mandatory, yet that is the argument you keep making.



Note:

I don't want to argue whether or not this vaccine should be mandatory or not, just pointing out that the particular argument you used (at least 3 times) is