not letting my 13-year old DD have the cervical cancer jab?

[IloveJudgeJudy]

It's now crunch time. I have a letter and form from school that I have to sign to allow my 13-year old DD have the three cervical cancer jabs. The form HAS TO be in tomorrow, one way or the other.

Last year when this vaccination came in I was all for it. BUT I have been reading up a bit more about it and have read that it only covers 70% of cervical cancers, far fewer people are affected by cervical cancers than by, for example, lung cancer or heart disease. I have also read, but I am not sure how true it is, that some girls have had quite severe adverse reactions to the vaccination.

So, AIBU to stop my daughter having these jabs?

I'llgetyoubutler - that is one of the key things that you need to look at when considering clinical research. Not all research is carried out by pharmaceutical companies, which is what you seem to be implying ? I do agree however that the exact involvement of a pharmaceutical company in trials involving the safety and efficacy of their own products needs to be made very clear.

Stullfit - people with opinions like yours are as dangerous as those of people who place 100% faith in the medical profession. 'We' know that the government are using the rollout of the vaccine to discover if it triggers Guillane Barr ? ? ? How exactly do 'we' know this ? Cos that's what it says in the Sun ? I echo those who say that you are clearly not capable of having a reasoned debate. And yes I am completely pro vaccine but I base my decisions on cold hard evidence - try reading posts by Pagwatch to see how it can be done (and she's on the other side of the fence completely)

Someone mentioned that smallpox was eradicated from the world as a direct result of mass innoculation. this is a lie. only 10% of the worlds population was given the smallpox jab, and in the rest of the world where the jab was not given smallpox declined naturally due to better health, resources, medical care sanitary conditions, vermin control etc.
look at this

A quote from the text above regarding smallpox.
"It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we ever vanquished smallpox with vaccines, when only 10% of the population was ever vaccinated." Dr Glen Dettman.

"If people are worried about endemic smallpox, it disappeared from this country not because of our mass herd immunity. It disappeared because of our economic development. And that's why it disappeared from Europe and many other countries, and it will not be sustained here, even if there were several importations, I'm sure. It's not from universal vaccination."----Dr. Mack

and this
here too

illgetyoubutler - those references aren't exactly form pee-reveiwed journals are they? And those 'doctors' aren't exactly leading members of the medical profession, are they? One is from a naturopath flogging his own medicines ffs!!!

sassy: "Not all research is carried out by pharmaceutical companies".
i didnt know that, i believed it was only them that did.
who else does then, do you know? and most importantly, are these companies or scientists completly independant, have no financial ties, support or sponsering, from the pharma companies and manufacteres?

maybe not, but, they do state facts and statistics from the CDC, (Centre for Disese and Control), the Lancet( the british medical journal) and World Health Statistics Manual and other reputable sources.

"Facts" "statistics" and highly selective quotes taken out of context in a piece on the internet do not constitute a solid body of peer-reveiwed research (sorry for earlier typo pee-reviewed research, which looking back on it was probably an appropriate description of some of those articles)

There is a whole load of baisc research done before pharma cos get anywhere near. Government, Research Councils, medical charities etc.

but who do the governments buy the drugs from?

not asking aggresivly, btw, have only just started looking into vaccine issues since having my daughter last year.

illgetyou Independent researchers (scientists, generally not companies although sometimes research companies) carry out independent studies.

This can be a clinic or group from a hospital unit collecting data from their own patients, or it can be research labs at universities.

Sometimes they receive a grant from the pharma company who produce the drug they are studying (otherwise there would be no funding for such studies) but conflict of interest is always stated in publications and the involvement of the pharma company (if any) beyond supplying the funding is always declared. Journals insist on this.

In general, the only involvement they have is to give funding to the projects they think will be most useful to them. BUT by that, I don't mean they thing 'oh, that one might show side-effects so we won't fund it'. They can never know what the results will be, and absolutely cannot influence the results. They just might prefer to fund a project that investigates their drug in a particularly important (paying) patient population, rather than one studying the effects of their drug in horses, or mating baboons, or cleaning your kitchen sink (unless that is what the product is for!). You see what I mean, though.

Particularly in post-marketing data (i.e. the data collected by physicians who are using the drug in their clinics) are very balanced views on the efficacy and safety of drugs. But of course, when a drug is new, there is limited post-marketing data (if any) and so the only data that can be used to determine its safety and efficacy are clinical trials.

Hope that makes sense.

You know, in all of this, the people I do feel most sorry for are all those underpaid research scientists- and yes, I know some of them- my BIL has a PhD in science and has worked in cancer research as have other friends-who have spent years of their lives trying to make a difference. Sure, the drug cos make money- ut the research is done by people who want to try to help.

But as one who works in the dissemination of clinical trial data, I can assure you that while the pharma companies may want to put the most positive spin on everything that they can, there are several lines of defence against them doing this:

1. The lead author is always an independent researcher, and will not let pharma company authors influence the data - they will always ensure fair representation of the data. These independent authors often author papers from the competitor drugs, too, so they are in the business of presenting the facts, not spin-doctoring.

1. There a independent guidelines for publishing clinical trial data, not least of which is the Consort Statement www.consort-statement.org/

1. Papers published showing clinical trial data are peer-reviewed - i.e. scrutinized by other researchers/physicians who pick holes in them for weeks on end before they are published. These people are totally independent and will not allow spin-doctoring/mis-representation of the data.

1. There are several regulatory bodies who mandate the disclosure of certain data (safety, etc) and these mandates are upheld by the journals publishing the data.

1. The scientific documentation that accompanies new drugs (package inserts, prescribing information, SPC, EMEA/FDA submissions) are highly legally regulated and the contents are determined by the governing bodies, not by the pharma companies.

So please avoid falling into the media-hype/scaremongering trap of thinking that pharma companies can 'cover up' or 'suppress' their findings. They can't, much as they may like to.

bear with me mightytoosh!
have already read your text twice, but still dont understand fully! may have something to do with a grumpy newborn on my lap thats causing a distraction!

PP, yes my SIL is studying towards the same job as your in law. as she would say, there's no money to be made in a cure!

PP - x-poster, my long post there is following on from my previous post and is in answer to illgetyou

thanks toosh, will read more later. have to go get DD now!
bye

I'llgetyou - sorry school run but I think the others have explained how clinical research works ?

And grungebob - I am wetting myself at your typo - love it!

Illgetyoubutler - this info relates to cancer and oncoligy drugs but it's a good start at understanding clinical trials - ther is another link within it to the royal Pharmacuetical society

www.cancerhelp.org.uk/trials/types-of-trials/phase-1-2-3-and-4-trials#3

A few facts about the pharma companies. I don't work for a pharma company, BTW, I just find them interesting so did some research.

Very, very few do actually make any money. In the UK, only two (GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZenecca) have ever made a profit. Every single other UK pharma or biotech company is currently loss-making. Although it has to be said that AZ and GSK, because they identified blockbuster drugs, are doing very nicely thank you.

For every 1,000 potential drugs that researchers identify (whether the researchers are employed by pharma companies, universities, independent research organisations or charities) only 1 will ever make it to production and sale. The rest will be binned because of adverse results from clinical trials - generally because the drug is ineffective for its intended purpose, but some because harmful side-effects have been identified that outweigh potential benefits.

It costs, on average, $1 billion to develop a new medicine from initial concept to production and sale. If anything, pharma companies are more likely to can a product with marginal clinical trial results than push it forward because they simply can't afford to throw more money at a product which will almost certainly never see the light of day.

In the UK there are, broadly, three levels of clinical trials. The first, for a small number of health individuals, pretty much just tests that the new drug won't kill you. The second, for a small number of individuals who are generally suffering from the disease in question or are in a risk group, tests whether the new drug actually does any good. The third, for a large number of ill or high-risk individuals, tests whether the new drug is better than existing products on the market (generally either because it lasts for longer, or is in an easier form to take - tablet rather than injection, for example, or is genuinely more effective).

Clinical trials have been tightened up enormously since thalidomide.

Don't also forget that even if a product passes all of the above tests, then there are ongoing trials once it is in mass use to indentify ongoing issues.

In my view, it's actually very rare for a drug to receive approval in the UK, Japan, the US and the EU (don't know about the rest of the World) and for it subsequently be found to be cause more harm than good. (Vioxx would be an example of one that, arguably, slipped through. As someone else noted above, it was voluntarily withdrawn by its manufacturer, Merck.)

If I had a daughter, I would want her to have the vaccine.

To add to that cinnabarred - before anything is tested in humans (Phase I being healthy people to test safety, as you say, and also investigate how the drug moves through the body), all drugs are tested in lab and animal studies (called pre-clinical studies).

So they have a very good idea of what the safety profile is before it ever gets to humans.

Also, the three levels of human trials that you mentioned (Phase I, II and III) ALL monitor adverse events. In addition to that, some Phase II/III trials are specifically designed to assess safety, as a priority over efficacy.

So safety is always a primary concern (I think it may actually be mandatory before the trial itself is approved). And all trials are approved by ethics committees before they can begin.

I don't work for a pharma company, but work very closely with them and IME, the people dealing with the science are scientists at heart and won't be swayed even by the pen-pushers at the top.

Riven, not having a go but you've just proved the point you were trying to disprove:

"But the decision was made to retain it as its benefits outweigh its risks."

Is the same as saying it causes more good than harm.

The sad fact of the matter is that some conditions don't yet have perfect treatments (most conditions actually, as there really is no such thing as a perfect treatment). So it is always a case of taking the rough with the smooth. Sometimes, the rough is really rough, such as the example you cited. But if there is no other treatment option available, or the other options are equally or more flawed (such as the steroids you mentioned), the choice ends up being between accepting a life-threatening illness (such as cervical cancer, as this thread started about) or taking the possible risks associated with the treatment/vaccine on the basis that the benefits outweigh them.

I wish people would understand that the scientific community are doing the very best they can to find treatments, preventions and cures for all the ills in the world, but that it is a bery difficult thing to do, and they cannot predict the exact outcomes of every person who takes the drug. The best they can do is test it as rigourously as they do, for years (usually around 12 years from drug design to pharmacy shelf) and go forward (or not) on the basis of the evidence they find.

If you expect them to be able to predict the future, you will be disappointed every time.

And lets face it - the world is very different now than it was even 100 yrs ago - anaesthetics, insulin, antibiotics, sanitation and hygiene. All life-saving developments that are available to us due to the work of the scientific and pharmaceutical community that people on this thread are so quick to blame at every turn.

I don't see how fainting proves anything. When I was young, both my dad and my brother had blood/needle phobia and had to ask to lie down even to take a blood test. The cultural atmoshpere in my school dictated that when there was any jab or ordinary blood test to be taken, all the girls were to run up and down the corridor squeaking and panicking beforehand, and quite a few regularly felt faint/fainted afterwards, quite regardless of what the jab/blood test actually was.

I was almost grown-up before I realised that having needles stuck into me doesn't actually affect me: I hadn't realised that was an option!

Now I'm not saying that I or any of the other girls actually faked our reactions on purpose: but we expected to feel a certain way- and we did.

I assume you have all heard of mass hysteria?
When boys at my son's school were given injections for TB a whole lot of them fainted- it was catching.

It is a psychological reaction to seeing others doing the same thing.

Riven makes a valid point that everyone has to weigh up the risks and balances and then make a decision for themselves. My gripe comes when people make decisions based on inaccurate information. Based on this thread I wouldn't put Riven and many others into that category although I haven't come to the same conclusion that they have. But outside of MN and in some instances on here, I do see very many examples of flawed decision making. The media has a lot to answer for.