Well after two years of young girls and their families being inundated with the scare tactic marketing campaign for so-called cancer vaccine Gardasil based on less than 7 years of research, people are just now wondering if this unnecessary and under-researched vaccine is cost effective, or even if it actually has along-term effect on preventing cervical cancer.
If you are interested in my rant, keep going. Otherwise just go to the full story here.
So what clued you all in that we might be jumping the gun a little? Was it pumping 12 year old girls full of a deactivated STD without any hard proof that it really does what it's supposed to, or was it the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent per girl without any real research to stand on?
And for the record, despite the marketing, Gardasil is not a cancer vaccine, it prevents a virus that is usually cleared by the immune system on its own, but in very rare cases, sticks around asymptomatically, and in only some of those rare cases, has been linked (not proven to cause, just linked) to cervical cancer. And this is worth the risks of a vaccine, the cost of a vaccine, and causing every girl in the country to lose her ability to have her body fight this virus on its own? How about instead, we make sure that all girls get affordable and frequent pap smears to catch any abnormality early instead of spending millions in research and marketing to possibly prevent some rare occurance?
Sorry for the long rant, full story at the New York Times here
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
I COMPLETELY agree with your "rant." The other issue with the scare tactics is that it the women and young girls who get sucked in by it don't do the research. It creates a sense of false safety. There are already so many women who do not get regular pap screens. With this vaccine I guarantee more women were feeling like it was less necessary.
Post a Comment