The "Cervical Cancer" Vaccine: Good For Merck, Bad For US Women! [View All]

[mhatrw]

Even if you take the two most currently prevalent cervical cancer disease vectors (HPV 16 & 18) out of the human population -- which is the best case scenario for GARDASIL vis a vis cervical cancer -- there is no guarantee that other high risk strains (31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, and 68) won't fill the void. Even assuming a causal and not contributing link between high risk HPV strains and cervical cancer (and I'm not disputing that this is a very good guess), cervical cancer is a severe imbalance in a human/virus ecosystem that potentially includes a myriad of currently unknown factors. Even if we confer total protection against HPV 16 and 18 among this high risk population, how can we reliably predict the resulting prevalence and virulence of the other high risk HPV strains 20 to 60 years down the line? And how can we reliably predict how all of this will affect cervical cancer contraction and mortality rates?

Yes, almost 3,700 US women died of cervical cancer last year. But that's less than 2.5 US women out of every 100,000. If current trends continue (you know, if US women don't start to blow off their annual pap smears due to a false sense of security), that mortality rate will be reduced to about 1 in 100,000 (via more and better pap smear screening and more prompt treatment) by the time that GARDASIL could possibly have ANY measurable effect on cervical cancer mortality rates! That's 1 out of 100,000 without GARDASIL. Now consider that it would cost about $50 million (including doctors fees) to vaccinate that population -- ostensibly to protect them against this "killer." Suppose GARDASIL works as intended and reduces that rate by half. That's $100 million per life saved!

Of the 3,700 US cervical cancer deaths last year, less than 50% received "regular pap smears" according to the CDC. And I highly doubt that "regular" means annual. So let's look at the numbers: .5 (the number that got regular pap smears) multiplied by .7 (the cervical cancer cases that could be prevented by GARDASIL in the BEST case scenario) multiplied by 3700 (the number of cervical cancer deaths in the US last year) = 1295. So in the BEST case scenario -- assuming that cervical cancer rates will remain as high as they are today even though they have been steadily decreasing by about 25% per decade for the last three decades without GARDASIL, assuming that 100% of the US population is injected with three shots of GARDASIL and that these vaccinations confer 100% lifetime resistance against HPV 16 & 18, assuming that no other high risk HPV strains become more prevalent or deadly over the next 20 to 60 years, assuming that all the old and sick US women who die of cervical cancer would otherwise live through the year AND assuming that a "regular pap smear" as defined by the CDC means an annual pap smear -- we are talking about 1300 lives a year that could be saved by GARDASIL vs. 1850 lives a year that could be saved by making sure every US woman gets an annual pap smear.

And the cost for all of this GARDASIL "cancer prevention"? Assuming that Merck somehow doesn't get all of its bought and sold politicians and health care "experts" to make this vaccine mandatory for little boys as well as little girls, we are talking about 50 BILLION DOLLARS per every 100 million US females vaccinated. To save (at most, in the best case scenario) a total of 1300 lives a year, many of whom would probably die soon of other causes. Can any of you think of ANY better way $50+ billion could be spent on medical research and/or disease prevention?

To include vaccination RISKS in this analysis, consider that ALL of the studies on GARDASIL completed so far included less than 22,000 woman combined. If just one woman in these studies were to die every five years years because of complications related to the three injection GARDASIL vaccine plus alum adjuvant regimen (a number which is of course currently impossible to know), that would translate to an annual death rate DUE TO THIS VACCINE of nearly 1400 women annually over the entire US female population -- which is more women than this vaccine would save from dying of cervical cancer in the best possible scenario!