HPV Vaccine Recommended For Boys 569
necro81 writes "An advisory committee to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon issue new recommendations that pre-adolescent boys be vaccinated against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). The disease is sexually transmitted, endemic in the sexually active, can cause genital warts in both men and women, and is the primary cause of cervical cancer, which kills hundreds of thousands of women globally each year. The three-dose vaccination has been available for several years and is already recommended for pre-adolescent girls. Vaccinating boys should further reduce transmission."
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is no surprise, but I am glad it's been approved. Once again science making the world safer.
Science isn't about asking "why?", it's about asking "why not?". Cave Johnson, I'm done here.
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You're crazy! The five-assed monkey...that's impossible. It's reckless. It's pushing it too far. Four asses was a much as man was meant to do.
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Yes, it s. Making a reasonable profit using science to improve are health.
In 2006 the average net income for a Pharmaceutical company was about 27Billion. Net after expenses, 5.5 billion.
The Pharmaceutical company hire the best scientists in the world....they also hire the best sales and marketing people.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, 1 in 140 women will get cervical cancer due to HPV. Lets see which makes "Big Pharma" more money, 140 HPV vaccinations (3 doses each), or chemotherapy medicines for one person with cervical cancer (one round of 6 cycles)? Well, based on cost alone 420 doses of HPV vaccine is $163,800. One round of six cycles of chemo (meds alone) is about $150,000. So Pharma might make a small amount of money by preventing cervical cancer. That's only a real problem if you think that the value of a human life is less than about $13,800 (and if you don't count the cost of pap smears.)
13,000 women a year get cervical cancer in the US, nearly all from HPV. And for all the men here snickering and saying that it's not our problem. There were about 1200 cases of penile cancer last year and about 300 of them were due to HPV infection.
Herd Immunity (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everyone will be vaccinated, and not everyone who does get vaccinated will develop immunity. But if enough people are vaccinated, then the disease can't reach enough susceptibles to spread and even the people who aren't immune are protected, too.
There's a kid in my son's first grade class with a liver transplant, and is hence on immunosupressive drugs. Vaccinating my kids helps protect that kid's life. Same principle with all vaccines.
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Unless there are health complications to men from HPV
HPV is shown to cause throat, penile, rectal, and testicular cancer in men. They're rarer than cervical cancer in women, so you don't hear as much about them.
Vaccinating carriers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Vaccinating carriers... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just penile cancer. Also, depending on how transferred, HPV can cause rectal and oral (throat) cancers.
I also ready today (here [nytimes.com]) that HPV may lead to future heart trouble.
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That's because relationships with the opposite sex has a tendency to put stress on your heart.
This
Though I would imagine a relationship with a same sex partner would likely be equally stressful as well.
Guess it depends if you want heart failure to be brought on by stress or loneliness, but you're damned either way.
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I am not a doctor. My guess is that urine keeps the penis cleaner than the cervix. Are there any doctors who can comment on my guess?
Re:Vaccinating carriers... (Score:5, Informative)
I am not a doctor. My guess is that urine keeps the penis cleaner than the cervix. Are there any doctors who can comment on my guess?
I will avoid making snarky comments about your elimination habits (although it is rather tempting).....
The Standard Model of cervical cancer (I made the term up, we don't call it that) goes like this:
The cervix [wikimedia.org] has two different types of epithelial (skin) cells. The area where these two types intersect (called the 'transitional zone) is a region of high cell turnover - cells are dying and being replaced, lots of chemical and genetic activity. This makes it an ideal place for the HPV virus to switch cell growth from normal to abnormal. So even though you can get HPV infections in other parts of the cervix / vagina / anus / penis it is the activity in the transitional zone that cause problems.
Males don't have a cervix (no, don't go there, this is a quality, family oriented web site), no transition zone. LESS (not zero) cancers.
Most HPV induced cancers in males are found in the anal regions where again, cell division and turnover are relatively high. HPV associated cancers in the mouth and throat are rarer still, but they do happen.
The major thrust (so to speak) for immunizing males is that they are typically 50% of the sexually active couple (more or less) and decreasing the amount of viral load will lead to a decrease in infections which will lead to a decrease in HPV associated disease.
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I appreciate that response. That is very informative. Can you say whether the cell turnover on the cervix is definitely greater than the cell turnover in the male urethra?
Also, you didn't say so explicitly, but you used the word "we", which implies that you are a doctor. You can convert your post from +5 Interesting to +5 Informative if you can say that you are actually a doctor.
Re:Vaccinating carriers... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to be a doctor to read and understand the literature. In fact, it helps. By and large med students don't care about anything not on the test, and doctors get most of their continuing education from pharmaceutical companies. Anyone with college level chemistry and biology, and an actual interest in science, is better prepared to interpret the literature than most doctors are.
What would actually improve the post a lot is a link to a peer reviewed article.
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Yeah, who would have ever thought something like herd immunity [wikipedia.org] would be sensible...
Throat cancer. (Score:2)
Wasn't there a story on /. a while back how this vaccine also protects from throat cancer in males?
Get rid of the celebrities... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we had celebrities coming out and saying "I think the vaccine could have more side effects than the disease..."
We'd still have polio...
measles...
mumps..
Rubella...
Tuberculosis
Whooping Cough...
and a bunch of other nasty diseases flying around like the common cold. I think many parents (atleast around here in Northern California, think you need 200 years of concrete data, or Oprah to claim a vaccine is needed).
Re:Get rid of the celebrities... (Score:5, Insightful)
And thanks in part to the anti-vaccination folks, some of those are making a bit of a comeback. Whooping cough and measles are the ones our pediatrician mentioned.
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The problem isn't the celebrities, it's a public more willing to listen to celebrities than scientists about an issue that's almost entirely scientific. We have an endemic fear culture that embraces worry over knowledge. People only listen to the celebrities because they're spreading a message that the public is primed to receive. We have to eliminate the culture that embraces this message of ignorance and fear, and anti-intellectualism. The celebrities are merely a symptom of our broken culture.
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It's the media. They show the debate in a light of 'everyone's an experts'. So Dr Oz gets the same credit as an doctor whose specialty is immunology.
Re:Get rid of the celebrities... (Score:4)
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I'm sorry, but Jenny McCarthy and Charley Sheen are not exactly typical celebrities. Holding up Queen Bimbo and King Himbo as typical is an insult to Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and everyone else who's ever been in a Kevin Smith movie (with the possible exception of Jason Mewes).
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swingers? (Score:2)
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Is there not a test for HPV- for those HPV negative- they could be vaccinated.
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According to the CDC website, no there is no test to say whether an individual is HPV infected or not.
Interestingly though it also seems to indicate that the HPV infection can go away of its own accord in time.
http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm [cdc.gov]
"There is no general test for men or women to check one’s overall "HPV status," nor is there an approved HPV test to find HPV on the genitals or in the mouth or throat."
and from http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/stdfact-hpv-and-men.htm [cdc.gov]
"There is no test for men
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I doubt very much there's NO test. Most likely there is no cheap, easy test that could be given casually.
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given that there are hundreds of strains of HPV and the 2 vaccines cover something like 16 strains between them it is quite possible for this vaccine to be useful even to someone who has been exposed. Many men could be carrying very common strains of HPV but not be carrying one of the most dangerous strains (some of which are targeted by these vaccines).
Of course the problem isn't that you can't get the vaccine, you can, but your insurance won't pay for it. What it comes down to is its not financially ben
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Right, at present I don't believe there's much evidence to support any benefit for people already infected, however if you're only infected with one of the strains that is included, there would likely still be some benefit.
But, as others have said, it's not just sex, these strains do sometimes cause throat cancer as well as penile, cervical and anal cancers so, hypothetically there should be some risk just from kissing.
Re:swingers? (Score:5, Informative)
I got the HPV vaccine last year as a male at the age of 26. There is the overall thought that if you are sexually active (ie, not a non-infected virgin with another non-infected virgin), you will have obtained some strain of HPV (there are more than 150, most are relatively benign). Your body can "clear" most of these, and they will never be an issue. I thought it was still appropriate for me to get the vaccine, as there are some benefits:
Vaccination was uncovered by my insurance (gee, thanks!) but I figured it was worth the $510, to protect myself and any partners (should I be a carrier).
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what's in it for the insurance companies?
Less infections requiring procedures would mean less money spent on treatments, and would reduce the amount of money they would have to pay out for treatment.
Oh wait, that's probably not what they want, since that means less money passing through their hands for them to skim off of.
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But the insurance companies are also aware for every subscriber they lose to "growing up", they'll gain another one who just grew-up. It's in their interest to do this kind of preventative treatment across the board because eventually most of these kids will become adu
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My daughter just got the second of the three shot series. The first visit is a 'doctor visit', while the last two shots are 'nurse visit' and somewhat cheaper.
$510 sounds like well under the cost of three such short 'checkup' visits. Also: wiki says [wikipedia.org] that all three shots 'retail/list' for $360.
Re:swingers? (Score:4, Insightful)
New transmission method. (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we invent vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases that get transmitted sexually? Imagine the distribution efficacy and cost benefits we could realize with STVs!
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Hell, if that starts up I may go into the vaccination racket, preferably at an all women's college.
Or Vaccines On Condoms (Score:3)
Can we invent vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases that get transmitted sexually?
Someone should invent a vaccine that could go on condoms. Could call them White Hats.
It might also protect men from throat cancer (Score:2)
testing? (Score:3)
Last I heard they didn't have a way to test men for HPV. Men are almost, if not always, asymptomatic and wouldn't have enough viral material accessible to test for it. Have they refined this? How much testing has been done to show the effectiveness of this on boys? I'm all for this vaccine and I'd get it myself if I'm not already a carrier, but it's expensive and unless they can effectively test for this it's possibly just a cash grab.
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This is why they have an age limit on the vaccine. The goal is to get boys and girls vaccinated before they become sexually active and are exposed to the virus. The assumption being that after a certain age, the likelihood of exposure approaches one and by then it's too late (combined with the difficulty in testing for the virus.)
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But should still be of value to persons who have not been sexually active, yes? regardless of age.
And I'd been wondering why they didn't vaccinate males; after all, carriers are half the equation.
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testing for males is very difficult, as an asymptomatic male will show no signs of being infected, and, if I recall properly, the FDA does not have any approved tests for HPV in men. I believe the effectiveness in this comes from "Herd Immunity".
Balance the benefits. (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, SEX!
On one hand it will allow many couples to have children that may not have otherwise due to cancer, which most agree is a good thing
OTOH, SEX!
And really isn't that what is all about? Preventing anyone from having sex outside a state defined and mandated relationship. We can't have people going around enjoying themselves without the approval of the feds, can we?
I was amazed at the opposition to HPV for vaccines. Do people really think that kids alone in the backyard are going to limit themselves to mutual handjobs because they are afraid they might give each other cancer? Do they really think that kids are going to be more likely to want to see what all the fuss is about because they have the vaccine? Sure I understand the implicit idea is that the vaccine assumes multiple partners over a life time, but isn't that the status quo that is modeled? Newt Gingrich has slept with at least three women. If marriage is between one man and one women, and we promise god that we will be faithful untile death do us part, isn't any number more than one kind of morally equivalent.
One hesitates to suggest that if this was a vaccine against prostate cancer there would not be so much discussion.
Re:So what you are saying is (Score:4, Interesting)
Recommendation vs mandate (Score:3)
Recommendation is one thing. Mandate is another altogether. I don't have a problem with somebody recommending something. I have a problem with somebody taking over your decisions about your body and your health (and yes, I think an individual rights are more important than the society, because individual is the smallest minority).
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So then I should be allowed to spread disease if I want?
What if I want to infect myself with TB and walk around infecting others?
I think you should be allowed to opt out of the vaccine, then you should of course be legally responsible for anything that happens because of it. Including an insurance company refusing to pay for your cancer.
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For highly contagious diseases the two things are basically the same. For highly deadly diseases (We don't have many left though, because of *drumroll* vaccine) you've basically committed manslaughter if you refused the vaccine and got someone else infected.
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If you choose to put a chink in the armor of herd immunity, I agree it should be your right. Somewhere else. Maybe we can make an island for people who like smallpox and polio, too.
I jest, but you're coming at this from the angle of a person who has already benefited from government-mandated vaccinations given to your parents and grandparents; vaccinations which may have saved your life.
Re:Recommendation vs mandate (Score:5, Insightful)
HPV is 100% avoidable... it's like herpes... it isn't something that just happens.
HPV and HSV are 100% avoidable if you abstain from physical contact with others. Not just sexual contact, _all_ contact. HSV has been transferred from parents to children by kissing. You can acquire it just by making out with someone, which I assume most people would refer to as a "safer" activity.
In addition to transfer via fluid, HPV can be active under the fingernails. If an infected person with an active outbreak touches you where you have broken skin (or digitally penetrates you without a barrier) you can be infected. Essentially, skin-to-skin transfer with an infected person _can_ give you HPV. Touching, mutual masturbation, frotting, making out.
Then, of course, you have things like this [nytimes.com], where children are being infected out of no cause of their own.
Or the fact that you can do everything right (and have "safe" sex, using condoms and dental damns and finger cots and not-brushing-your-teeth-before-oral-sex and discussing histories with your partner, and still get infected, because many people can carry these infections without having an outbreak or being aware that they are a carrier.
your ignorance is rampant, you're turning this into The Scarlet Letter for the present time.
Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Wish we had it for other HPV strains (Score:2)
The Economics of Public Health (Score:4, Interesting)
There are approximately 12000 cases per year and 4300 deaths per year from cervical cancer (cancer.gov).
If Gardacil prevents 90% of those cases (it's a very effective vaccine), then vaccination has an effective cost of approximately $157,000 per case (assuming we amortize the initial 14Bn hit over 20 years).
I understand there are other public health benefits than simply prevention of cervical cancer, but let's hope we get a biosimilar quickly to drive the cost of vaccination down significantly.
Why so much sensationalization? (Score:3)
"The disease is sexually transmitted, endemic in the sexually active, can cause genital warts in both men and women, and is the primary cause of cervical cancer, which kills hundreds of thousands of women globally each year."
Let us look at the figures at wiki. 4800 women died in US of cervical cancer. 70% of these are caused by HPV and the vaccines are 90% effective. It means that if everyone is vaccinated, it will prevent about 3000 deaths. Remember CDC is recommending for US men and women and has no effect on global deaths which is around 250k/yr of which 70% are due to HPV, which is about 175k. That figure does not qualify as "hundreds of thousands".
Also, with the cost ranging in the region of $100-200 and effectiveness of 4-6 years, this is one of the most expensive preventive medicines ever.
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Because it doesn't work anymore.
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Really? What changed?
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What's your point? Or did you just reply to the wrong guy?
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Nothing, it never worked. Some percentage of teenagers were always sexually active. Actually, teen pregnancy is much lower than it was in the past and people are marrying later.
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Really? What changed?
Nothing - it never worked. We're just more public about the repercussions now.
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Because it never actually worked.
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YES.
I know as I was growing up, I had a LOT more sex than my parents did...and have talked to them about this now that I'm very much an adult.
I've spoken with younger people today, and parents..and even "I" get a bit shocked to hear what kids are doing today, and how much younger they start than we do.
Younger people are MUCH more loose when it comes to sex....I almost wish I could go ba
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They are just more willing to talk about it.
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Your parents were prudes?I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but as has often been stated, the plural of anecdote is not data. I happen to know, both because I was born when my mom way 17 years old, and because the term TMI has no apparently meaning to my parents; that both my parents were sexually active as teenagers. Maybe my parents were sluts? Possible, but my data point is no more useful than yours. Historical analysis shows that while it wasn't talked about or studied, teenage rates of promiscui
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Yes, they are having more sex at a younger age, don't kid yourself that is what TV programming got us.
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Why don't you do like we did in olden-days? Discourage sexual activity until they're more likely to be an adult about things, hm? This strikes me as buying a dogs to deal with the cats that you brought in to deal with the mice...
Why?
Why not get rid of computers to prevent the spread of computer viruses?
Why not get rid of cars so we never have a flat tyre?
Why not kill everyone so they never get a cold?
I agree discouraging certain activities from pre-teens and teens is best- but these kids will grow up to be adults- and let adults have fun in an adult way!
Sure they should protect themselves properly- but I bet the vast majority won't at least once because of the heat of the moment... and from what I recall HPV cannot be prevented by
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Your virgin daughter can still get HPV on her wedding night, and die of cervical cancer.
Re:How's about this... (Score:4, Funny)
Back in *my* day, we all had chastity belts and if anyone had sex we burned them as a consort of Lucifer. And you know what, we were happier and WE LIKED IT!
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How would that help? Ignoring the fact that the evolutionary drive to have sex is way stronger than your discouraging 'tut tut', it'd just delay the day when they got HPV infected and started spreading cancer causing viruses.
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Why don't you do like we did in olden-days? Discourage sexual activity until they're more likely to be an adult about things, hm?
It didn't work then. (Your grandma is such a liar.) It doesn't work now. The diseases prevalent in the real (pre-antibiotic) "olden-days" tended to be diseases that killed quickly or marked the infected in more obvious ways than modern retroviral diseases, so they were somewhat easier to avoid. Of course herpes was still around, but I'm not sure it had even been identified as an STD at that point.
But as far as being a bad deal, an injection at age 12 with a very remote chance of side effects versus the possibility that you will eventually find a woman to love only to give her a disease that kills her. I would have gotten in line for that shot. I somehow managed to negotiate the maze of adolescent and young adult sex without contracting HPV, but it certainly could have been a different story.
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But hey, it doesn't kill men.....I dunno if we should mandate it on men. Then again, I don't think it should be mandated for women either, at least not without parental consent to opt in.
Geez, it was so much easier growing up prior to the early 80's. YOu could fuck anything that walked and all you had to worry about was pregnancy, or having to get a shot to clear up the 'clap' or something similar.
Nowdays...you fuck...you die??
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It does kill men. Just fewer. It can cause penile, oral and anal cancers in men.
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Yeah, just because men are the carriers that, in most cases, give it to women doesn't mean we should actually *do* anything about it. Fuck'em, why should we go through the terrible agony of a simple injection to help protect them from cervical cancer. Wait though....something is nagging at me here....
Oh yeah, it's this [time.com]. SHIT! IT KILLS MEN TOO! WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!
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Actually there seems to be evidence that it might be linked to throat cancer and possibly prostate cancer. Plus if men are vaccinated they cannot pass on these varieties of HPV to unvaccinated partners so that helps too.
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As though they are mutually exclusive. 100% vaccination means you don't need to cure it, and prevention is far preferable (and usually cheaper) than trying to fix it after it goes badly.
It's not like cancer is one disease that we can just cure. It's a symptom of huge array of diseases and mutations, HPV vaccine goes after one of the causes.
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Vaccines are better than cures. A 'cure' requires that the individual get sick first, this directly means that whatever microbe infecting the person has already multiplied and could potentially spread to another host continuing on the cycle. Vaccines are preventative on this account which removed the possibility of further transmission. Once the vaccination rate is high enough, the disease simply has no were to run to and once it's out of hosts, it dies and it is effectively cured for everyone and all time
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Your immune system IS the cure all. Your baby is already swarming with pathogens he is developing immunity to. A vaccine is just a drop in the bucket.
If you're really worried, keep your baby in a sterile room and make sure it never puts anything in its mouth. A decade later, you'll have one hell of a sickly kid.
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It's not a matter of lobbying, vaccinating only girls doesn't have the same benefits that vaccinating everybody does. The main question was whether any possible health risks for men would offset the health benefits for them.
Vaccinating just specific groups is a bit of a warning that there's probably something going wrong. That's usually only done when supplies of vaccines are short, hedging this way without shortages is always going to be suspicious.
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Your mind has obviously been infected with the Slashdot Paranoid Meme Virus, but this raises an interesting point. The HPV vaccine is the most expensive one made. It is a complicated vaccine to make, took some time to create (20 years) but apparently the manufacturer had a different metric for determining price:
Gardasil took more than 20 years to develop, is complex to manufacture, and must be constantly refrigerated, but that’s not why it’s so expensive. Instead, Merck calculated the price based on the money the vaccine will save the entire health-care system—and the CDC approved the price, as it does with other vaccines. “We based the price on a number of factors, most importantly the value Gardasil brings to individuals and society,” says Jennifer Allen, a spokesperson for Merck. “HPV-related diseases cost the U.S. health-care system about $5 billion every year, and we took that into consideration.” Although Merck would not make sales projections, population data show that the vaccine would gross more than $11 billion if all women 11 to 26 in the United States were vaccinated per the CDC recommendation.
THIS to me, tells me that the system is broken. Merk (and the rest of big Pharma) has long jumped the ethical shark. Research should be brought back into the government fold (along with the paten
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Very interesting quote you just made.
For reference, I found the article from which the quote originates here:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/hpv [discovermagazine.com]
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I read somewhere that British pharma are guaranteed a flat-rate of profit by law, to both ensure that it's worth their while and to prevent gouging. Anyone know how this works, or how well?
Re:How is this News for Nerds? (Score:4, Funny)
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Umm, medicine, specifically epidemiology? Y'know, not every geek is exclusively interested in computing, electronics and astronomy.
Recently there was a story on /. about an actress suing a company for revealing her age, on a website.
Re:HEY! (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isn't, and your source kind of sucks.
This reads like the autism fraud news stories.
Here is the CDC's page on the whole issue. [cdc.gov] Excerpt (my emphasis):
People get vaccinated and die. People brush their teeth and die too. Statistics.
SOURCE: CBS News (Dammned eco-commies!) (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/cbsnews_investigates/main5253431.shtml [cbsnews.com]
(CBS News) Amid questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine Gardasil one of the lead researchers for the Merck drug is speaking out about its risks, benefits and aggressive marketing.
Dr. Diane Harper says young girls and their parents should receive more complete warnings before receiving the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. Dr. Harper helped design and carry out the Phase II and Phase III safety and effectiveness studies to get Gardasil approved, and authored many of the published, scholarly papers about it. She has been a paid speaker and consultant to Merck. It's highly unusual for a researcher to publicly criticize a medicine or vaccine she helped get approved.
Dr. Harper joins a number of consumer watchdogs, vaccine safety advocates, and parents who question the vaccine's risk-versus-benefit profile. She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years; there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years.
This raises questions about the CDC's recommendation that the series of shots be given to girls as young as 11-years old. "If we vaccinate 11 year olds and the protection doesn't last... we've put them at harm from side effects, small but real, for no benefit," says Dr. Harper. "The benefit to public health is nothing, there is no reduction in cervical cancers, they are just postponed, unless the protection lasts for at least 15 years, and over 70% of all sexually active females of all ages are vaccinated." She also says that enough serious side effects have been reported after Gardasil use that the vaccine could prove riskier than the cervical cancer it purports to prevent. Cervical cancer is usually entirely curable when detected early through normal Pap screenings.
Dr. Scott Ratner and his wife, who's also a physician, expressed similar concerns as Dr. Harper in an interview with CBS News last year. One of their teenage daughters became severely ill after her first dose of Gardasil. Dr. Ratner says she'd have been better off getting cervical cancer than the vaccination. "My daughter went from a varsity lacrosse player at Choate to a chronically ill, steroid-dependent patient with autoimmune myofasciitis. I've had to ask myself why I let my eldest of three daughters get an unproven vaccine against a few strains of a nonlethal virus that can be dealt with in more effective ways."
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Potential Autoimmune Disorder | Gardasil (11,813) | Placebo (9701)
Juvenile Arthritis | 1 | 0
Rheumatoid Arthritis | 2 | 0
Systemic lupus erythematosis | 0 | 1
Arthritis | 5 | 2
Reactive Arthritis | 1 | 0
So, at worst, the rate of such diseases was ~0.076% with Gardasil and ~0.031% without it. But these numbers are so low that the difference could easily be due to chance. There's no real evidence that Garda
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Agreed:
* death rate due to adverse reactions to this particular vaccine: 32/25E6 = 1.3E-6
* death rate due to HPV: 3/100,000 = 3E-5
I'd take the death rate due to adverse reactions allrighty -- gives you chances that are an order of magnitude better.
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Actually, that's _exactly_ what a vaccine is. Lots of vaccines, especially the early ones, were made from dead cultures of the disease they were supposed to prevent. Later on, scientists learned to isolate the unique antigens presented on infected cells, and made vaccines consisting of just these compounds. But all vaccination relies on "priming" the immune system with either a non-threatening verion of the pathogen, or some other non-threatening compound that, to the immune system, "looks" like the pathoge
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Several state and local governments have proposed requiring the vaccine for school girls entering the 6th grade.
Gardasil is approved for girls as young as nine years old, despite the fact that the youngest girls participating in clinical trials were 11-12 years old.
And how is this related to efficacy or danger of the vaccine?
A recent study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also questioned the general effectiveness of Gardasil. Additionally, there has not been a chance to study long term side effects of the vaccine.
There has been one study questioning the effectiveness. Can you elaborate? Does that study question the reported effectiveness or the general effectiveness like it should be 92% instead of 95%.
Special Reports . . .
Wow do you actually read any of the information you linked or are you trying to make your point by overwhelming people with a lot of data and hoping they don't actually read any of it. If you actually went through your data, most of the cases were listed
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My boy don't need no vaccines. I'll pray the diseases away.
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No vaccine today uses any live virus. Typically, they contain killed viruses or just fragments of the virus. It is impossible to get the flu (even a mild case) from the flu vaccine. However, the flu vaccine takes time to become effective. During this time, you could be infected with the flu. (Alternatively, you could be infected before your shot but only have symptoms come out after it.) This is due to the coincidence of your infection and shot's timings, not due to the vaccine giving you the flu. Pe