8 More Deaths Caused by Gardasil Bringing Total Number To 11

[snoopy369]

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

No, the question is what business the government has making a vaccine mandatory

Personally, I prefer to make the vaccine FREE, instead of MANDATORY. No penalty to not taking the vaccine, but no benefit to not taking it, unless you think it is more dangerous. Different people will value "cost" and "gain" differently, and it's not the government's job, imo, to decide that.

The ONLY time that might not be the case is in the case of a virulent disease/strain that has a high cure rate with the vaccine, but also a high enough mutation rate to likely form a vaccine-resistant form if it is left out in the wild and not vaccinated against - ie, if there is a significant chance of vaccinated people being harmed by the existence of non-vaccinated people.

I'd still take the hypothetical vaccine regardless, but I don't think the government should generally require people to take preventative measures that don't help or hurt anyone other than themselves (and others who choose similarly). That's mommy's job, and I'm of the school that considers government not to be my mommy

I do also think that the 'sexual transmission' argument is spurious. Either the government has the right/obligation to require immunizations, to ensure safety, or it does not have said right/obligation; method of transmission, or complicity in the act of transmission, is not relevant. The government is not going to "trust" that teenagers choose to not engage in sexual activities (or any other activity); it is the responsibility of the government to NOT trust people will behave themselves perfectly. Otherwise, why do we have a police

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Wezil
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...

Why is sex relevant?

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.

Oh? You can guarantee that any individual teenager won't have sex? Ever?

[Gibsie]

Originally posted by Wezil
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.

Okay, I'll give you that: women who plan on being celebate for their entire lives should not get it.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by snoopy369


No, the question is what business the government has making a vaccine mandatory

Personally, I prefer to make the vaccine FREE, instead of MANDATORY.

To answer your rhetorical question, it has the same business making vaccine mandatory as making a tax system, conscription, speed laws etc.. mandatory.

More seriously though,
Being Canadian, I assumed Mandatory->Free.

Also, why the opposition? (Personnally I'd prefer to make the vaccine not have any side effects instead of MANDATORY )



But in any case,my argument was on which is the proper way to consider the effectiveness of the vaccine.

If you are against government intervention, the effectiveness is irrelevant.

Originally posted by snoopy369
Different people will value "cost" and "gain" differently, and it's not the government's job, imo, to decide that.

The free rider problem comes in, as Kuci said.
This is always an issue in almost any gov. intervention.

To use an analogy that's not too far off, that's a bit like saying there should never be conscription, as people will value cost and gain of sending soldiers to war differently so it's the gov's job to decide that.

But then you get the obvious problem that people not going to war benefit from those that do.

Note, again, I am NOT arguing for mandatory here, (or for conscription for that matter). I am just pointing out that the objection you are raising here can be used against almost ANY gov. intervention of any kind (ex: ppl value the "cost" and benefit of taxation differently, yet we don't allow people to choose whether they want ppl to be taxed, for obvious reasons).

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by snoopy369
The ONLY time that might not be the case is in the case of a virulent disease/strain that has a high cure rate with the vaccine, but also a high enough mutation rate to likely form a vaccine-resistant form if it is left out in the wild and not vaccinated against - ie, if there is a significant chance of vaccinated people being harmed by the existence of non-vaccinated people.

Your position is not as clear cut as you make it seem to be.

No vaccine is fool proof, you point out mutation but that is hardly the only reason for failure.
Vaccinated people have a chance to get the disease, and non-vaccinated people increase exposure and thus this chance.

Therefore this ONLY time, is basically everytime, to a certain degree.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by snoopy369

I'd still take the hypothetical vaccine regardless, but I don't think the government should generally require people to take preventative measures that don't help or hurt anyone other than themselves (and others who choose similarly). That's mommy's job, and I'm of the school that considers government not to be my mommy

This example was made up to clear up the discussion on effectiveness, not whether gov. should ever do anything.

You train of thought seems to lead that gov. should do basically nothing at all, which I'm not going to argue, but of course if you think that, then my hypothetical vaccine shouldn't be mandatory anymore than any other vaccine.

[snoopy369]

If the vaccine is free, then there aren't any free riders, in the classical sense; there isn't anybody who gains from not having the vaccine (unless they believe the vaccine hurts them), or more specifically loses from people not taking the vaccine, if it is made free to all.

My reason for preferring free and NOT mandatory is clearly enunciated in my earlier post. I don't believe most vaccines/diseases carry a significant risk to vaccinated people due to non-vaccinated people; most viruses either mutate too quickly to have meaningful vaccines of the traditional type (AIDS), or too slowly (in the area that the vaccine requires not to mutate, generally a surface protein of some sort for appropriate CD4/CD8 antigen-specific cells iirc). If the argument is made that there is such a risk, then I would see the rationale for the government doing this.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by snoopy369
If the vaccine is free, then there aren't any free riders, in the classical sense; there isn't anybody who gains from not having the vaccine (unless they believe the vaccine hurts them), or more specifically loses from people not taking the vaccine, if it is made free to all.

1.You got the definition wrong.
A free rider is not somehow who benefits from not having the vaccine.
It is someone who benefits from others taking the vaccine.

2.If the vaccine is free, the free rider problem isn't really present, but I never brought it up in that context, so I don't see why you bring this up. That is, I don't think I brought up the free rider problem in the context of a free vaccine (where free vaccine in this context must mean free of any associated cost, so no side effects, etc...)


For one thing, in practice there is really no free vaccine, and the free rider problem is always present.

I brought up an hypothetical free vaccine to enlighten a different issue, that of Ben's twisted rules for deciding on effectiveness.

[Kuciwalker]

2.If the vaccine is free, the free rider problem isn't really present

It is, because there are risks [perceived or real] to taking the vaccine - see the subject of the thread - but the benefits of the vaccine are felt by everyone, so long as a sufficient proportion of people take it.

edit: nevermind, you added that caveat. It's a point that bears repeating, though.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by snoopy369
My reason for preferring free and NOT mandatory is clearly enunciated in my earlier post.

I don't know why you keep saying you prefer it free, that's not one of the choices, it's not free! (that is it has a cost associated with it, money, side effects, whatever)

The choices are between
(not free and mandatory ) and
(not free and not mandatory).

Originally posted by snoopy369
I don't believe most vaccines/diseases carry a significant risk to vaccinated people due to non-vaccinated people;

I think that's probably correct. But that's not addressing the free rider concern.
But what about the fact that non-vaccinated people profit from the vaccinated people, at no cost to themselves?

[Ben Kenobi]

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.

Again, this just confirms my real point. The question is why are vaccines like MMR, and DTP mandatory? Why for those six diseases (along with polio and smallpox?) Is there any difference between these six and the HPV shot?

I agree, that with the case of MMR and DPT, if we found that they had a 0.1 percent chance of preventing cancer that it would add onto the beneficial side. However, how many people would say that the primary reason for making MMR and DPT mandatory was because they could prevent cancer? No one. Without a doubt, everyone would say that the reason they are mandatory is because they are effective at controlling 6 different diseases, and can inoculate the population from them. If you have a DPT and MMR shots, you have the reasonable expectation that you will be immune to those 6 diseases.

The other side, is the public health side. Why the 8, along with Polio and Smallpox? Because the vaccines are effective. You can eradicate these diseases, or come very close with an effective vaccination campaign.

If we were to do the same with HPV, we would not get the same results. Yes, HPV rates would decline, but in order to truly eliminate HPV, you would need success rates around 90 percent or so.

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.

It is a property of the vaccine that the vaccine effectively treats all the strains of the disease, and prevents the disease from spreading.

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

This will vary depending on the person, and is why it should not be mandatory. Different people rank the costs and benefits differently, no one shoe fits all.

[Kuciwalker]

I agree, that with the case of MMR and DPT, if we found that they had a 0.1 percent chance of preventing cancer that it would add onto the beneficial side. However, how many people would say that the primary reason for making MMR and DPT mandatory was because they could prevent cancer? No one. Without a doubt, everyone would say that the reason they are mandatory is because they are effective at controlling 6 different diseases, and can inoculate the population from them. If you have a DPT and MMR shots, you have the reasonable expectation that you will be immune to those 6 diseases.

The other side, is the public health side. Why the 8, along with Polio and Smallpox? Because the vaccines are effective. You can eradicate these diseases, or come very close with an effective vaccination campaign.

If we were to do the same with HPV, we would not get the same results. Yes, HPV rates would decline, but in order to truly eliminate HPV, you would need success rates around 90 percent or so.

You don't need rates that high to significant decrease the spread, though, so that even the uninoculated are unlikely to catch it.

[Kuciwalker]

This will vary depending on the person, and is why it should not be mandatory. Different people rank the costs and benefits differently, no one shoe fits all.

This has already been debunked.

[Ben Kenobi]

Do you realize that this is just a naming convention?

Do you really want to get into the taxonomy of infectious diseases?

HPV is to HIV as dog is to cat. A disease is like a species, whereas a strain is a breed. Dogs can interbreed with each other and diseases can mutate into different strains.

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!!!

No, these names are not arbitrary, and represent a significant amount of work. I'd hardly believe you would say that the difference between a dog and a cat is irrelevant, especially in the case of medicine.

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..).

Taxonomy of diseases is no more arbitrary then species classifications.

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.

If it's free, why should we force people to take the shot, since the shot won't prevent the disease from spreading?

Why should we treat the HPV shot differently from the flu shot? Neither are mandatory.

[Kuciwalker]

Do you really want to get into the taxonomy of infectious diseases?

HPV is to HIV as dog is to cat. A disease is like a species, whereas a strain is a breed. Dogs can interbreed with each other and diseases can mutate into different strains.

...
>>>
^ that is my trying to type a capitalized "..."

Ben, what you just said is 1) nonsensical and 2) irrelevant.

Taxonomy of diseases is no more arbitrary then species classifications.

So, very arbitrary, then?

If it's free, why should we force people to take the shot, since the shot won't prevent the disease from spreading?

Because it will prevent the disease from spreading.