Ontario parents shunning HPV vaccine for girls

I guess the Nazi eugenicists at Merck figure if you are dumb enough to inject your kids with Gardasil, then you deserve to have your DNA cut out of the gene pool. And if you are smart enough to resist, you and your loved ones will live another day to fight these bastards until they are completely removed from society. They are the disease and we are the cure.

PW

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CanWest News | Nov 22, 2007

Health official blames media for stoking fears of risks

by Charlie Fidelman

MONTREAL – Ontario’s new program to vaccinate against human papillomavirus has had an exceptionally poor start because parents are concerned about the risks, a leading health official said yesterday.

Fewer than 50% of parents — in some areas it’s as low as 28% — have agreed to vaccinate their girls, Dr. Ian Gemmill, the medical officer of health for Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Public Health, told a conference in Montreal.

“This is a huge disappointment,” said Dr. Gemmill, who blames media coverage — including reports in scientific journals — for stoking unfounded fears of the vaccine.

“There are lessons to be learned from the Ontario experience. You don’t want to undermine the program before you start,” Dr. Gemmill told the conference on public health.

Parents are refusing Gardasil, a newly developed vaccine to prevent HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that is identified as the major cause of cervical cancer.

“It’s not something that typically we’ve seen with any other vaccine program we’ve had,” said Dr. Gemmill, who has served on national and provincial committees on communicable diseases and immunization.

The federal government is making $300-million available to the provinces for HPV vaccination. Quebec is on track for providing the vaccine in a voluntary program to girls age nine and older as of 2008, a provincial health department spokesman confirmed yesterday.

Ontario’s announcement that it will offer a vaccine to girls in Grade 8 came in August, a day after an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal argued it is premature to offer the immunizations on a universal basis.

Lead author, McGill University epidemiologist Abby Lippman, warned that the long-term effects of the Gardasil vaccine are not known.

She argued that the disease isn’t an epidemic and regular Pap tests are effective in detecting cervical cancer in early, treatable stages.

Some parents who initially agreed to vaccinate their girls are dropping out of the program, Dr. Gemmill said.

“I’ve had people tell me, ‘I’m not going to get the rest of the doses for my daughter because I’m worried about this,’ ” he said. “We held a news conference and sent parents letters telling then, ‘Don’t be swayed by things that are unreliable.’ ”

Clinical trials for Gardasil were held for six to seven years and involved 10,000 girls, Dr. Gemmill said. It’s considered nearly 100% effective against the two strains of a common sexually transmitted HPV virus that causes 70% of cervical cancers.

Oncologists, gynecologists, obstetricians, public health officials, cancer agencies and the Canadian Paediatric Society have publicly endorsed it.

“What was fast about the vaccine was not the research,” Dr. Gemmill noted. “It was the program. Usually we have to beg and beg, but the money came much faster than what we’re used to in public health for vaccine programs to be implemented.”

Some critics questioned Health Canada’s speedy adoption of Gardasil, saying it followed a massive lobbying campaign by its makers, Merck-Frosst.

A similar vaccine is also made by pharmaceutical company Glaxo-SmithKline.

2 responses to “Ontario parents shunning HPV vaccine for girls

  1. Concerned parent

    Gardasil does not protect against all strains of HPV and in fact has only shown to be effective against the less dangerous ones.

    I’m more concerned about the unknown long term effects of Gardasil than I am about my daughter contracting cancer from an STD.

    The whole lobbying of governments by pharmaceutical companies to approve drugs like this and even worse, to convince those governments that they should pay for and run immunizations programs for that drug does not sit well with me.

    Bottom line: I chose not to have my daughter immunized.

    Educate yourself and do your research !

  2. Good for you! At least you care enough about your child to do your own research unlike those who simply believe everything the government tells them. And look into Merck’s safety record which is horrendous ,but rarely mentioned by enemy media.

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