[KristinJ]

in reply to: Gardasil Vaccine and Graves Disease #1069565

Michelle, I hope your doctor also told you that 95 percent of HPV infections clear themselves, leaving you with a natural immunity to further infection by the same strain? And that smoking, a poor diet and multiple sexual partners all dramatically increase the risk of getting persistent infections that can lead to cervical cancer–so conversely, if you don’t smoke, eat lots of fruits and veggies, and are moderate in your….adventurousness, you can further limit your already tiny chances of getting cervical cancer? (Incidentally, you can get HPV from only one lifetime partner and non-abused kids have been found to have it, too; it’s just an increased chance if you have a lot of partners.)

Also, even if you get the vaccine, you’re still not clear because there are so many strains of HPV and the shot only covers four. Replacement disease is a very real possibility, and at best Gardasil only covers the two strains that cause 67-70 percent of cervical cancer. Thus far, it’s proving 17-45 percent effective in preventing total pre-cancerous lesions. (You hear that it’s 98-100 percent effective, but that’s only against the strains it covers.)

I strongly believe that everyone should weigh the pros and cons of Gardasil for their own situation, but I have to admit that it INFURIATES me that doctors tend to present Gardasil as: if you don’t get it for your child, she will get cervical cancer. Our doctor was so clearly unable to answer real questions about it that I ended up starting a blog to educate myself before making the decision. Education is key, as is knowing that there aren’t any risk-free choices.

[KristinJ]

in reply to: Gardasil Vaccine and Graves Disease #1069560

Hi Carla–I’m sorry to hear about your daughter’s diagnosis; I hope she’s doing well now.

Just wanted to remind you to report her Grave’s disease to VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Although there may well not be a connection with the Gardasil vaccine, if there is one, no one will uncover it unless people report in.

The system is very imperfect as people both over-report and under-report–for instance, someone could report that they’d been in the ER after the vaccine even though they were actually hit by a car upon leaving the clinic. And then again, it’s estimated that maybe 10 percent of real adverse events are reported. For instance, when one young girl experienced rapid-onset motor neurone-type disease after Gardasil, there were no other cases in the VAERS database until her parents put out an appeal through a small personal blog for similar cases and found two.

All that we can do as parents is to make sure that potential problems are in every available database and let researchers follow up. The prevalence of auto-immune diseases is rising,so we have to ask these questions in an attempt to understand why.

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