What the Gardasil Testing May Have Missed (2017)

I remember when I got my second dose of gardasil I blacked out in the waiting room after and woke up on the ground with rugburn on my face. I later learned I had fallen over and had what appeared to be a seizure. I didn’t even know what it was I was being vaccinated for at the time, I was pretty young. I was a little peeved when I found out that, as a male, I didn’t even need the vaccine. Needless to say I’ve been skeptical of vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole ever since.

from 2017

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...

HPV vaccine is exactly the type of vaccines that made me extremely skeptical of big pharma, well before the pandemic. For the record, both my kids are fully vaccinated with every non-optional vaccine, including the first shots of COVID vaccine. I now regret getting the COVID vaccine for them and feel very guilty about it.

When my children were infants, the doctors and nurses were pushing this HPV vaccine, saying it was safe. I questioned why infants should get vaccinated for a sexually transmitted virus including boys who can't get cervical cancer, and the response was that it was the moral thing to do. It sounded like nonsense to me, and I said if they get the vaccine, it will be after they enter puberty.

After a bit more investigation, it turned out that the chances of my daughter developing any type of problem from HPV infection was exceedingly low, and the chance of getting cervical cancer was even lower than that. So the idea that EVERY SINGLE CHILD in the US should get HPV vaccine smelled like big pharma trying to make billions by getting it added to the vaccine schedule.

Big pharma greed plus the laws protecting them from any lawsuits makes vaccines the perfect breeding ground for useless but potentially harmful vaccines pushed on hundreds of millions of people. The COVID vaccine post Omicron is another perfect example of this. This article just foments my opposition to anything new because big pharma is fundamentally untrustworthy and big pharma greed has done a huge disservice to the world because people are less and less apt to trust any new medications now.