I'm sorry about negative experiences and/or regrets other commenters might have about their vaccinations. Measuring the risk/reward profile of vaccines seems far from simple, particularly in cases like this where the large benefits (no cancer) and risks (autoimmune problems) may both be quite rare for any individual. It is too bad if the study didn't fully capture possible risks in this case, and hopefully follow-up studies and monitoring can help better describe the risk profile.

It's worth noting the benefits of HPV vaccination do seem to be quite real, though. In the US, >20% of the female population has a high-risk HPV infection [1], and cervical cancer runs at ~12k new cases and ~4k deaths a year [2]. A follow-up study found women vaccinated before age 17 had about 88% reduction in cervical cancer, with around 53% for women vaccinated at 17-30 years of age [3] (presumably later-vaccinated women had a high chance of already having an HPV infection so the vaccine wouldn't be useful).

I think potentially saving >3.5k lives and >10k cervical cancer cases annually in the US is a pretty good return if we can get widespread HPV vaccination, though of course we should also work hard to study and minimize vaccine side-effects. I'm similarly hopeful of news about EBV as a cause of multiple sclerosis [4], which is another situation where preventing a widespread infection might prevent rare but serious illnesses.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db280.htm

[2] https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/Trends/1,2,73,1,3,value,23

[3] https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020...

[4] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/epstein-bar...