In 2006 Gardasil was released to the public as the answer to 75-90% of cervical cancer. Parents rushed their teens and pre-teens in to get the shot, knowing that it was most effective before their children became sexually active. Now the shot is beginning to be questioned. Is it really safe and does it really help?

Well does it work? The answer is yes…

Since 2006, about 8 million females in the U.S. have received at least one shot of Gardasil, according to the vaccine’s maker, Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, N.J., which based these estimates on data from government and private insurers. Of the 100 known strains of HPV, about 30 cause cancer or genital warts. Two — HPV-16 and HPV-18 — are responsible for 70% of cervical cancers. Pre-market studies showed that the vaccine is 90% to 100% effective in thwarting the transmission of these two strains and two others, which are linked to 90% of genital warts.

The vaccine is doing it’s job, but some are saying that companies may have been too eager to get the drug into people and not enough time figuring out the possible negative side effects. For the most part everything has mainly been positive.A few patients fainted and a couple more had pain at the site of the injections, but nothing too serious. Although a recent report has began to stir up doubts.

The report revealed that since the vaccine’s 2006 approval, when girls began getting it, nearly 9,000 had bad health events after receiving Gardasil. The incidents included 10 miscarriages, 78 severe outbreaks of genital warts and six cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that can result in paralysis. There were also 18 reported deaths.

At this point their is no proof that the vaccine was in anyway directly linked to any of these cases, but parents are nervous.

Sorting through the pros and cons can be daunting for many parents.

It is difficult to prove whether the vaccine was the culprit behind these side effects — just because two events happen, it does not mean that one caused the other, says Dr. Laurie E. Markowitz, an epidemiologist at the CDC who has had her own daughter vaccinated. The deaths, and all the other serious events, could have happened in the absence of the vaccine, she says.

Another con is whether the shot will give teens a false sense of security and lead them towards unsafe sex or less pap-smears. I think there are enough other worries that teens and adults will be no more relucant to have a pap-smear then than they are now.

Though most medical organizations strongly advocate using the HPV vaccine, some doctors and parents, like Levy, are asking whether the vaccine’s benefits really outweigh its costs. They say they aren’t convinced that the expensive shots offer any more protection than preventive measures already available — principally, regular screening via the Pap smear test.

A handful worry that blanket immunizations of the nation’s adolescents could backfire by lulling them into a false sense of security that leads them to neglect regular screening. If that happened, vaccination could eventually boost cervical cancer rates instead of lowering them.

But the shot is expensive, it costs $360. And no one knows if the shot will even help as much as people believe it will, only time will tell us if it’s actually worth it.

In addition, because Gardasil protects only against the HPV strains linked most strongly to cervical cancer, “we don’t know if it will make a difference in the ultimate rates of cancer,” says Abby Lippman, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal who has researched the HPV vaccine. “The jury is still out on how much benefit we’re actually going to get with this vaccine.”

Yet, what do doctor’s recommend? To get the shot. At this point there is no direct correlation between the incidents and the pro’s appear to out weigh the con’s.

There is more than the matter of cancer prevention, says Dr. Joseph A. Bocchini, chief of pediatric infectious disease at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport and chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases. The vaccine could spare hundreds of thousands of women from the psychological trauma and physical pain of a cycle of follow-up tests when they have an abnormal Pap test result and the treatments for pre-cancerous lesions that can cause infertility.

So what would you do? Would you have your child get the Gardasil shot?

Source: LATimes

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