The HPV Vaccine Doesn’t Deserve Its Reputation. Get It for Your Kids

This is a really sloppy article with a number of factual errors:

1) there is not "a vaccine", there are SEVERAL, each with different spans of effect.

2) "a vaccine with no serious safety issues, that prevents cancer." Um no, not nearly that simple. Not all such cancers are caused by HPV. What would be true to say, assuming perfect efficacy, would be "a vaccine with no known safety issues (true enough: since it's a genetic vaccine, unlike an influenza vaccine) that prevents cancer caused by an HPV strain that is targeted by the vaccine IF the full course and schedule of treatment is followed."

3) "Human Papillomaviruses cause several cancers, including the cervical cancer that kills 4,000 women each year." Actually, cervical cancer can occur absent any HPV infection.

4) "Most people get the HPV virus" is wrong. Most American women show exposure. Not the same thing.

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The problem with HPV vaccines is not in the science, it's in the marketing. If you were a parent who followed the "expert" instructions from the beginning, here is what happens:

1) You have your child get Cervarix. Then get it again a few months later. Then again a few months later. OK, great, now that all that money is spent, she is protected, right? Um, not exactly. She is protected from Types 16 and 18 (assuming perfect efficacy).

2) Gardasil comes out. It protects against four strains -- the course of treatment you've already paid for and executed over 6 months is already obsolete. Now, you do another course of 3 injections over another 6 months to add protection from Types 6 and 11. Now, a year, 6 shots, and thousands later, she is protected from 4 types.

3) Gardasil 9 comes out. It protects against nine strains -- the courses of treatment you've already paid for and executed over 6 months are again already obsolete. Now, you do another course of 3 injections over another 6 months to add protection from Types 31, 33, 45, 52, and 58. Now, a year and a half, 9 shots, and more thousands later, she is protected from 9 types.

But there are 13 types that we know of that cause cervical cancer alone; other subtypes could end up causing cervical or other cancers as well. So you know she is unprotected from at least four more cancer-causing subtypes... and, no doubt, you will be a sucker who buys another course of treatment later.

This is Planned Obsolescence that makes 20th-century Detroit look like amateurs. GlaxoSmithKline and Merck thank you for your gullibility and generosity.

Anyway, ditch this article. The FDA has a better info page here: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/in...