I am skeptical about the safety and necessity of many vaccines, especially in very young children, but I’d never oppose a vaccination because it removes the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted virus that can lead to cancer and, thereby, makes sexual activity less dangerous. But that’s the position a lot of conservatives take. They want to be able to scare their daughters out of engaging in sexual activity by telling them that could get human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes genital warts and cancer. The Virginia Senate just had to fight off an effort to kill their (not really) mandatory vaccination program for girls. But I think a lot of men would think twice if they realized that they run a real risk of getting killed by HPV, too.
What’s the leading cause of oral cancer? Smoking? Heavy drinking?
Actually, it’s oral sex.
Scientists say that 64 percent of cancers of the oral cavity, head, and neck in the U.S. are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which is commonly spread via oral sex, NPR reported. The more oral sex you have – and the more oral sex partners you have – the greater the risk of developing these potentially deadly cancers.
“An individual who has six or more lifetime partners – on whom they’ve performed oral sex – has an eightfold increase in risk compared to someone who has never performed oral sex, Ohio State University’s Dr. Maura Gillison, said at a recent scientific meeting, according to NPR.
What a great argument against having oral sex!! How can conservatives let such compelling data get destroyed by a successful vaccination program? Yes, unbelievably, this is still a fight in one legislature after another. We’re a nation of idiots. But maybe the news that men can get oral cancer from HPV will convince enough of them to stop trading a bad argument for the lives of their wives, daughters, and sisters.
Fat chance. Oral-genital contact, heterosexual or otherwise, was until fairly recently still illegal in a lot of states. Sure, these guys (it always seems to be guys, yes?) are happy to sacrifice the lives of women to their ideology. But anyone who doesn’t conform to their lifetime one partner, one position, on the husband’s demand view of sex, in their view, has it coming.
Of course, most of them are according to this study at risk of HPV, too. But then, that’s only if you believe scientists. God protects the righteous.
Winger logic. It’s complicated.
“I am skeptical about the safety and necessity of many vaccines, especially in very young children”
The amount of ignorance concerning vaccination is fucking shocking. Aside for antibiotics, vaccination has saved more lives and improved the quality of life than any other medical procedure. The problem is that people have a hard time understanding the how vaccinations protect against disease. Wikipedia has an okay article on vaccination.
Oh, and Jenny McCarthy doesn’t understand shit.
I don’t have any problem understanding how vaccinations protect against disease. I do have problems knowing what side effects they may have on very young children, and even vanishingly small chances of adverse reactions, including death, must be weighed against vaccinating against non-lethal diseases (which we recommend for every child).
I’m assuming you’re also taking into account changes to lifespan and quality of life that could happen, even for ‘non-fatal’ diseases?
For the MMR that Jenny McCarthy took such exception to: while Measles isn’t itself fatal, stronger strains can lead to scarlet fever, which can itself lead to heart problems in later life. Mumps can lead to swelling and damage not only to the parotid in the throat region, but testicular swelling that can lead to infertility in later life… Rubella (german measles) can become a congenital illness that can lead to pregnancy complications and low birth-weights…
Pertussis, from an outbreak I saw out here in CA, can potentially trigger encephalopathy, a swelling of the brain that can be fatal.
All in all, compared to the risks of infection and the risks of later complications, I figured it was better to immunize than to have to spend later life helping my daughter deal with complications of diseases she could have avoided up front…
It’s a matter of weighing the risks….which would you prefer to avoid more?
You also have to weigh whether you want this hanging on your conscience versus the extremely small chance that mumps, measles, rubella or some other disease kills or badly injures the long-term health of your child.
My major concern is really with vaccinating very young children. I think the older the child the safer the trade-off as a bet. This is especially true for diseases that are only rarely fatal. A good example is chicken pox. It’s not the end of the world if they get it, so I’d rather their immune system be strong before even considering a vaccination. Yet, once a child has developed a strong immune system, it seems like something worth doing.
I think you have to look at each vaccine carefully and make your own decisions.
Also, I have no idea what Jenny McCarty said about these matters, nor do I care.
re: Jenny–neither do I, other than to frown at the celebrity-worshippers following her misguided advice and seeing the resultant spike in early-childhood cases of MMR…
I’ve seen it written that breast-feeding is one of the best means to develop early-childhood immunity…but with so many of Today’s Mothers unable (for whatever reasons) to do this, the fallback will have to be immunizations, until some new method can be developed to confer immunity to disease without risk of side-effects ,or other issues.
Jenny McCarthy has an autistic son (like me). She is firmly in the camp that mercury levels in vaccines have contributed to the rise in autism. That research has been debunked within the last year. But, many still hold on to it, trying to find an explanation for why their kids are autistic. Believe me, I’d love to know why.
Until they positively identify the cause of the rise of autism, I think it is prudent to not just listen to doctors or the CDC’s latest opinion, but to research everything you plan on introducing to your child’s environment. If you feel safe putting something off, put it off. If you are comfortable rejecting the common wisdom on some particular vaccination, then reject it.
I think it’s important that new studies have undermined the theory that vaccinations lead to autism. But that’s not much relief to parents who know something is causing it that is probably environmental and avoidable, but don’t know what it is.
Plus, autism isn’t the only concern. Vaccinations can kill, and since you don’t want to kill your perfectly healthy child, you need to be sure that the risk/reward ratio is very, very solid.
You also should consider how your decisions can impact the overall health of your community. In the aggregate, vaccinations are a net positive, but they do have a few built-in “acceptable losses.”
Your personal circumstances matter, too. Is your kid in day care or is his spending all his time at home with family? That changes to risk profile. Are you traveling on airplanes or abroad?
The main thing is to do your research and make informed decisions. Every ten years the government tells us that something they told us was safe actually kills is and something they told us will kill us really isn’t so bad after all.
Do your research and pick a doctor you have reason to trust (mainly, that they have done their research and have a healthy skepticism).
Honestly, you are making a complete ass of yourself.
You are making totally stupid statements. Wakefield has been stripped of his medical license. There were 12 children in that “study” and they mostly did not have impairment.
i am stunned at the amazing anti-science stupidity in your statements. There is NO VACCINE AUTISM LINK. It’s complete crap. Only idiots believe that shit.
Really, I have lost a lot of respect for you. This is complete garbage.
I didn’t say that autism is caused by vaccinations. You have reading comprehension problems.
followed that link and I do not believe that story. have a pretty good b-s detector and it absolutely reads like a fiction. first of all, with the baby obviously in pain she would have rushed back to the doctor or called another doctor. doesn’t she have any neighbors? relatives? she would have called them and they would be over at her house helping figure out what to do. second, what’s that about her husband sleeping in? it’s a fiction to explain why he was there [or was he up all night with the baby? why not tell us the baby woke up in the night]. third, if the baby was screaming all day, who would have gone to bed? they would be up every 5 minutes to check on her. – I don’t have any idea about the safety of vaccines, but this story is b.s. maybe it’s an embellished version of a true account, but as is, caveat emptor.
who knows if the story is true. But there are many cases just like it. And you wouldn’t want to live your life knowing that your innocent decision ended the life of your child. You don’t have to look hard to find examples.
I’m not telling anyone what to do. But it pays to be informed about each and every thing you plan to introduce to your child’s immune system; especially when they are very young and have an undeveloped immune system.
I once had a roommate who had polio. His legs were horribly disfigured and he could barely walk up and down stairs. He got it from his polio vaccine back when they used the live virus. The government told his mom it was safe, and it was pretty safe. It certainly prevented a lot more polio than it caused. Those are still the types of choices a parent has to make.
of course. I haven’t followed the discussion and haven’t heard of any cases before this.
There is no such thing as a 100% safe vaccine. There will always be a chance for adverse reactions and or death. That being said, far fewer children die from vaccinations, than the actual disease. All of the common childhood diseases: rubella, whooping cough, diphtheria, measles, mumps,polio (ect) can be lethal. If you would like to look a the specifics of each vaccine here is a link to the CDC vaccine information page.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vis/default.htm
I think the point is you have to be very careful when expressing “concern” over the safety of vaccines that you aren’t heading into Jenny McCarthy territory. If you’re worried about the vanishingly small risk of minor side effects, that’s one thing. But if you’re talking about supposed links to autism or risks of “overload,” then you’re in outright anti-science territory. You have to make it clear which you’re talking about because people are (rightfully) sensitive about the issue.
I think you are living in dreamland. Do you know what mortality was for young children prior to penicillin, which was not available prior to WWII? And thanks to the farmer morons, will soon not be effective? Do you know what pertussis is? Polio? Diptheria? Meningitis? These are REAL DISEASES, and the
Modern people seem to think that their children, once born, will survive. This is not a given. And the more skepticism about vaccines, the fewer get them and the more actual disease there is.
You are I believe in your 30s. I am 58. Kids my age got polio. Some died.
Get the fucking vaccines. Of all medical treatments, vaccines WORK, and the side effects are vanishingly small.
I am not a physician, but I work in a medical environment, and I know statistics, and epidemiology. I speak as a professional.
“…the position a lot of conservatives take. They want to be able to scare their daughters…”
It’s kind ( snark ) of you to tell us what ‘conservatives’ think and why…except that’s the identical technique of framing argument using ‘Poisoning the Well’ aka ‘Strawman Argumentation’ to take both sides in a ‘discussion’.
I do not believe ‘mainstream media’ will ever give you information which badly damages their advertisers. That said, you might want to consider the results of last year’s ‘flu’ scam…which hadn’t been run for a few decades.
It was interesting that India and other nations which were not in a position to afford mass ‘immunizations’ had a public health program which focused on building up the body’s defences.
Query : in a food delivery system which puts its emphasis on sterilizing food to make it ‘safe’ from infection…what prediction do you make for preservation of ignored essential nutrients ?
Now we are dealing with public health emergencies from starved/compromised immune systems and selling drugs as the answer to the wrong question.
It gets stranger. If selling drugs at a profit is best effected by sustaining a dependency, what is the best moneymaking strategy ?
Here is an example of the level of sense used in our world.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2935/
Now, I understand you might think I am evading the question. But Search Results out there may or may not quickly lead you to alternative answers besides the results paid for by advertisers.
I happened to run a few searches.
http://oldephartte.livejournal.com/4649.html
The conclusions you draw are your responsibility.
The best approach is no sex, or as it’s otherwise known, marriage.
I have a video for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vQOM91C7us
LOL Nice ! Bland text can’t compete.
Despite that, water and food are at risk from ‘systems’ that ignore anything like sensible restraint….and that includes biologicals. Marlerblog will give you a look at the legal institutions which seem to work to our safety – while serving to destroy traditional methods that actually worked.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/07/corporate-farming.html
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/08/green-acres-food-and-junk-food-post.html
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/08/environment-sickening-practices.html
My husband had a horrendous oral cancer. It probably dated from childhood viral infection–although it might also have dated from factory exposure to benzene during his college years.
In any case, it was cured after what his doctors admitted was a “Nazi treatment.” And five years later a brain tumor which was “likely caused by the radiation treatments” was also successfully treated.
HPV? Perhaps. But more to the point, if we want to make sure this plague is gone from our population EVERYONE must be vaccinated.
This kind of PERNICIOUS STUPIDITY about vaccinations is leading to deaths of children. Idiots who believe this vaccing-autism crap don’t have their children vaccinated.
And why is that? It’s called “herd immunity”. That is, if enough kids get vaccinated, your kid does not need to be since no disease can spread.
So, the deal is that your child is not exposed to the “risk” of vaccination if other kids are. So, you are willing to put other children at risk to save your own child.
It’s a cowardly and disgusting approach taken by really bad people. I have no sympathy for such parents.
One final comment:
(CNN) — A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an “elaborate fraud” that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.
An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible.
“It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, told CNN. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”
He falfified the data. he was paid to do so.
He should be in jail for this scientific falsehood.
Something to consider:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110120/ap_on_he_me/us_med_flu_vaccine
Seems to fit with BooMan’s concern over vaccinating the very young.
If and when some scientific panel determines that this has some credence, I will then consider it an important issue. Until they do, it is simply one more likely non-issue.
Every year, there are probably 2 million children born in this country alone. And they all get a bunch of shots, possibly 20 by the age of 3 (disclaimer: I am just guessing). So, if you are saying that out of possibly 40 million opportunities for a momentary issue to arise, we get 36, would I consider that to be a serious problem?
No, i would not. Do you know what a serious problem is? I would say a kid with pertussis is a serious problem.
Every year in this country, there are 5000-9000 hospitalizations from chicken pox and 100 or so deaths. Thus, we have more deaths from chicken pox than febrile seizures (which are usually temporary).
Conclusion: If you say that my kid had a 1/1,000,000 chance of a temporary seizure, and 3x that likelihood of dying from chicken pox and 1000x that of being hospitalized, a rational person would vaccinate.
Both the side of “vaccination problems” and “not vaccination problems” must be considered.