HPV jab

[TeenageWildlife]

My DD has been told that they are about to do these jabs at school. She is 17 so they have spread the initial target recipients. I have done some research on Gardasil and wil be encouraging her strongly NOT to have it. I am shocked by the number of deaths, the fact that it has been withdrawn in Spain, and especially this What do people think?

actually it has happened, girls are "persuaded" when they've come to school having decided not to

yes you were putting teenage girls down saying they would faint

people didn't faint all over school during rubella vax years ago

it's just "hysteria" thing people made up because girls were collapsing which is really quite embarrassing

if girls are collapsing it should be given in surgeries, not schools

dd has had one of hers and is fine

we both read up on it

disregarded you tube I must say

They DO faint! I have spent my morning today doing an HPV vaccination session and 2 girls out of 150 fainted before they had even had their vaccines. They get themselves all worked up, the other girls wind them up telling them the needle is thiiiiissss biiiggg and some of them hyperventilate. It's also a warm day and I imagine a few hadn't had breakfast.

As for persuading girls to have the vaccine - if they don't have a consent form signed by a parent (or whoever has parental responsibility) then they don't get the vaccine. Girls 16 and over can self-consent and if they decline then IME nobody persuades them. I obviously can't speak for all nurses but we will not chase girls to have the vaccine - if they are competent to self consent (or decline) then that is their decision.

Juule, can you do me favour and link to where NHS says vax is only good for 4.5 years protection? I hadn't heard that before.

Juule - the NHS website says that the vaccination is known to last for at least 6 years, and that antibody levels are remaining high, so should last for longer here

Obviously, over time it will become known just how long it protects for. It's given early so that girls are protected before they become sexually active, and even if it only lasted for 15 years, that would take them through the years they are most likely to be infected in.

I remember lots of fainting when we were given rubella vaccination at school.

Gosh I wish it had been around when I was a teenager.I caught the hpv virus from a b/friend who was unfaithful and slept around.i didn't know I had it as had clear smears for years.I had a tiny pimple like lump on the vulva in about 1997 and my gp said it was a cyst and if not bothering m just leave it which I did.fast forward 8 yrs and the 'cyst' suddenly grew twice its size and a gynae said lets whip it off.It turned out to be a malignant tumour caused by the hpv virus and had I waited any longer it would have been curtains for me!My cancer was def caused by hpv

TeenageWildlife - My 18 year-old DD has had two Cervarix jabs ( next due in about 3 months)and is fine (but made huge fuss about actual jabs!) I actually hassled my GP for it as she missed the school round due to her age (too old, basically).

I suffered precancerous changes of cervix in my 20s, detected through smears that detected the presence of HPV, and eventually needed a colposcopy, biopsy, then laser treatment to remove affected cells. It was deeply unpleasant and painful (done under local anaesthetic but the injections and biopsy hurt like hell, and the laser burning smells vile.) And no, I didn't have a racy sex life before I settled down to monogamy - and used condoms cos the Pill didn't agree with me. Perhaps a vaccination would have saved me from all that.

So I think anything that lessens the likelihood of that happening to my DD is worthwhile. Not to mention the potential for preventing cervical cancer. DD agreed. FWIW, all her friend have now been vaccinated too, outside of school. No casualties reported...

Mrssceptic - My DS had a HepB jab recently - fainted afterwards. Do I say the HepB is to blame? No, I don't. He just got up too quickly.

IMO, if people go looking for evidence to support a point of view they already hold, they tend to find it and ignore what conflicts. I just think of the millions of girls who have had the jab - and nothing bad happened.

My daughter is 12 and we have discussed this in detail with her. I think the evidence that the vaccine causes harm is very weak and mostly anecdotal. OTOH 700 women a year die in this country from cervical cancer. She is keen to have the vaccine and we think that's the right decision.
And as for the fainting, Sidge is absolutely correct. I clearly remember people fainting at my all-girls school 30 years ago when we had the rubella injection.

My dd had it last year

They do it in schools because that is easier - no reason why you cannot have it done at GP if that's what you prefer - and nobody can have it done without parents signing detailed consent form. Of course you can choose for your daughter not to have the jab!!! At first jab the nurse also asks the girls questions to check on points on the consent form.

There are 3 jabs over period of 6 months. Lot of fainting at first jab, according to dd it was hysteria-induced. A few felt slightly unwell afterwards - far fewer reactions to 2nd and 3rd jabs. Arm feels a bit 'heavy' afterwrds, much like after a tetanus jab

I had heard that a booster was due at age 16/17yrs but not sure. The series of jabs is given at age 12 because many girls become sexually active from that time.

Peanutbutterkid Here is the NHS link which I referred to.

"Research has shown that the HPV vaccine's protection is effective for four-and-a-half years after completing the three dose course. Beyond that, it is not known how long the vaccine's protection will last."

CMOT How odd. So one nhs site is saying 4.5y and another is saying 6+. I don't really find it that reassuring that the nhs can't agree with itself on this. I also think it's a big leap to make that it would be effective for 15y going from 4.5 to 6+y (possibly?).
So giving the lower estimate, a 12y would be 16.5 by the time it was wearing off. If we took the 6y estimate she would be around 18+. Still doesn't seem to make much sense to give at 12.

As regards having the vaccine against parents consent. This is on my 12yo dd form.

"What if she wants the vaccination but, as her parents, we'd rather she didn't have it?

You should discuss this with your doctor or nurse to get more advice. The decision is legally hers as long as she understands the issues in giving consent but the nurse would much rather have your permission as well."

gils at my school were sexualy active age 11...12 is probably a compromise.

that it wears off may be an argument for a booster sooner rather than later.

I wish i could be certain my daugher won't be sexually active before 16 - aged 2 seems a bit early to say!!

also, no-one here can be certain they haven't got HPV, as symptoms don't always manifest. It would be nice to b sure i didn't, when getting dodgy smear results.

i might add that condoms do not always protect against HPV as they don't cover the whole genital area.

Juule the point is that they won't know for sure how long protection will last for until the vaccine has been around longer. What they know now is that it definitely provides good protection for up to six years, which is as long as they have been able to monitor it for. That doesn't mean that they don't expect it to protect against HPV for much longer than that, simply that they can't prove it yet.

You'll note that the page that Juules linked to was last updated in 09/08, and is not due for review until next year. The publications showing 6 year efficacy (and note this is not that it is running out at 6 years, just that there isn't any data yet after that point, so we know that women/girls will be protected for at least 6 years, and probably longer as they were reacting strongly at that point) were not published till this year review in Vaccine

There are cases of Guillaine Barre syndrome. Dismissal of cases as "not caused by vaccine" are all too common.

I once had a conversation on here with someone very knowledgable about vax, very pro vax in fact, who "couldn't get her head" around how you would establish whether a vaccine caused a death, if the number of deaths in a control group was no greater than the number of deaths in the vaccine group.

Given the culture of denial about vaccine side effects, and the under reporting of vaccine side effects, and the history of scaremongering amongst those promoting vaccines, the loss of trust is only to be expected.

here are cases which are denied connection with the vaccine

These are cases dismissed as anecdotal. These make me cautious, more than cautious.

I had HPV. I would not have this vaccine nor allow my daughter to have it. If anyone sought to persuade her outside my presence, without a vaccine consent form from me, while she is under eighteen I would consider that a severe imposition.

Vaccines are given in schools because it's easy to collect girls together. Not for any other reason. Convenience.

Mrssceptic - if a million people are vaccinated, then by the law of averages, a few of them will, within, say 48 hours, have a car accident/ fall pregnant/ win something on the lottery/ fall over/feel sick/buy a dog and so on. The question is, did the vaccination cause any of these things to happen, or would they have happened anyway?

Google scholar shows many references to safety of the Cervarix vaccine and the observed side effects, and there's nothing alarming there that I can see.

If anyone can point to some robust scientific evidence that Cervarix is responsible for the anecodal cases the media has writen about, I would be really interested to read it. I am not saying these cases were not "caused" by Cervarix, just that there is no scientific evidence yet.

It's a tought fact that children do, occassionally, get very serious illnesses out of the blue, and so it is possible these will coincide with receiving a vaccination. So what is actually a cruel coincidence looks like a correlation.

I once had a conversation on here with someone very knowledgable about vax, very pro vax in fact, who "couldn't get her head" around how you would establish whether a vaccine caused a death, if the number of deaths in a control group was no greater than the number of deaths in the vaccine group.

Given the culture of denial about vaccine side effects, and the under reporting of vaccine side effects, and the history of scaremongering amongst those promoting vaccines, the loss of trust is only to be expected.

Don't know what to do except repeat myself really.

surely the problem is that to begin with both control group and vaccinated group would have exactly the same health outcomes, which would gradually diverge with time?

so you'd need a really long term study to back it up. Haven't these studies alrady been done on a small scale?

MMRSKEPTIC, how do you think the safety of a vaccine should be determined? What testing or statistical techniques would be the right ones?

I don't see the NHS 4.5 vs. 6yr advice as conflicting; they just reveal a situation where the understanding of the efficacy is still evolving.

I don't care what choice you lot make for your DDs. Mine is almost certainly getting it.

Long term non-retrospective studies involving vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.

Control groups given not the vaccine solution with everything but the virus: but nothing at all.

I am not "you lot". I do care what choice you make for your daughter but I wouldn't tell you what to do. Why do I care? Because I think it's a damn shame, that's why.

When friends take babies for their shots, I never say don't. Never. I just hope those mothers will not be banging on the doors of doctors a few weeks later saying: we trusted you, and look what happened, and being told they are lying, hysterical, scaremongering, or telling anecdotes stories.

I hope it doesn't happen to your daughter too. It probably won't, it probably wouldn't happen to mine, but it's happening to too many.

I second Mosschops.

How long term is your long-term, Skeptic? 5 yrs, 25 yrs?

Sorry, I really don't understand this bit:
"Control groups given not the vaccine solution with everything but the virus: but nothing at all."

Pls. can you detail what each control group would have? Which outcomes would you measure and record?

In vaccine trials control groups are often/usually given a placebo vaccine: containing the preservatives and any adjuvants but not the virus.

Do you see why it's preferable to have a control group which has no injection at all? Or perhaps four control groups: the vaccine group: the vaccine solution group: an injection group with no contaminants: and a non injection group.

I would say ten years.

Incidence of vaccine disease: incidence of disease other than vaccine disease: immune disorder: atopic disorder: autism and ASD: and death.