Recently read Bad Science, and am in the middle of Bad Pharma. It seems to me that Ben Goldacre was fairly complimentary about the drugs companies that signed up to the trials register (GlaxoWellcome was one I think), and was disparaging when they pulled out after a merger with Smithkline. He’s hugely in favour of open information on trials (positive and negative), and unimpressed with hidden trials and statistical manipulation.

Bad Science is a great book – should be a standard text for kids. Encourage them to look behind sensationalist headlines.

To the OP, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, my friend’s wife was diagnosed with cervical cancer basically during the birth of their daughter, and died soon after. The HPV vaccine (had it been available then) may have prevented the cancer and my friend’s daughter may have a mother now.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0[/video]

And don’t use it to clean your loo either 😀

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KX8C3H4Oaw[/video]

To be fair I think the rest of his post suggests that iolo actually meant:

Point taken, however acupuncture may work (though not for everyone, and not for me either), and herbal remedies (ie. St Johns’ Wort) do have some effect.

Homeopathy, OTOH, is utter quackery, and doesn’t work for anyone.

No, of course placebo is no bad thing. My objection to homeopathy is that there is lots of robust evidence it doesn’t work, little that it does work, and it’s hugely expensive for what is distilled water. There is a disaster relief charity called Homepaths Without Borders, and this is beneath contempt.

St John’s Wort has well-documented effects.

Anyway, me ranting about the evils of the distilled water peddlars is getting a bit off topic.

I have had treatment twice for abnormal cells (CIN2) on my cervix and I have HPV.

Once you have it, it can stay dormant and never actually clear up. the body may get rid of it on its own, but it doesn’t always.

I had very unpleasant treatment to remove the changed cervical cells, including a biopsy with no anaesthetic and then a LLETZ treatment which basically burns them off. My first abnormal smear was at 23, which is only 10 years older than the OPs daughter, and I was treated a year later. My second treatment at age 27 – I got infected afterwards and my cervix is scarred, and is now hypersensitive.

I now have to have smear tests every year, I bleed every time and it’s very painful after the two treatments, not to mention that having a very sensitive cervix affects, ahem, other things. I dread having another abnormal one and having to go through it all again, but of course if it happens then that’s what will have to be done in order to stop it turning cancerous.

Sorry for any squeamishness on the part of the men, but that’s what women have to deal with when they have abnormal cells due to HPV infection and I would like that the OP is informed about this before he makes any final decision regarding whether his daughter is vaccinated or not. I sure as hell wish there had been one when I was that age.

I sometimes wonder if men don’t want their daughters to have this vaccine because they can’t handle the idea of them having sex, ever, so they WANT an excuse to say no to it and not have to deal with it. And of course, there is an association of HPV with promiscuity, even though you need only have one partner who has been infected to get it yourself, so some people think that the women who have to go through this probably deserve it because they are sluts anyway, if they’ve ended up with a sexually transmitted infection.

I am a small animal veterinarian. I give literally dozens of vaccines every day. In 13 years I have seen fewer than 10 serious adverse reactions.

Being a vet and a keen traveller I have also received far more vaccines than the average person – my wife, also a vet, has too. We are both quite fit and well despite these dreadfully toxic things.

My daughter who is now 11 months has had all her vaccines to date and I’m sure in time will have her HPV vaccine too.

I think in the Western World it is very easy to forget just how serious the diseases are which have now largely disappeared. I have dealt with rabies and distemper cases (both of these fairly well eradicated in the UK) and still see parvovirus – which is preventable IF animals are vaccinated.

Vaccines are not without risks. No medical intervention is. By and large though these risks through are tiny compared to the diseases they prevent.

The thing is, that one person they sleep with could have slept with one other person who had HPV….even if the girlie is a wee angel, the boy might not be, or vice versa!

Beginner’s mistake. He’s supposed to put the solution into a special flask, and strike it 10 times against a special leather and horsehair mat. Only then will the water remember the bleach molecules…..

Good thing he didn’t, or the homeopathic bleach could have killed him 🙂

Makes you wonder why there have never been any homeopathic terrorist attacks eh? Pretty easy to sneak 1 picolitre of something nasty into a public water reservoir! 😆

The second part of this cover vaccines well too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03ccs7k/Pain_Pus_and_Poison_The_Search_for_Modern_Medicines_Pus/

Of course, you could always ask your daughters what they want.

At 13 yrs old, I know myself and most other girls were quite self aware and if my mum signed for me to have an injection that I did not want, there is no way I would have had it!

I cant imagine the wishes of the girls are not asked about!

http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2013/09/17/the-murdering-of-our-daughters-12255/

Snopes debunk 6079smithw’s scaremongering here:

http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/gardasil.asp

Which in part reads:

(To illustrate this concept, we offer the following [admittedly far-fetched] scenario: A man who received a flu vaccination and then accidentally hit his hand with a hammer a few hours later might legitimately report that soon after he received the flu vaccine, his hand began to throb painfully. Although such a report would be literally true, it would not establish any causal connection between the flu vaccine and the adverse medical symptom of a throbbing, painful hand.)
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/gardasil.asp#MvrJyOIeToiBOoox.99

Sorry I can’t sort the line spacing in the quote!

If you have any doubts about vaccination then Penn & Teller explain it very simply.

Really is an odd attitude eh?

I mean, even if you buy into that interesting moral framework – their pure virginal daughters still risk contracting HPV when they get married and have good honest intercourse (procreative purposes only obviously) with their loving devoted husband?

Sadly, these people ARE this delusional.

Anything that gives women greater choice, protection, and agency over what happens to their bodies is opposed.