All the stupid people, where do they all come from...

Ok, I had to do a paper on HPV and Gardasil for a class recently. HPV is the primary cause of most warts, including hand, plantar, and genital, as well as causing most cases of cervical cancer. Gardasil is a vaccine which prevents HPV infection in strains 6, 11, 16, and 18, which are the leading causes of genital warts and cervical cancer (along with vulvar, penile, and anal cancers). There are upwards of 100 strains of the virus, but these strains cause most (70%) of cancer cases. HPV will infect more than 50% of the population at some point in their lives, and most cases clear up without any symptoms. Those that don't become cancer

People are worried about Gardasil side effects.

Never mind that in previously uninfected patients the efficacy of the drug is 100%. Never mind that cervical cancer is deadly, and effects primarily young women with families. Never mind the face that it is men who are often the reservoir for this disease. oh no. its DANGEROUS.

three deaths have been vaguely connected to gardasil. this is 3 out of 5 MILLION patients. all of these deaths have different primary causes. the most common side effects are redness, swelling, or pain at the injection site, and mild fever. (I had pain and swelling, as well as the mild fever, I got over them all in a day.) No study has ever shown Gardasil to be harmful.

but there are those who day that HPV is a "disease" and Gardasil is a "drug company product to sell to a panicked populace."

uh....get yer freaking science right. HPV is relatively harmless--until the infection has continued for years, and eventually the viral DNA becomes one with the host DNA (host=you.) the HPV has all sorts of mechanisms to make the cell divide, which also reproduces the the virus. when the viral DNA is incorporated, the virus no longer exists, but the ability to divide unhindered remains in the cell. Ta-da, cancer. This isn't trickery, its basic virology. DO YOUR RESEARCH, you fuckers.

dammit universe.