Gardasil revisited

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Ok, I am all for vaccines and d had her 1st gardasil vaccine several weeks ago. She also had all the other required vaccines for college a week ago.</p>

<p>However, I just got a phone call from a family member who told me about an article they have in the NY Post today about adverse side effects of Gardasil. After googling this info, I found some additional startling information, and honestly, don’t know what to think about continuing with this vaccine.</p>

<p>Any thoughts? Was everyone aware of these problem when they decided to get their Ds vaccinated?</p>

<p><a href=“FEDS’ WARNING SHOT”>FEDS’ WARNING SHOT;

<p>[Judicial</a> Watch Uncovers New FDA Records Detailing Ten New Deaths & 140 “Serious” Adverse Events Related to Gardasil | Judicial Watch](<a href=“http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2008/jun/judicial-watch-uncovers-new-fda-records-detailing-ten-new-deaths-140-serious-adverse-e]Judicial”>http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2008/jun/judicial-watch-uncovers-new-fda-records-detailing-ten-new-deaths-140-serious-adverse-e)</p>

2

<p>My doctor explained to me very well that the shot could have possible negative effects. I still chose to get vaccinated, because I’ve known women who have died from cervical cancer.</p>

3

<p>No vaccine is without risk - and yes, things do happen to a very few. In the end, the vaccine helps MUCH more people than it hurts.</p>

4

<p>^Exactly.</p>

<p>It’s like saying no one should drive because people die in car accidents once in a while.</p>

5

<p>From reading the article it seems like those cases with extreme adverse affects were more likely to be coincidences-with 8 million girls/women getting the vaccine the odds are favorable.</p>

6

<p>My GYN isn’t wild about giving Gardisil to very young girls, yet, as was discussed in the article. She prefers to wait till 15/16-ish at this time.</p>

7

<p>My daughter has decided not to get it, with my consent. She is not sexually active, wishes to wait until marriage, and so at this point the risks outweigh the benefits. If she chooses to be sexually active, she is aware that she needs to revisit the issue BEFORE she becomes so. </p>

<p>I do not want to give any young people the wrong impression, but this is a parents forum. I will say that I know of at least two couples where the husband had genital warts removed in the past, and the women have never contracted the virus despite unprotected sex for years. And even if they do contract it, it may not be the strain that causes cancer. </p>

<p>Now don’t get me wrong, as the wife of a cancer survivor, I take cancer very seriously. But on the other hand, a huge number of fertile young women are being persuaded to get this shot in the interest of preventing a possible virus which possibly could cause cancer. What if this shot turns out to be another thalydomide?</p>

<p>My daughter also voiced objections to the newest meningitis vaccine because she had read about neurological or nerve damage. We discussed with the doctor that we do wish for her to get the meningitis vaccine before college, but that we want the one that they’ve been giving for 40 years without problems.</p>

8

<p>I received all 3 shots, no problems here!</p>

9

<p>My doctor refused to vaccinate me until I reached 16…she felt that it needed to be my choice instead of my mom’s, and that at 16 I would be more emotionally ready to make the choice. I want to wait until marriage also, but I want to be protected all the same.</p>

<p>Whatapain-I’ve known several women who have been vaccinated, and none of them have had any problems. I also received the new meningitis vaccine a few weeks ago and haven’t had any problems (nor has anyone I know who has received same said vaccine).</p>

10

<p>Whatapainthisis, you do know that HPV is not just transmitted sexually, don’t you? You could shake someone’s hand then go to the toilet and become infected.</p>

11

<p>I respect any girl’s decision to wait for sex until they’re married; howevever, if the partner she eventually chooses has not made that decision, it doesn’t matter one hoot what decision the girl made years before she met her future husband. </p>

<p>One of my daughter’s friends got HPV and made most of her friends swear they’d get the vaccine; it’s not a fun disease to have, and she has no idea what her future will look like as far as having children, etc.</p>

<p>I spoke with a woman at my high school reunion last month about this. She is a gynecological oncologist working in a major medical center, and has a teenage son and daughter. I asked her specifically what she thought of the vaccine; her response was, she tried to get her children in on the trials, but wasn’t able to due to age protocols. However, she said she plans to start both her daughter and son on the vaccine this summer (they are both still in high school).</p>

12

<p>lalucha, about getting it from a handshake – I don’t know how feasible that is. I mean, I do know of a mother who caught crabs off of her son’s towel, but HPV?!</p>

<p>How would that go:</p>

<p>a) Man shakes off after peeing and gets virus on hand?
b) Shakes my hand and passes it to mine?
c) I touch my privates immediately after?</p>

<p>I don’t know about that scenario…</p>

<p>I used to hear that you should get your first gyno at 18 as a baseline, but my daughter is very protective of her “netherregion” and has been adamant that she won’t. Now her pediatrician says that she will be able to wait until 21 if she is not sexually active. My daughter has at times made comments about not doing it then either.</p>

13

<p>My daughter had to go to the ER not too long ago after eating Thai food and suffering stomach pain. The doctor asked her if she could be pregnant, and my daughter told her that she is a virgin. When we got the bill, we saw that they had run TWO pregnancy tests on her. My daughter told me that she felt violated by that, and why did they even ask. I have to admit, I was chuckling in my head at her outrage.</p>

14

<p>

</p>

<p>I suspect that somewhere in hospital history, there is at least one case of a teenager denying sexual activity on their history, especially if asked in front of a parent. And while I believe your daughter was telling the truth, if the treatment that they were contemplating in any way was contraindicated with pregnancy and they administered it anyway and she was pregnant, I can see lawsuits everywhere. Stomach pain in a healthy teenage girl can be a symptom of miscarriage and/or eptopic pregnancy, the latter of which can be very serious. </p>

<p>Both my daughters went on birth control pills during their freshman years of college - the combination of odd sleeping schedules and living with so many girls threw their periods off as well as made them much more heavy and more frequent. Each saw a different practitioner for their exams, and the rule of thumb seemed to be if they aren’t sexually active, then they don’t do a pap smear until 21, or whenever they become sexually active, whichever comes first. Otherwise, both could have waited until age 21 for their first exam. While no young lady enjoys this invasion of privacy, it is imperative that we, as their mothers, set a positive tone for doing things we don’t like, in order to screen for certain diseases and disorders. The best way to send this message is to drop hints to your daughters when you go for your yearly exams (or whatever schedule you’re on), and especially when you go for your mammograms.</p>

15

<p>Yeah, I actually explained to my daughter that the doctor probably would have been negligent if she had just taken her word for it and she turned out pregnant. But then again, maybe the doctor should just go ahead with the test without asking if she will not believe her anyhow, because it undermined my daughter’s trust in doctors.</p>

<p>I agree about the gyno exam, she seems to feel that “she’d know” if there’s something wrong, but I’ve explained that many women with ovarian cancer do not know until it is advanced. She’s actually already had a breast ultrasound at 14 because she had a benign lump and my maternal grandmother died of breast cancer. She’s also been told that having had her period at age 11 that her risk is higher.</p>

<p>I think that it is tough to deal with the fear of the anticipated pain. Both my sister and I had gyno exams as virgins, and it hurt like hell. While it was not said to them directly, this was certainly overhead by our daughters. If I had to choose for myself, I’d rather have had my first “invasion” be by a person that I love, rather than a speculum. On the other hand, if you don’t get invaded by the speculum first, you don’t get some forms of birth control, and hypothetically risk invasion by a baby and/or a disease. Then again, I expect my daughter to insist on a condom if she is unmarried, so maybe the speculum could come after…</p>

16

<p>1) One of the very first things you learn as a 3rd year medical student rotating through OB/GYN (a required clerkship at every single medical school in the country) is that a female of reproductive age is always pregnant until proven otherwise. The physiology of pregnancy is completely wacky and can be responsible for a great variety of symptoms. Plus, if she is pregnant - even if not the cause of her symptoms - the pregnancy can influence the way she’s treated. No one should take offense to having a pregnancy test run, it’s simply very important information to have. I’ve personally been involved in cases (both teenagers and older women) in which the patient claims there’s absolutely no way she could be pregnant, and only later on in the workup does anyone order a pregnancy test…which of course comes back as positive.</p>

<p>2)

Infection and disease aren’t that simple. These women have been infected, in that they’ve been exposed to the virus multiple times. However they’ve never shown symptoms of the disease - that’s a very key difference. Their immune systems have been able to clear the virus before it’s becomes established (or keeps the virus at a sub-symptomatic level). That’s where cervical cancer becomes an issue. In fact the serotypes of HPV that are most likely to cause cervical cancer (16 and 18) actually very infrequently cause the formation of genital warts. These two serotypes are responsible for about 70% of all cervical cancer and are covered by Gardasil. But there are also those remaining 30% of cases caused by other serotypes, and they may cause warts. So warts while one common sign, aren’t present in every single case.</p>

<p>3) Teriwitt’s point about the partner’s role in the whole thing is spot on. And it underlies an important reason why girls/young women should get the vaccine. Merck, in addition to expanding Gardasil’s age range in women (a decision which has recently been delayed) is also exploring giving the shot to young men. That pursuit will likely wait until after they get approval for women into their 40’s.</p>

17

<p>Whatapainthisis – why would your daughter be so adamant about not having a routine health check? That seems silly to me. And yes, it’s unlikely that HPV would be transmitted through a handshake, but it is possible – being a virgin reduces, but doesn’t remove the risk of infection.</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>But they need to ask; it’s not a matter of not believing her. Let’s say a girl is sexually active and freely volunteers this information to the doctor. Then the pregnancy test comes back negative, but signs are pointing to a possible ectopic pregnancy (among other things) … the doctor isn’t going to dismiss pregnancy as a possibility because the test came back negative, if the girls admits to recent sexual activity and is having certain unexplained symptoms. It also doesn’t mean they won’t continue to try to rule out other possibilities, but until they diagnose her with something, they need all the information they can get.</p>

19

<p>I can see how doctors are damned no matter what they do. For example, I have a relative with no insurance, and when she went to a gyno, a full battery of STD tests was run, even though she stated that she was married.</p>

<p>On the other hand, when I went to a new gyno, I said that I was married, not unfaithful, and that I’d tested negative for everything with the birth of my son in 1999. I told her that my husband says he’s faithful. When I came back for a follow-up, I discovered that she didn’t test for any STDs. I was disappointed and did not return. I considered that to be sloppy, like she didn’t look out for me, what if my husband was a louse?</p>

<p>To the last few posts, my daughter is afraid in general of the pain of any vaginal invasion. A member of my family did have to get a gyno as a virgin and has been vocal about how it hurt. Girls that she knows have been vocal about the pain of their first intercourse. I think that it really boils down to fear of pain. However, she’s not stupid, she’s very practical, so I think that if her situation changes to make the exam necessary before age 21, she’ll get it. </p>

<p>I agree with the prior statements about ruling out pregnancy, it was simply a urine or blood test, but she was offended that she wasn’t believed. While she was asked about sex while I was in the room, she was also asked again when she was sent to pee, and I was not there. Again, I understand that the situations above, I’m just wondering if there’s a better way to handle it without undermining trust. How many virgins end up pregnant? The gyno exam talk went on at this ER visit, because if her pain had been lower, she would have had to have one. As it turned out, it was the food.</p>

<p>About the HPV, this is pretty disconcerting. One of the women that I spoke of earlier, her husband had warts frozen off before they met, but he had one reoccurence after they met. She told me that he was told that the virus exists in the wart and was removed when frozen. This did not seem accurate to me, I’d think that it is in the body, but manifests or doesn’t. Although this confuses me, because as a child, I had warts on my fingers, and they didn’t come back.</p>

<p>Anyhow, this woman had some kind of test, which was negative for HPV. How can this be possible after years of sex with him? And she has birthed her children naturally. Should she be concerned that they have the virus too?</p>

20

<p>My wife is an oncologist who studies cancer prevention. I can’t imagine many people more qualified to weigh the benefits and risks of Gardasil. Our 14-year-old daughter has had the Gardasil vaccine. When we were talking about this when my daughter was 13, I told her that some people were against the vaccine because they thought it would encourage people to have sex before marriage. “What if I get raped?” she asked. I thought that was pretty astute, and should be added to the fact that a woman’s husband may not have waited for marriage, even if he says he did.</p>