It’s quickly becoming an iconic moment of adolescent female sexuality. First you’re penetrated, then it hurts terribly. You may cry. You may even faint. For a day or two afterward, you might feel kind of weird.
Losing your virginity? No, getting the HPV vaccine.
75% of me wants to write off this story about how incredibly painful the shot is (with hints of maybe you shouldn’t let your daughter get the raging slut shot) as mostly laziness. The reporter clearly went to a CDC-based conference in Georgia and saw this presentation and thought, “Both easy to write about and has a great hook, because it’s about teenage girls and Teh Sex.” But the hyperbolic language of the piece, especially the stuff about the vaccine being the most painful shot ever (more painful than having your cervix removed?) is irresponsible in an atmosphere where sexphobic, religion-addled parents are resisting getting this life-saving prevention for their daughters in the first place, and are probably looking for any excuse possible to avoid it.
Because the shot doesn’t sound significantly different than other vaccines.
The pain is short-lived, girls say; many react with little more than a grimace. But some teens say it’s uncomfortable driving with or sleeping on the injected arm for up to a day after getting the shot.
Ever get a flu shot or a tetanus shot as a teenager? I suspect that girls are alarmed by this shot, because their vaccination point of reference is all from childhood, when they don’t really remember how much it hurt. Also, as the article notes later, teenagers are special fainting risks from shots, so this is probably all more a result of what age you are when you get it, not the shot itself. Nervousness is also a factor, and considering that a percentage of these girls are probably getting a dose of parental hysteria and lecturing about having a sexuality (even if being sexually active is way in the future), I’m not surprised some have high emotions to go with the pain. But all this information is buried in the second half of the article, i.e. the “don’t expect people to read it” half.
Again, I doubt the reporter is trying to stir up right wing nonsense. And a quick bout of googling shows that the anti-choicers out there have largely ignored this story. It’s more a combination of laziness, and the fact that this story fits a pre-existing cultural script about female sexuality. I wish I had Hanne Blank’s book here, because she describes the script perfectly, about how female sexuality is about pain and sacrifice. Anything unpleasant, from childbirth pains to medical treatments like this vaccine to the objectifications and humiliations for women in so much porn, gets put into a cultural narrative about how women’s very biology speaks to our rightful position in society as lesser to men, and how our sexuality is about pleasure and use for them, and pain and sacrifice for us.
To make it clear to those who confuse (often deliberately confuse) describing with inventing a cultural construct, I reject the notion that a woman’s natural role is to suffer and sacrifice, or that it’s inevitable. It’s not impossible to reimagine most of our feminine sacrifices in a way that doesn’t construct women as lesser than men. The HPV vaccine is not all that unique in terms of vaccines of the sort that even men get, for instance, and imagining it that way gets it out of the realm of feminine suffering and into the realm of normal medical prevention.
183 Responses to “This prick will make a woman out of you”
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I’ve been getting my hepatitis shots over the past year (I get every shot recommended by my doctor), and yeah, they hurt when you get them. The injection site hurts for a day or so after, and then it’s fine. That’s been my experience with flu shots and indeed every vaccine I’ve ever received. The only surprise would have been if the HPV vaccine didn’t have those symptoms. Then it would have been a vaccine worth studying to figure out why it felt so good.
This asshat was apparently born after smallpox was eradicated.
Seriously.
Like many people born in my generation, the last to be so tortured, I bear the blackberryish scar of that damn painful “shot”. Smallpox vax didin’t involve just one needle but multiple needles, and there was often some scraping involved.
HPV? Too painful? Puhleeze. Try childbirth. Maybe the writer will someday develop some painful cancer to compare it by.
From the CDC Fact Sheet:
Oh noes! We can’t eradicate a scourge of humankind …the widdle girls will CRY!
Any reason to avoid ’sex’.
If God didn’t want us to be happy then how come he made preventing pregnancy so easy? Answer that the fundie nuts won’t…
Imagine the conversation in the future: “You have cervical cancer.” “How did that happen?” “Didn’t your parents have you get the vaccine?” “No, their heads were firmly buried in their bibles and their asses.”
Hah. I remember when my daughter wanted to get her ears pierced, but was scared it was going to hurt. I told her then, ‘what, you’re seriously going to let fear of a little pain keep you from something you want?’. She went and did it, and thought it was nothing (of course I took her to a piercing studio to be done with a needle by a pro, not a teenager in the mall with a gun, so I think it was far less painful than normal). Seems like the same idea applies here. Pain is fleeting. There’s nothing you can’t live through for a few seconds, and come out stronger. But then, unlike these asshats, I don’t think of girls and women as dainty flowers, either.
Interestingly, my mom and aunt said for both of them the worst shot they ever had by far was the gamma globulin shot in the 50s before they went overseas.
OH, it can get worse. I took my (still sexually inactive daughter) in for her annual PAP and to get her BC pill renewed. She asked to be vaccinated and was told that her doctor did not stock the vaccine and so could not be vaccinated. When she asked where to go, the Doctor mumble something about try Planned Parenthood, or I can pay the co-pay on my prescription plan get the vaccine and then my doctor will administer it. The kicker is that my daughter was home on Christmas break, so finding another doctor, and getting her in will be a major chore. I am so mad I could spit.
LindaH,
That is shocking! My daughter just received the vaccine (two out of the three shots) at age eleven at the insistence of her doctor. Not that we were objecting, but I mean its every doctor’s duty to be pro-active on this.
aimai
Amanda wrote: I suspect that girls are alarmed by this shot, because their vaccination point of reference is all from childhood, when they don’t really remember how much it hurt.
I was going to ask, what, they aren’t immunised against rubella any more? And then I looked it up and discovered most kids are now immunised against rubella in their MMR vaccine at 5.
But that was a familiar ritual: all the girls lining up to get their rubella shot. Used to be age 12, got kicked back to age 11 when some girl was pregnant when she got the shot - not that you get many, but even a very few would be more than you want.
The people who claim HPV vaccine will let girls think they can have sex now would probably claim that rubella vaccine would let girls think they could get pregnant now.
Gardasil was definitely no more painful than a Tetanus shot, which is, by far, the most painful shot I’ve ever had. I did faint, but that’s because I have a tendency to pass out at the smallest thing (low blood pressure and all).
I actually had a nurse at the health center of the university I attend ask me if I thought Gardasil was more painful than other shots, I guess she had heard rumors about it being painful, and I told her it wasn’t bad at all.
The most painful part about Gardasil? My insurance doesn’t cover it. $150 a shot is a LOT of money.
This isn’t about teh sex or scaring girls away from a lifesaving HPV vaccine. Instead it looks like we have another case of “advertisement disguised as real news” The last paragraph gives it away.
Gardasil is soooo painful. Fortunately, Cervarix(tm) will be approved soon!
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Shots may hurt, but I’m pretty damned sure cancer hurts worse.
My paranoid conspiracy theory:
Cervarix really IS better than Gardasil. Merck knows this, therefore, they are spending a huge amount of money to push Gardasil as hard and as fast as possible so that they can make as much money as they can off of it before Cervarix makes it obsolete.
To a certain degree the wingnuts are the drug companies best friends. Feminists and those concerned with women’s health spend most of their time and energy fighting the wingnuts and give the drug companies a free pass. Women’s health suffers as a result.
Ha! The HPV shot (and even the smallpox vacc.) was nothing compared to the Anthrax shot. Those things hurt like hell going in, and leave a swollen painful lump on your arm for 7-10 days.
I had a tetanus shot last year, and my arm hurt like a bitch for over a week. It makes me wonder whether the author of the article is running around unvaccinated.
I recently had both a tetanus shot and an HPV shot on the same day, one in each arm. Neither hurt me (for once being the person who always has the odd-out physiology pays off).
However, the nurses and doctors were emphatic about warning me beforehand that HPV is one of the most painful shots they give people. The needle was put in after a warning of, “This is going to hurt.”
With Guardasil, I really think it depends on who is getting the shot, and possibly amount of muscle in the arm. Because a bunch of my friends and I have gotten it, and it hurt at different intensities for each of us. Mine was pretty light, yeah it stung and was a bit sore, but nothing more than that. A friend of mine had it hurt really bad (she usually has a higher pain tolerance than I do as well) and then couldn’t lift her arm for several days without pain. Another had the first two really moderate, but then the third really hurt.
Amanda is right about how suffering is gendered female, and this article clearly buys into the easy losing-your-virginity(whatever that is)-is-painful chestnut. You know, sex must be painful for women; that way we can pretend they don’t like it.
However, what you are missing is that in that paradigm, women must be medicalized more than men. Part of the a woman’s life is suffering meme includes that we are more responsible for caring for our bodies because we must be the ones to bring in the next generation. Thus, women go to doctors more,etc. While I’m not going to advocate against gardasil (I’m still thinking about it), I will point out that neither the CDC nor Merck is rushing those trials on boys and men. I’ll also mention that Jesurgislac’s example about Rubella is telling. They first administered that one to girls only - until they realized is wouldn’t work without immunizing everyone. Why with the girls first in that example - to protect unborns not the women themselves. The Gardasil situation (and this article) plays into that history of medicalizing women only. Remember the Infectious Diseases Act in 19th Century Britain?
I’ve had surgery, and I’ve had big-ass shots (typhoid comes in a convenient 2 liter syringe).
Surgery hurts more.
And I didn’t even fool with childbirth, after the nurse who picked me up and treated my head injury from fainting during the typhoid vaccine told me how much I didn’t have to complain about.
She wanted to know why we were traveling to a part of the globe where typhoid was endemic, found out that adoption was a work-around to get out of labor, and said: Great. This didn’t really hurt.
There was a time when rubella was administered separately from measles and mumps? I learn something new every time I visit.
Tetanus is a shot I react fairly strongly to. The injection site swells and is extremely tender for about a week So tender my HS boyfriend had to switch which side of me he walked on, and had it down in less than a day because even a light brush caused a scream-and-leap reaction. Gardasil painful? Not so much.
Do you guys in the US not get TB vaccines as standard? Now THAT hurts, but y’know, funnily enough it’s considered better to have a few days of discomfort than die unnecessarily early later on in life.
The Gardasil shot didn’t hurt, but maybe I’m tough lol. The worst part, like AJ said, was that insurance didn’t cover it, so at $150 a shot for three shots total, it definitely hurt my wallet.
LindaH:
Where do you live? Because that’s actually pretty shocking, to me. IIRC my daughters’ shots didn’t even require a co-pay — like our flu shots, the insurance company has been picking up the cost, because it’s *insurance*.
In 1964 my family travelled to southern Europe to live for a year. At that time the State Dept. was still recommending typhus vaccination for those circumstances. It was *incredibly*, memorably painful, way more painful than any other of the long string of shots we had to have.
I think wayward has hit this on the nose: it’s advertizing.
My daughters have both gotten Gardasil at the same times as other shots and felt that tetanaus was significanlty more painful and the flu shot about the same - it wasn’t a big deal.
LindaH I’m shocked by your doctor. We’re in the same boat of having to fit things in over break and our doctors’s office was very accommodating. Your daughter should be able to get the shot at her university’s health service although it probably won’t be paid for under her school’s health care - you’ll have to submit it to your health coverage or pay out of pocket I would guess. Of course I’m assuming she’s away at school given your comment.
aside from the thread - the spam verification you’re using is awfully hard on anywone visually impaired.
From the same AP story:
“A second HPV vaccine, GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix, is under FDA review and could become available in 2008. Complaints of injection pain have not surfaced in clinical trials, said Liad Diamond, a company spokeswoman.”
I saw this story last night. Gonna wait until a bit more info comes out- if this second vaccine can be done in one injection vs 3 and not as painful, I’m going with that for my daughters.
I cannot imagine the hell of telling my autistic child that the pain she just endured is something she has to do twice more! Not just that, but she will then react badly to even driving by that building, from the association. Have gone through similar experiences with her and do NOT want to create another! (Dental trips are HELL…)
Right after I got a tetanus shot, I went to work. Turned out I was scheduled to be Bugs Bunny that day (I loved that job). Nothing is more awesome than having innocent children barrel into your tender shoulder to hug you and trying not to make any noise.
If it does hurt as much as that, that sucks, but yeah … it’s not that unusual, and the trade off is, of course, totally worth it.
Thanks for the reminder — I need to put the HPV vaccine on the list of things to discuss with my doctor, now that I have health insurance and can see one.
There is a faction in the homeschooling movement NOT to vaccinate their children. It is one of their arguments FOR homeschooling against insitutional school. And I have more experiecne of it from the Christian fundie side.
That’s not to say I didn’t delay getting come vaccines for my kids. I delayed the chicken pox vaccine because I felt (and still feel) there are problems with giving it early - and I have had a hunch that the raise in autism may be inpart due to the preservatives in some vaccines. Don’t know, it’s just my hunch.
I think it would be interesting to see if these children got the desease their parents refused to vaccinate them from (and not be JW) if there would be any suits flying around, prehaps citing “reckless endangerment.”
But to describe the HPV vaccine as the most painful ever, as Ms Kate pointed out, never got the small pox vaccine. (Or lined up in the school gym along with your classmates to get vaccinated. After stepping up to get the shot the next “station” was a place to sit down if you felt woozy.
I did get vaccinated once the day before my family and I went camping up by Vail, CO. For some reason I had not only an injection site reaction (bruising, pain for days, trouble walking), but also light headedness and vertigo (at times) and nausea.
Try hiking the Colorado high country feeling that way. I spent most of the time sitting by the camper enjoying the sounds of the stream we were by and looking at the aspen as it began to change.
Would my parents have stopped the doctor from giving me the shot had they known what my reaction would be? No. They may have postponed it until after the weekend, but I still would have gotten the vaccination.
Do I wish my 23 year old daughter would have had the HPV vaccine years ago? Yes, because it is my responsibility as a parent - and stupid to think that she would either stay a virgin until marriage OR that being rapped was out of teh realm of possibility.
GAH. of course i click through, mosey around the rest of their “sexploration” (??) links, and find the following:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18039615/
She moves in mysterious ways
Theories on why women orgasm, secretly ovulate and have big breasts
the breast section (near the end) is really the most ridiculous part. for what it’s worth, most of the absurdity seems to be less the author’s fault and more the quoted ‘expert’ that keeps naming ideas stuff like “the goldilocks hypothesis” and “the keep-’em-close phenomenon” (”that way he’ll have to stick around and take out the trash, mow the lawn in order to ensure it’s his progeny”) in a perfect caricature of the evolutionary psychologist that believes men are monkeys in clothes.
anyway, i though y’all might have fun with it.
As somebody with a fully filled-out WHO Yellow Card, I’d have to say that the tetanus shot is the worst I’ve ever had. My arm felt like it was going to fall off for about a week.
I’m suspecting(I’m a guy, this formulation is not for me so I won’t know) that while the HPV shot may hurt as much, it probably doesn’t hurt for as long.
Interestingly, my university clinic is vaccinating both males and females and the vaccine is available at a discount at the uni pharmacy.
Umm… so I’m logged in and my last comment keeps refusing to work.. . this is going to be really embarassing if it triple posts but here goes again…
Interestingly, my university clinic is vaccinating both males and females and the vaccine is available at a discount at the uni pharmacy.
hm, LindaH, i tried to get gardasil from my new doctor over the summer and was told the same thing - i could pay for it as a prescription at the pharmacy then take it back to the doctor to administer it.
(a) they didn’t tell me til the end of my appointment (so would have had to schedule a whole new appointment, and i’d already had to take half a day off work to get to this one) AND (b) this was no private practice office or remote location or anything like that — it was a huge urban clinic/hospital complex and part of the largest healthcare group in the state.
so i felt this was a huge load of crap but i couldn’t really do a lot about it. not too long after that i started making plans to move cities, so i couldn’t count on my insurance lasting long enough to cover 3 shots, so i still haven’t gotten it. and i’m 24 and frankly getting nervous that (with my job + insurance luck of late) i’ll run up against my 26th birthday still unvaccinated and be denied coverage because i’m past the Official Window where Everybody sluts around enough to have gotten all their hpv already. grr.
hm, LindaH, i tried to get gardasil from my new doctor over the summer and was told the same thing - i could pay for it as a prescription at the pharmacy then take it back to the doctor to administer it.
(a) they didn’t tell me til the end of my appointment (so would have had to schedule a whole new appointment, and i’d already had to take half a day off work to get to this one) AND (b) this was no private practice office or remote location or anything like that — it was a huge urban clinic/hospital complex and part of the largest healthcare group in the state.
so i felt this was a huge load of crap but i couldn’t really do a lot about it. not too long after that i started making plans to move cities, so i couldn’t count on my insurance lasting long enough to cover 3 shots, so i still haven’t gotten it. and i’m 24 and frankly getting nervous that (with my job + insurance luck of late) i’ll run up against my 26th birthday still unvaccinated and be denied coverage for being past the Official Window where Everybody has already gotten all their promiscuous sex out of the way and picked up all the hpv they’re gonna get. grr.
My daughter passed out from the first HPV shot and is begging not to get the other two because it hurts so much. We’re mean, though, so we’re making her get them. I’m guessing the fainting is partly just being a 12-year-old hurtling through the draining changes of puberty. She also briefly lost consciousness when she got her ears pierced.
also, re: boys/men and gardasil — i’m pretty sure the last time this came up here, we went researchin’ and discovered that despite prior claims in such articles, gardasil does work for boys — or at least, well enough for the uk to be recommending it for all students, not just the girl ones. interesting.
Last year I got the Gardasil shot along with a DTP booster, Hep A and meningococcal shots. I have to say, the Gardasil wasn’t exceptionally painful for me. Definitely not “the most painful shot ever.”
If I didn’t have several other vaccines to compare it with I might have noticed the pain of the Gardasil shot a little bit more but hey.. vaccines involve needles! They hurt! Whodathunkit?
Yeesh…
I get a flu shot every year, and that hurts like heck for a couple of days. The last time I got a tetanus shot I was woozy and concentrating more on the huge split/stitches in my mouth, so I wasn’t paying much attention. But heck, I also get allergy shots twice a week, and those hurt like hell most of the time. Shots hurt. Waaa. That’s kind of standard.
For innoculation pain, try the military. Line you up, shoot both arms with numerous drugs and back to duty for you!
Having lost very young women to the big C, I am very much hopeful that this vaccine proves effective.
I hope the fundies don’t have the troubles the Amish have had. In PA some Amish have declined vaccinations. Since they are Separatist, few English get to observe the results of disease among a sensitive population. Not pretty. There’s a reason for all those tales about the attic and the relative.
Interestingly, my university clinic is vaccinating both males and females and the vaccine is available at a discount at the uni pharmacy.
I had my MMR shot when I was in my early teens, I think I was 12. I remember it hurt like hell, and later that day I fainted in public. My mom freaked out and I came to with a cute paramedic guy hovering over me. Sleeping on that arm was completely impossible for a few days because of soreness, and I was light headed for a while. (I probably remember all this so vividly because of the cute paramedic.)
Nobody was really alarmed, certainly nobody ever advocated that we shouldn’t rush to vaccinate kids against rubella. *eyeroll*
ok now that i’m officially registered i’m gonna post this one more time then give up:
LindaH, i tried to get gardasil from my new doctor over the summer and was told the same thing, that i could pay for it as a prescription at the pharmacy then take it back to the doctor to administer it.
this was no private practice office or remote location or anything like that — it was a huge clinic/hospital complex in downtown atlanta and part of GA’s largest healthcare group. and (because of it being so huge) it was hard to get appointments there, i’d already had to take half a day off work for this one, and they didn’t tell me all this til the end of it.
so i felt this was a huge load of crap but i couldn’t really do a lot about it. not too long after that i started making plans to move cities, so i couldn’t count on my insurance lasting long enough to cover 3 shots, so i still haven’t gotten it.
and i’m 24 and frankly getting nervous that (with my shitty job + insurance luck of late) i’ll run up against my 26th birthday still unvaccinated and be denied coverage because i’m past the Official Window where Everybody sluts around enough to have gotten all their hpv already. grr.
Well, at least you can tell one thing about a girl who thinks the HPV shot is really, really painful.
There’s no way she ever went out and got a tattoo.
She also probably doesn’t have any piercings she doesn’t want you to know about.
Seriously, ever since my tat, shots (even the particularly ouchy ones like tetanus) are child’s play.
I haven’t had Gardasil, as I’m 33 and outside the most useful window. Plus as a lesbian, I’m in a lower-risk (though not no-risk) group for HPV. But I have had tetanus shots, allergy shots, my ears pierced, flu shots, a cartilage piercing, and three tattoos. I’ll put the tetanus shot pretty low on the list. Obviously, different people react differently to various kinds of needles.
The flu shot is the one I won’t get again, because I get sick half the winter each time. I feel like I have the flu for about three weeks, and I’d rather take the chance of really getting it than definitely being out of work for a week and being miserable for two more, and having a lingering cough half the winter. If I really get the flu, I’m probably down for a week and weak for another week. I’ll take that risk every time considering I’m still relatively young, in decent health, and in no danger of getting pregnant, so I’m probably not going to die unless we see a super-bug, in which case I’ll suck it up and get the shot.
We’re mean, though, so we’re making her get them.
Way to go!
My parents made me get a lot of elective vaccinations as a teenager (boosters on a lot of childhood stuff, the Hepatitis B series, meningitis etc) and now that I’m traveling to countries where you often need shots, I’m really happy I went through with it. Shots I got in high school mean fewer copays for shots to go backpacking around Asia!
Tell her that when she’s 25 and gets the backpacker jones, she’ll thank you.
When I was in the Canadian Forces, one of the rights of passage for new recruits at the military colleges was the Needle Parade: the day we all lined up to to get the multiple vaccinations that were a standard requirement. I forget which ones, exactly, but I know I was poked at least three times.
Marching away, practically no one could move the arm that received the injections. Some people were hurting for days. And these were routine injections, nothing new or experimental.
Obviously vaccinations must be less common these days or else that idiot doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Hell, I certainly can’t remember it, but the scar on my arm indicates that my smallpox vaccination must have hurt like hell at the time.
Some of the pain from shots is also due to the person administering them. There’s a physician’s assistant at my doctor’s office who just has a good way with a needle–not that shots ever feel *good*, but she has a light touch–and a nurse, who gives injections with all the subtlety of sticking a meat thermometer into a pot roast. I’ve learned to request the PA.
Oh, come on.
The TB vaccination, now that’s a pain. Gives you a horrible oozy scab that aches for days, and hurts something rotten when they put it in, too, because of how they have to do it. This doesn’t sound any worse than your usual kind of vaccine - quick jab, bit of an ache. Certainly nothing at all compared to cancer.
This whole HPV row is astonishing. You’d think that preventing all cancer, any cancer, would be considered good. But oooh, no, not if it leads to girls having sex! Because goodness knows, having one’s reproductive organs eaten away isn’t nearly as bad as the idea of a young woman fucking for fun. This arse-backwards logic depresses me.
I haven’t read all the comments yet.
Does anyone know if they’ve tested the vaccine on men? I’d like to have my son get it (not right away, he’s still young). After all, most women get HPV from men. Why should it be solely women’s responsibility to prevent it? Why should boys get HPV if it can be prevented?
Cara-
I just did a little quick google search and it seems that early tests indicate the vaccine is also good for boys. It prevents them spreading HPV to women as well as protecting them from certain penile and anal cancers and genital warts.
You’re finding a new doctor for both of you, right? And letting this assberet know why, I hope.
That doc’s an ass who has a strange idea about what practicing medicine means.
“Do you guys in the US not get TB vaccines as standard?”
Nope. In the US, you have to have a pretty good reason to think you’d be at risk before you get vaccinated against TB.
This year I got Gardasil, a tetanus booster, and a flu shot. All three Gardasil shots and the flu shot were on par–the site felt odd when the fluid was injected, there was a dime-sized area with redness and mild swelling for a day, then a barely-noticeable amount of tenderness in that spot for a second day. As I recall, it was about the same as when I was vaccinated against Hep B when I was 16 and against meningitis when I was 19.
The tetanus shot? Sweet baby Jesus, that fucker hurt. The shot and the injection weren’t bad in and of themselves; the weird sensation with the injection was much more pronounced than with the flu shot or Gardasil. Within about half an hour afterwards, though, my arm was killing me, and I couldn’t move it without intense pain. That lasted for a full week without much in the way of abatement until days six and seven. I am deeply grateful I won’t need that one again for a decade.
FWIW I usually find the tetanus shots memorably painful.
This last time I don’t remember it being an issue - not because the shot was bad, mind you, but because I tumbled in the day after a bike wreck with my broken finger, broken hand, hot pavement burns and road rash all up and down my right side and said “I need a tetanus shot”.
It had been ten years, and I knew I really needed one. They gave me one, then slathered me with antibiotic goop, and sent me off to xray …
Cara, I was wondering about that myself. My sons are unmutilated and men do carry the virus and pass it along to women, as well as see health effects themselves.
One is turning 12 in a couple of weeks, so I’d like to see some parity soon. Then again, acknowledging male health effects and transmission means that insurance companies would have to carry it and physicians would have to stock it, rather than blather about owwwie arms and sluts and trollips and God’s Wrath for Teh Sex and all of that. fundies might also have to acknowledge that being a virgin bride isn’t enough if your partner has been around.
1. tetnus hurts. bet its nowhere near tetnus as far as pain.
2. if hpv is gotten from men, why arent they being vacc to PREVENT passing it on?
i mean, if men are so much more promiscuous, etc, bs, et al –then they are INFECTING at a higher level. Go to the source. wheres their fucking shot??
oops i meant TB, not tetnus.hurt immediately & for like a week.
“just did a little quick google search and it seems that early tests indicate the vaccine is also good for boys. It prevents them spreading HPV to women as well as protecting them from certain penile and anal cancers and genital warts. ”
WHY ARENT WE HEARING THIS ???!?
WHY is it that all we hear about re this vacc is how it needs to be DONE TO GIRLS??
that is fantastic, about the boys–helps them out immensely & teaches them sex. responsibility & how to protect women, instead of ignoring or exploiting them!!!
“One is turning 12 in a couple of weeks, so I’d like to see some parity soon. Then again, acknowledging male health effects and transmission means that insurance companies would have to carry it and physicians would have to stock it, rather than blather about owwwie arms and sluts and trollips and God’s Wrath for Teh Sex and all of that.”
I was really hoping that Cervarix would be doing male clinical tests as well as female. Theirs is supposedly going to be demonstratedly effective for a higher age range, which would be awesome for women whose insurance won’t pay for Gardasil past 26 or whose health-care providers won’t administer it in a way that’s technically off-label. If they’d done trials for boys and men as well, they could have expanded coverage to way more folks. The potential for cancer and whatnot aside, I’d have to assume most men really aren’t down with the unnecessary possibility of getting dick-warts.
“WHY is it that all we hear about re this vacc is how it needs to be DONE TO GIRLS??”
Because the benefits for males aren’t nearly as compelling–penile cancers are rare and generally detected early enough to be treated easily without substantial disfigurement. Cervical cancer? Not so much, especially in women too poor to afford yearly pap smears. You also see herd immunity if enough people are vaccinated, so it’s quite possible that males will see a dramatic benefit even if it’s only females receiving the vaccine. Kind of like how children whose parents refuse to vaccinate against measles or chickenpox still don’t have to worry about catching it so long as everyone else is vaccinated.
Does anyone get through this life in the US without any painful shots?
I got a cortisone shot yesterday in what the nurse referred to as my “hip” but I would consider high on my ass. It hurt like hell all night last night, and I’m still sitting kind of gingerly. But I consider that worth it for getting several weeks’ relief from my horrible back pain — so that’s not even for a life threatening thing.
I did get a tetanus shot before making my first post-Katrina venture to my New Orleans house to start cleaning up - but honestly I don’t remember that one as exceptionally painful like people are saying here. Perhaps it was but I just had a lot of other things on my mind so don’t remember. Or maybe it just didn’t compare to the cortisone+lidocaine shots I’d been getting in my elbows, that take something like 5 minutes (moving the needle around!) to fully unload.
And every year I get a flu shot that leaves my arm tender for a day or so. Big deal, better than the flu.
Shots are just part of the basic medical care you’re going to get. A painful shot vs. CANCER? I just don’t see how that could even be a reasonable question.
Because the “OMG SLUT VACCINE” flipside of the story only works if it’s about girls. After all, if a guy has a lot of sex, he’s an ultra-manly super-stud, but if a woman has a lot of sex, she’s a filthy, untrustworthy, evil slut.
Plus, I’m pretty sure they’re still only testing it on male subjects. Testing always comes first.
can any of you answer this question for me?
i am very phobic of needles (i legitimately thing that needles hurt more than almost any pain i’ve felt before). the only shot i could ever get done again is actually the tetanus shot, because i never felt the needle, it lasted a second, and the after-pain with the arm feeling funky is a pain i can deal with, as opposed to feeling the needle.
do you feel the needle when they give you the gardasil or the new HPV vaccine? i’m trying to figure out if the pain everyone is referring to is after-pain or needle pain. how long does the vaccine last? i remember some of my childhood vaccines took ‘longer’ because they had to inject slowly. is it like that?
sorry for the weird question, i’m just hoping/wondering someone can answer…
The needle they used for Gardasil was, in my case, the same type of needle they used for the tetanus booster. If you didn’t feel the needle for the tetanus shot, you probably won’t feel it for the HPV vaccine. The volume of the vaccine was also fairly low, so I don’t think they’d feel a need to inject it slowly. The only problem I’d expect with a needle-phobe is that it takes three separate shots, so you’d have to be willing to sit through it three times for full immunity.
I inject myself with interferon every other day for my MS, so I am pretty inured to injection site reactions.
I do get swelling and other unpleasant side effects sometimes, but you know what? I haven’t died from it yet.
Unlike, say, preventable cancer, which CAN kill you. Scare coverage like this of Gardasil can have devastating consequences. I wish reporters and editors would think before they do stupid crap like this.
BTW, because of my level of generalized klutziness, I have had tetanus shots and boosters so often I would have to check the card in my wallet to say how many.
I don’t remember them as being especially painful, but since I was probably in the ER for treatment and/or stitching of yet another accidentally self-inflicted wound I may have been distracted.
I was going to ask if you had forwarded the URL of this post to the author of the story, but then I saw that it HAD no author, being a miraculous conception of the AP.
the benefits for males aren’t nearly as compelling–penile cancers are rare and generally detected early enough to be treated easily without substantial disfigurement.
While I’m no medical expert, it seems to me as a matter of common sense that the vaccine would be particularly indicated for gay or bi men.
re: shot pain: as someone who once spent two damn years selling blood plasma (hey, $180/month is nothing to sneeze at) I can expertly testify that it makes a WHOLE LOT of difference WHO is administering the needle.
Aside from the chemical reactions, some folk are just a lot better at sliding that steel into you than others. {cough}
Anyone who thinks that the HPV shot hurts really needs to get a DTAP. I couldn’t use my arm right for a week.
There is no scientific evidence for your “hunch” and there have been comprehensive studies of the question.
http://www.cdc.gov/od/science/iso/concerns/mmr_autism_factsheet.htm
I’ll join the crowds of people that say it probably isn’t anything near the tetanus booster. I grayed out (didn’t completely faint) when I got it for HS, I grayed out when I got it for cutting my finger open on a knife as a 25 year old. It’s not the shot that hurts: it’s the spreading, burning, stabbing pain in your muscle.
Having been a teenage girl myself, I read the article and thought, “Someone thought it was worth writing a whole article about teenage girls getting themselves so worked up about a shot that they faint?” Heck, my friends and I got ourselves so worked up at the thought that a statue was going to come to life during an overnight trip that we managed to wake the whole dormitory. And surprise surprise, we were just about 12 years old at the time.
I’m sure the shot is not a fun time at the doctor’s, but I suspect normal teenage behavior is the root of the fainting, not some horrible side effect of Gardasil.
I was 5 during the smallpox epidemic in Yugoslavia. Both of my shoulders are patchworks of scars from multiple vaccines. They hurt like hell.
Flu shot: hurt. Tetanus: barely felt it (although having a big-ass nail hole in my foot at the time might have taken my mind off a 22-gauge needle).
Gamma G: yow. As bad as a really bad tooth..
Of course, once the meme is out there, it’s pretty much impossible to do any kind of decent study. (Anecdotally here I see that pain with HPV is strongly correlated with injection pain in general.)
You can add me to the tally of those who had no problem with the Gardasil shot. I’ve only had the first one, but it was nothing, and I’m needle-phobic myself. (Some things are too important to let fear stop me.)
I was very pleased with my doctor’s handling of the whole thing. I went in for my annual physical and she brought it up before I could (although it was definitely on my list). I asked about the age, because all I’d heard was that it was recommended for women up to 26, and I wanted to be sure it was still effective for me at age 30. As soon as she reassured me that it was, I told her I wanted it, and that it didn’t matter that insurance wouldn’t pay, since I didn’t have any anyway.
Totally off-topic: I just started reading this blog on a regular basis, but I want to thank Pandagon at large for starting the fight that caused my last breakup. That guy was a wart, and I’m glad to be rid of him.
Don’t they give shots in the ass anymore?
I haven’t gotten the HPV vaccine yet, but I suspect that the people most bothered by it have been bothered by other vaccines as well.
The most painful shots I’ve most recently had to receive were Novocaine shots for some minor foot surgery. I will admit I was definitely feeling light headed after the first!(of three.)
(Sorry if this doubleposts. I got an error..)
somewhat off topic, but, people keep posting about a chickenpox vaccine. when did this vaccine come about? does this mean kids dont get chickenpox anymore? a childhood without chickenpox is a mindblower.
“While I’m no medical expert, it seems to me as a matter of common sense that the vaccine would be particularly indicated for gay or bi men.”
Probably.* Unfortunately, the general public has an extremely hard time getting too excited about non-straight medical problems, with a portion of them considering problems specific to gay men to be a good thing, so it’s going to focus on the known problems faced by straight men on account of HPV. On the medical side, even if there was a precise correspondence between the vaccines’ expected reduction of cervical cancer and the vaccines’ expected reduction of anal/rectal cancer, the companies themselves can’t really do much marketing based on it in the US since neither has yet been clinically proven a) effective in males and b) safe for males to take.
On the crazy-people side, the vaccines’ manufacturers might actually not tout the benefits to gay and bi men outside the gay and medical communities. The fundies’ “It will turn your daughters into whores” campaign was bad enough; wait until some fundie starts the “It will turn your sons into homos” campaign.
*Particularly if HPV-related anal/rectal dysplasias give rise to a substantial percentage of overall anal/rectal neoplasms, since you have the same problem as you do with cervical dysplasias plus the compounding problems of general ignorance (how many gay/bi men are out to their doctors and how many doctors would know to recommend pap smears to their gay/bi male patients even if the men were out them?) and difficulty obtaining/funding the service without an initial complaint, by which time it may be too late. I don’t know that gay/bi men would be much more at risk for penile cancer, given the prevalence of HPV in the overall populace, but they might be at greater risk for HPV-related throat cancer than straight men if that link turns out to be solid.
“when did this vaccine come about? does this mean kids dont get chickenpox anymore?”
I think it was approved in the US like ten years ago. I don’t think many places require it to register for school or anything, but given how inconvenient chickenpox can be for caretakers and how miserable even a mild case can be for the sufferers, it’s pretty popular.
My daughter had all three shots; she didn’t say anything about it being unusually painful.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the evidence against Gardasil’s safety, namely that within the first year of its use (June 2006 to May 2007), it had 371 serious adverse reactions reported including 3 deaths to the FDA (serious reactions as in “paralysis, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and seizures”.)
http://judicialwatch.org/6299.shtml
From May 2007 to September 2007, there were 347 more serious reactions reported, including 8 more deaths.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_6428.shtml
The former director of the FDA has estimated that according to research, only about 1% of serious adverse reactions to vaccines are actually reported to the FDA (Dr. David Kessler, MD, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, June 1993). If his estimation is correct, that would mean that there may actually have been something like 37,000 serious adverse reactions from June 2006 to May 2007, and 34,000 serious reactions from May 2007 to September 2007.
This is a sobering thought considering that there are less than 12,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed every year, there is no evidence that Gardasil even prevents cervical cancer, and it does not necessarily confer immunity to HPV:
“Merck acknowledges that it doesn’t know yet whether an initial vaccination will offer lifetime protection or whether patients will need booster shots. So far, the company has shown only that the vaccine lasts five years.”–WSJ, Feb 7, 2007
I’m just sayin’.
I”ve had my first two shots of gardasil (in Australia it’s free for women up to and including the age of 26), and I’d say that they are comparable in pain to a tetanus or flu shot– for me that means my arm will feel a little sore for 24 hours, but nothing that will put me out of action.
My trick for reducing the pain of shots: let my arm hang limp, and then don’t look when the doctor is aiming a big-ass pointy thing at my tender skin.
You may cry. You may even faint…
This brings back some weird memories.
I’m Canadian and 55 years old. In the late 50’s and early 60’s we used to get shots for various things. I can vaguely remember an announcement over the the school intercom that the nurses were here to give us our shots. They were for smallpox, polio…etc.
They used to line us up in a very military style. The order we sat in the classroom was the order in which we got our shots. Like most of the kids I did not enjoy this experience, but with a little grimace I got through it o.k.
One year, there was this red headed girl who sat in front of me. She had an obvious phobia about needles and fainted just as she was about to get her shot. It set off this chain reaction and kids started fainting all over the place. I’ve never fainted, but I came close that day.
Mass hysteria is still alive and well.
I’ve had all three shots of the HPV vaccine, and they didn’t hurt nearly as much as tetanus or hepatitis.
I find it interesting that the discomfort level for inoculations seems to vary so much from person to person. I’m not physically brave, and have a pretty low pain threshold (translation: I’m a huge wimp about pain). But I’ve never had a bad reaction from needles. Not when I was a kid, not when I had to get my “kid” shots again as an adult returning to college (the mumps/rubella/whatever combo), not when I’ve gotten tetanus boosters as an adult. I did get a typhoid shot that made my arm sore for a couple of days, but it wasn’t anything extreme. Yet I’m the kind of person who almost weeps when I stub my toe on something. What’s up with that? It’s got to be more than just mind over matter. Anyway, to veer back towards the topic, this vaccine is probably the same: it might suck more for some patients than others. So what’s the point of the article? That shots are unpleasant? That’s real newsworthy.
I’m too old to have the shot. However, I did have part of my cervix removed when I was in my twenties due to cellular dysplasia.
I’d rather have the shot.
I’m new, so this may not come out of moderation before someone else responds, but Phinky, my doctor assures me that it’s not a matter of being too old to get it, but of being too old for insurance to pay for it. She said that it was effective enough that she got it, and she’s in her mid 50s, and she didn’t say anything about an upper limit for actual effectiveness.
re: one jewish dyke
I thought that being a lesbian is actually a higher risk for HPV? For the longest time I thought girlsex was safe, very little need to worry about stuff like HIV, and while gay sex was mentioned during health class, I think, I don’t recall the lesbian part. Until several months ago, in a post at toronto feminist or torontoqueers, branching on from a rant about how HPV for adults aren’t covered by OHIP, I found out that lesbian sex is actually very high risk. Since girls are wetter than guys. So I have to do like, the gloves, AND the saran-wrap.
There’s an actual phenomenon called “needle shock” (some people call it “stick shock”) that can cause people to faint from having injections. I have a milder form of needle shock — I don’t faint, but I do get light-headed, and about 10 minutes after I have a shot, my metabolism crashes. Any time I have to have a shot these days, I take a can of Coke, some candy, and a sandwich with me to eat in that critical in-between time after I get stuck and before my metabolism crashes. Those of you who have similar problems might want to try it; it makes the experience a lot more pleasant.
I’ve never found tetanus shots to be particularly bad, personally. I think the worst one I ever had was local anasthetic under the skin on my back, but my doctor also says the skin on my back is unusually thick, so that might have something to do with it.
For the longest time I thought girlsex was safe…
Nothing is completely safe. Living is not safe. There is always risk.
The virus needs to be injected directly into the bloodstream. If you have an open sore or inflammation in your mouth or genitals it gives the virus a path.
Be safe and for gawd’s sake have some fun.
Considering the age cutoff (26-ish?), I’m wondering if the reason LindaH’s daughter’s doctor didn’t carry the vaccine is that most of his patients are older? If LindaH’s daughter is one of his few patients who would even be a viable candidate for Gardasil, it’s unlikely he would carry it — most doctors don’t keep vaccines on hand that their patients are unlikely to need.
Of course, he should be more helpful in finding her a way to get a vaccine he doesn’t carry… Maybe he’s worried about losing a patient?
The most painful part about Gardasil? My insurance doesn’t cover it. $150 a shot is a LOT of money.
Same here, but my insurance doesn’t cover ANY vaccintions (how fracked up is that?). The injection site didn’t hurt as much as a tetanus shot.
After a couple of years on Depo Provera, I’ve found that the painfulness of the actual injection depends on the technique of the person administering it. I had this awesome nurse one time who gave my hip a sharp little slap just before inserting the needle, so I didn’t feel the shot at all. Wish all shots were like that! Same with giving blood: the amount of pain depends on the skill of the person handling the needle(s).
The rabies pre-exposure shot hurt so bad, I could barely move my arm for 2 days afterwards. And I had to go through that 3 times (it’s a series of three shots). Somehow, I survived despite the pain. I think the fear of what I would have to go through if I were bitten by an infected animal made the vaccination worthwhile.
Same case here: you think young girls can’t handle the ouchie? I’m sure cervical cancer is hardly a picnic.
huh. my doctor “found something” last month, and I get to have a colposcopy next month. he said that it was too bad that the cutoff for the vaccine is 28. I was 30 at that time.
of course, I’m now really regretting the vaccine trials at KU; that I passed on as an undergrad. that, and I was knowledgeable enough at the time, to know better.
kickin’ myself…
maybe the age thing varies state to state? he made no mention of it being an insurance issue.
Em: Depo Provera is still a shot in the ass (well, kinda high up, but you have to unbutton your pants for it.
Strangely, the nurses that looked like they were throwing a dart in my butt instead of a hypodermic caused the least amount of pain. The ones that babied me through it, hurt a lot worse. That’s been true of most of my injections, oddly. Anyone have any idea why?
Probably b/c they just got the insertion over with more quickly. I think the trick is to give it exactly the right amount of forward momentum to get quickly to the proper depth in all one motion. The more sustained the push, the more your nerves and brain freak out.
None of my shots hurt badly enough to remember except for my Hep B series, which I got years before they were recommending it b/c I have a family member who is a carrier. That was in my butt, and that HURT. But, I was 4 years old at the time, and subsequent butt shots were nothing to speak of.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the evidence against Gardasil’s safety, namely that within the first year of its use (June 2006 to May 2007), it had 371 serious adverse reactions reported including 3 deaths to the FDA (serious reactions as in “paralysis, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and seizures”.)
Cervical cancer killed 3,850 women in 2004.
Hmm. Three deaths in a single year versus 3,850 deaths in a single year. Which seems like a better bargain?
And I know we’re all supposed to be shocked — shocked! — that a vaccine doesn’t give lifetime protection, but most of us have had tetanus shots and flu shots, you know. The notion that a vaccine doesn’t always offer lifetime protection isn’t that odd. They now think that the smallpox vaccine doesn’t give lifetime protection, so even if you were vaccinated, we could all still be completely fucked if smallpox makes a comeback.
Three deaths versus three thousand. You can cry about the three, we’ll rage about the three thousand.
This is an example of the common problem with all anti-vaccination people - they fail to take into account how horrible the diseases vaccinations prevent were. We can debate whether or Gardasil hurts too much or even kills a handful of people each year, or if the MMR vaccine causes Autism (which all studies suggest it doesn’t, see upthread). However, it is clear that cervial cancer kills thousands and measles, mumps and rubella would maim and kill still more if left unchceked. We are so fortunate that our children dying of measles, mumps, rebella, polio, whooping cough, complications relate to chicken pox, and so on is unthinkable that it is easy to forget that if it weren’t for vaccinations most of us would undobtably be watching our children die of or be maimed by these diseases.
“The former director of the FDA has estimated that according to research, only about 1% of serious adverse reactions to vaccines are actually reported to the FDA”
This vaccine is new, and it’s been the subject of a damn near unprecedented level of controversy. I suspect that given those two things, a lot more than 1% of serious adverse reactions were actually reported.
there has been testing of the HPV vaccine at least since 1993.
Since I was diagnosed with cervical cancer not that long ago, both my husband and I wanted our daughter to have that vaccine. And she’s getting the series.
It’s not just sex that increases the odds of the cancer, it’s also having kids. And I want my daughter protected. I was lucky that mine was caught in time, too many are not that lucky.
Which is why I labeled it a hunch.
There is no scientific evidence that women who’ve had mono as a pre-teen are more likely to have fibromyalgia either. . . but in every support group I’ve been in for fibro many of us, if not the majority of us had mono when we were pre-teens.
But then again until recently medicine thought fibro pain was all in our heads too.
Having had a strong allergy to bee stings, I was fortunate enough to undergo weekly shots of bee venom for a year, biweekly shots for six months and another six monthly shots. It was certainly less painful when the doctor did it, in a single fluid, almost ballistic motion. The nurses would carefully insert the needle, slowly depress the plunger, and carefully withdraw it, which hurt more. You get used to it.
I’ve had a lot of tetanus shots, but I don’t remember any particular tenderness afterwards. That may be because I generally got them after stepping on a nail or a rake, and my foot’s pain was more memorable.
For a few years I was a frequent blood donor, and the needle they used to use hurt a bit. Around 2001 they switched to a retractable needle and that hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. The same year, though, in preparation for a trip to Brazil, I was vaccinated for hepatitis A and yellow fever, both administered with smaller retractable needles, and they were nearly painless.
*sigh*
Which is why I labeled it a hunch.
The is also no scientific evidence that women who have had mono while they were pre-teens are more likely to have fibromyalgia when they get older. But every fibro support group I’ve been in many, if not the majority of women in
the group had mono as a pre-teen.
Also for a long time there was no scientific evidence for the chronic pain those with fibro suffer. We were told it was all in our heads and sent to a shrink.
There is also no scientific evidence that says that full moons adversely effect people. But everyone who’s ever worked in a nursing home will tell you that the residents are restless and a little nuts during full moons.
I have a hunch, an opinion. I’m not stating it as fact or playing doctor. I just know from personal experience that science doesn’t connect all the dots as quickly as we would like.
The chicken pox virus is varicella-zoster. It is the same virus that causes Shingles. The virus stays in the body even after getting over chicken pox.
Singles is a painful rash that occurs most often in people over 50. When i was in my late teens and 20s and worked in nursing homes, many residents I took care of had it.
The chicken pox vaccine isn’t just to take care of what is now mostly a childhood annoyance disease but also to keep someone from possibly having shingles when they get older.
(I also have a comment in moderation)
hello . does this show up?
nothing I’me posting is showing up
I read an article that said the shot hurts an extra lot because it “contains virus particles.” Oh?? I thought all vaccines contained “virus particles. Because if not, how exactly do they work?? The Media can be stupefyingly stupid at times.
On the general subject of shots hurting, I think a lot of it does depend on the tech administering the shot. One of my babies was screaming with pain after her first installment of DPT and had a huge bruise besides, and the other two (different guy on the other end of the needle) went in like butter, with hardly a squeak from the kid.
I haven’t had the HPV shot, but I got to the gyn this month for my yearly, so I’ll talk to my nurse then. I guess I’ll find out if it’s painful.
I know the tetanus shot didn’t hurt too much, and my doc even said it was the most painful for him, so he always dreaded it. As for the flu shot, well, the shot itself didn’t hurt me, although I had a tiny drop of blood run down my arm. But it was quite sore for the next 2 days.
Still, the minor pain/inconveniece of the shot far outweighs the major pain/inconvenience/dowright terror that can accompany a disease.
Tetanus shots have been no problem for me. And I went through allergy shots as a child and have absolutely no fear of shots.
But– DAMN!– flu a pneumonia shots I got one year were fucking agony. AND I came down with flu a few days afterwards, one of my worse bouts. Of course, I was told I must have caught the flu before I got the shot. Maybe. Didn’t seem likely, but of course, an undertreated batch of vaccine should be unlikely,too.
The end result, however, is I will risk flu, at least until an H1N5 (is that right for the killer avian flu) vaccine comes out. Even though my asthma makes me higher risk than most people (in theory), my immune system copes with most viruses well. And I hated those shots; I couldn’t sleep the night after getting them, and one arm was red and swollen for an area almost as large as my hand.
Strangely, the nurses that looked like they were throwing a dart in my butt instead of a hypodermic caused the least amount of pain. The ones that babied me through it, hurt a lot worse. That’s been true of most of my injections, oddly. Anyone have any idea why?
I’m just wondering how much of this, if any, is psychosomatic - whatever that means in terms of pain.
I know I used to be needle-phobic after an incident in childhood where they required six goes to get a large-bore IV tube in. I was still phobic up to about 30 or so, when I started giving blood - and I learned to just ignore the pain.
I don’t recall ever having a bad reaction to immunisations, and I’ve had two as an adolescent and one set as an adult - before going to China.
People do, of course, and it’s fair to let them know so they don’t worry if it happens, but I’ve been a regular blood donor and had more pain from the needle at the blood bank than I’ve ever had from a shot.
When we got our rubella immunisations, it was one by one in the nurse’s office, because once in a while one girl would faint (one did, in my class) and the point was not to have one fainter setting everyone else off or panicking the others. Practical, but I think it should have been one-on-one anyway - children also deserve medical privacy.
I had the HPV vaccine almost as soon as it was released and I remember it hurting like hell. I think the first shot I got she hit a freaking nerve or something, and my whole arm went painfully numb. And the second one hurt pretty bad too, but the third not at all.
But it hurts less than cervical cancer and genital warts, I’m sure.
I’m always so puzzled by people opposing the HPV vaccine, it’s not the first STD people have been being vaccinated for. Hepatitis anyone? I’ve heard nary a peep!
“The end result, however, is I will risk flu, at least until an H1N5 (is that right for the killer avian flu) vaccine comes out. Even though my asthma makes me higher risk than most people (in theory), my immune system copes with most viruses well.”*
Even those with a strong enough immune system to handle the flu should consider getting the shot if they have much contact with those who are at risk i.e. children, the elderly & the infirm just to lessen the risk of passing it on to them.
* i don’t mean to single you out i think several other people said the same thing.
I am currently living in Australia, where they are giving the vaccine to all women under 27 - if they have had normal pap smears.
I did not find the shot painful, my Hep A and B’s were 100 times worse. In fact I was not told that it would be particularly painful, nor had I heard in the media that the shot was supposed to be especially painful.
But I suppose if you hype something up enough, you can create any kind of hysteria you want.
Unvaccinated children do not have lower rates of autism. Vaccinated children do not have higher rates of autism. Autistic children do not have higher vaccination rates. Your “hunch” that the MMR vaccine causes autism has been thoroughly investigated and no correlation between autism and vaccination for MMR has been found. However, people continue to have these “hunches,” refuse to have their children immunized and in many places we now face the danger of outbreaks of measles, mumps and rubella. These outbreaks kill. We argue over possible side effects that might effect a group of people so small that it can’t be measured. There would be no controversy over the thousands killed without these vaccines. Yours is not a harmless hunch. It is a dangerous superstition.
My first gardasil shot was three weeks ago- I didn’t think the shot itself hurt at all, although my arm was pretty sore for about 6 hours after, but that was the extent of it. I thought I would have to be tested for HPV before it, because I’ve been sexually active for about 8 years, but my doctor told me that even if it came up positive, this would still protect me from the other strains, so she went ahead and administered it the same day. I just made the cut-off though- I’ll get the third shot about three weeks before my 27th birthday.
an anonymous kate
I do not object to the vaccine, just what they use to preserve it - like mercury. Actually I object to mercury in fillings and we don’t use the “eco friendly” light bulbs either because I haven’t heard anyone address the problem of mercury switches.
The fact that ALL my children (and I have 4) have ALL their vaccinations and they are all update, and some have actually have more vaccinations than others for their globe trotting [one son has been vaccinated for rabies - I wish all my kids could get that vaccine] means that I actually believe in vaccines.
I just delayed the chicken pox vaccine - and since it is not a mandatory vaccine how can my hunch be dangerous?
Do know that vaccines are created for one immune response only. Just as the human condition varies, so do immune responses. In fact, there are over 150 various immune responses. Not everyone will have a “typical” response to a vaccine. Some will even get the disease they were vaccinated against, from the vaccine! Thus is the case with my daughter who was typically developing, but should have been contraindicated for the MMR and chicken pox vaccines. After receiving these vaccines she had a reaction including fever, seizures, and a bulls eye rash. Now she is severely autistic, and has pituitary damage.
INDIVIDUALS WITH PRIMARY IMMUNODEFICIENCY ARE CONTRAINDICATED FOR LIVE VIRUS VACCINES!!!! Learn the signs before you make the same mistake with your child!!!!!!
My daughter’s story is not unique, go to any autism support group and ask the parents how many visited the ER after their babies’ vaccination.
There have been no medical studies on the link between live virus vaccines and autism, only epidemiologic studies, the same science that had our nation convinced for a decade that cigarettes did not cause cancer. As a society, we need to demand accurate science, and justice for our children.
Btw, they Gardisil vaccine only protects against SOME strains of HPV. We still do not know how effective it is, or if the benefits outweigh the risks (which we also still do not know what they are because it is such a new vaccine).
Vaccines are great, and neccesary, for those with a properly responding immune system. EDUCATE BEFORE YOU VACCINATE!!!!!!!
i’d say the chicken pox vaccine is worthwhile. the older you get, the rougher enduring chicken pox is, and with more kids getting vaccinated, you might be setting your own kids up for a really unpleasant time if they ever pick up the virus. it’s not mandatory because it’s not deadly, at least not for young kids, but chicken pox as a teen or adult might be a different deal. people who catch it at a later age end up in hospital, often, plus there’s the risk of reyes syndrome if aspirin gets involved.
it doesn’t make sense to avoid the chicken pox vaccine for mercury-related reasons. you take in more mercury eating tuna on a regular basis.
clytemnestra - thimerisol (the mercury containing preservative you object to), has been phazed out of a lot of vaccines that used to contain it. My father has pretty much a full set of immunizations and he’s allergic (as in likely fatally allergic) to mercury.
May I note the difference between your hunch on thimerisol, which has been thoroughly investigated and nothing found, and your hunch about mono and fibromyalgia, which (as far as I’m aware) has not been studied extensively. There’s a big difference between believing something when the evidence is inconclusive or absent, and believing it in the face of opposing evidence.
I do not object to the vaccine, just what they use to preserve it - like mercury. Actually I object to mercury in fillings and we don’t use the “eco friendly” light bulbs either because I haven’t heard anyone address the problem of mercury switches.
Vaccines for children under age 6 have no mercury in them or only a trace amount (1 microgram or less).
Sorry, Cly, but you are acting out of superstition. I know it’s a superstition that gets promulgated by a lot of prominent people (Robert Kennedy Jr., I’m looking at you), but it is a superstition. Multiple studies have been done. The Netherlands has not had thimerosal in their vaccines for over a decade and their rate of autism has not budged an inch.
I’ve gotten a Depo shot every three months for three years, and I’ve gotten it in my upper right arm every time. What’s this “unbutton your pants” crap?
(Since we’re comparing pain, the shot itself is only a prick, but the muscle is sore for the next day or so.)
I had it, and it hurt for a few minutes and then itched for a day or two, but it wasn’t that bad. They asked for a recent pap..
so is gardasil worth it for the old and monogamous? i’m about to turn 26 and have been with the same partner for some years now, and i don’t expect insurance would cover it.
also, my comment re: chicken pox seems to have been eaten, but short version: clytemnestra, the vaccine really is worth it. it’s not mandatory because chicken pox isn’t particularly deadly, but a lot of kids are getting the shot, meaning that yours might not catch it now, but still easily could later. chicken pox as a teenager or adult sucks, and not infrequently puts people in the hospital. the complications can get real ugly. there’s no particularly good reason not to get them vaccinated.
Do know that vaccines are created for one immune response only. Just as the human condition varies, so do immune responses. In fact, there are over 150 various immune responses. Not everyone will have a “typical” response to a vaccine. Some will even get the disease they were vaccinated against, from the vaccine! Thus is the case with my daughter who was typically developing, but should have been contraindicated for the MMR and chicken pox vaccines. After receiving these vaccines she had a reaction including fever, seizures, and a bulls eye rash. Now she is severely autistic, and has pituitary damage.
INDIVIDUALS WITH PRIMARY IMMUNODEFICIENCY ARE CONTRAINDICATED FOR LIVE VIRUS VACCINES!!!! Learn the signs before you make the same mistake with your child!!!!!!
My daughter’s story is not unique, go to any autism support group and ask the parents how many visited the ER after their babies’ vaccination.
There have been no medical studies on the link between live virus vaccines and autism, only epidemiologic studies, the same science that had our nation convinced for a decade that cigarettes did not cause cancer. As a society, we need to demand accurate science, and justice for our children.
Btw, they Gardisil vaccine only protects against SOME strains of HPV. We still do not know how effective it is, or if the benefits outweigh the risks (which we also still do not know what they are because it is such a new vaccine).
Vaccines are great, and neccesary, for those with a properly responding immune system. EDUCATE BEFORE YOU VACCINATE!!!!!!!
RKMK: I had Depo over ten years ago and, depending on who administered the shot, it was either given in the arm or the ass (closer to the hip). Actually, there was less pain when it was done in the ass, so I preferred that.
On the thimerisol issue, there is also a lot of confusion equating ethyl and methyl mercury. Thimerisol is ethylmercury; the harmful organic mercury found in foods and pollutants is methylmercury. While the body initially absorbs both of these mercuries at similar rates, ethylmercury (thimerisol) is processed out of the body within about two weeks and does not accumulate in the brain like methylmercury. Given that there is a minimum of 4 weeks between vaccines, there is no way to accumulate enough ethylmercury in the brain to cause autism in a previously normal child. (Source: Comparison of blood and brain mercury levels in infant monkeys exposed to methylmercury or vaccines containing thimerosal. Burbacher TM, Shen DD, Liberato N, Grant KS, Cernichiari E, Clarkson T. Environmental Health Perspective 2005; ehponline.org.) In addition, most vaccines have been thimerisol free (with only trace amounts left after the preservation process that are biologically insignificant) for several years.
Now, this is not to say that maybe children with regressive autism have more trouble voiding mercury from their system than non-autistic children, which would suggest that they would fall into the category of children who either should not receive vaccines or should be on a delayed schedule so as not to allow their bodies to accumulate even the trace amounts of thimerisol. Right now, the science cannot find a causal link between thimerisol and autism.
On topic: The whole notion that the brief pain of three shots should warrant reconsideration of the HPV vaccine is ludicrous. Are we going to apply this idiotic standard to other procedures? Or just the ones that allow women not to be punished with an awful disease if they dare to have sex?
thanks so much, An Anonymous Kate!
I was hesitant to say anything, but for the last 11-12 years, or so- I’ve worked with children that have Autism, Rett, and Asperger Syndrome.
I get really tired of the whole vaccine blaming. It’s actually (pervasive developmental disorders) looking like a more genetic predisposition (as in, if you have on kid with autism or retts, then their two siblings also have it- true!)
We are speaking from 2 different reference points:
From the FDA’s own site:
Since my youngest child was born in 1995, and all the children who have autism/asbergers I have been in contact with are in this cohort - this is my frame of reference.
Yes, it does go on to state “no dangerous quantity of mercury is likely to be received from biologic products in a lifetime.”
It also states that :
These are two similar but different perservative agents.
And yes the possible link between mono and fibro hasn’t been studied as much . . . since they just recently decided it wasn’t all in ourheads.
While this story seems like sort of a “…and I care because?” piece, it was pretty spot-on with my Gardasil experience. I got my first injection in the series along with two other vaccinations, both of which were barely even noticeable in comparison. My Gardasil shot burned pretty badly, and my upper arm was inflamed and sore to the touch for a full day afterward.
And yes, it’s better than cancer. If they had to deliver it with a punch to the face, it would still be better than cancer.
Actually, don’t be too sure the fundies haven’t jumped on this. I had to do a little research on this story for my job and it turns out some have been compiling anecdotal evidence since this story first broke almost a year ago.
Whoops, formatting mistakes. Here goes again:
mnemosynewrote: “Hmm. Three deaths in a single year versus 3,850 deaths in a single year. Which seems like a better bargain?…Three deaths versus three thousand. You can cry about the three, we’ll rage about the three thousand.”
I’m upset about the 3,000 deaths due to cervical cancer as well. I wholeheartedly support prevention and early detection for all women, since it is an almost foolproof guarantee of cure. Nearly 100% of cervical cancer is curable if it is caught during it’s early stage.
A vaccine would be a valuable tool to fight cervical cancer, if it were one that actually works and is not possibly permanently disabling more women per year than the number of women who actually get cervical cancer. My point is that the more evidence that comes in, Gardasil looks less and less like it’s that vaccine.
an anonymous kate wrote: “This is an example of the common problem with all anti-vaccination people - they fail to take into account how horrible the diseases vaccinations prevent were.”
I’m an anti-dangerous vaccination person, not anti-vaccination–big difference.
I’ve gotten a Depo shot every three months for three years, and I’ve gotten it in my upper right arm every time. What’s this “unbutton your pants” crap?
“My prostate exam? Well, he made me drop my pants, and then he put his hand on my right shoulder. No, wait, he put his hand on my left shoulder. No, wait, come to think of it, he had a hand on *both* shoulders…”
Since my youngest child was born in 1995, and all the children who have autism/asbergers I have been in contact with are in this cohort - this is my frame of reference.
If the autism rate had gone down sharply — or even at all — since they took thimerosal out of vaccines, that would be a valid point. But it hasn’t. IIRC, it’s actually risen a bit. As I said above, the Netherlands took thimerosal out of their vaccines a decade ago with no reduction in the autism rate. The link been completely debunked through multiple studies in multiple countries except for a few conspiracy theorists who “know” that it’s true because they want it to be true.
I completely understand why parents want to believe it was the vaccines: it’s something outside of themselves that they could (theoretically) have prevented, so they can say, “Well, if my child hadn’t been vaccinated, s/he wouldn’t have been autistic.” It is, unfortunately, about as accurate as saying, “Well, if I hadn’t eaten so much sugar while I was pregnant, my child wouldn’t have been diabetic.”
I’m upset about the 3,000 deaths due to cervical cancer as well. I wholeheartedly support prevention and early detection for all women, since it is an almost foolproof guarantee of cure. Nearly 100% of cervical cancer is curable if it is caught during it’s early stage.
Yes, curable, as long as you don’t mind never having children. You do know that they remove the cervix and often the uterus, right? Not to mention chemotherapy and radiation, which will often also cause infertility. Testicular cancer is also curable if caught early, but I’m pretty sure most guys would rather prevent it than have it cured.
But, hey, I guess cervical cancer patients should be grateful to be even alive after getting a nasty disease on their lady-parts that they wouldn’t have gotten if they hadn’t been such big slutty sluts, right?
I’m an anti-dangerous vaccination person, not anti-vaccination–big difference.
Grubby, take a look at how many deaths and complications are caused by the measles vaccine every year. I guarantee you that it’s more than three, or even 3,000. If we were supposed to stop administering every vaccine that ever caused a complication or a death or that required a booster shot, we’d have to stop administering them altogether.
Yes, Gardasil is not completely risk-free. No vaccine is. It is, unfortunately, the trade-off for having vaccines: thousands dead per year versus tens dead per year.
I get really tired of the whole vaccine blaming.
Same here, as in “wanting to punch people in the face when they say vaccines are TEH EVIL”. And I trust Big Pharma about as far as I could throw Mike Huckabee with Dick Cheney tied around his neck.. AND I have a child with Asperger’s. She didn’t get it from a fucking shot.
I understand that another company (GlaxoSmithKline?) is coming out with a competitor to Gardasil. We’re holding off for the moment, because these vaccines are pretty new. But I’m not going to stake my daughter’s health on her religiously getting Pap smears, and the diligence of the lab workers reading them. If you want to roll those dice with your daughter so she doesn’t OMG think about sex!!!! or because shots, are, like, not cool with Mother Earth, that’s your business.
mnemosyne wrote: Yes, curable, as long as you don’t mind never having children. You do know that they remove the cervix and often the uterus, right? Not to mention chemotherapy and radiation, which will often also cause infertility.
Sorry, mnemosyne, but you’re misinformed about what the treatments are for early stage cervical cancer. Removal of the cervix and hysterectomy are extremely rare, and most women do not need chemo or radiation. According to the Mayo Clinic, treatments for early stage cervcal cancer are usually limited non-invasive surgical removal (laser, cryo or otherwise) of the pre-cancerous cells, with a nearly 100% cure rate.
mnemosyne wrote: But, hey, I guess cervical cancer patients should be grateful to be even alive after getting a nasty disease on their lady-parts that they wouldn’t have gotten if they hadn’t been such big slutty sluts, right?
This sounds totally irrational–when did I imply any blame or call women who get cervical cancer sluts? In fact, it’s the opposite of what I believe.
What I’ve actually been saying is that early detection is THE best way to prevent cervical cancer and the entirely avoidable, preventable ensuing deaths from it.
I’ve also been saying that Gardasil causes permanent, serious injury (as in paralysis and permanent nerve damage) in what is very possibly three times more women per year than women who are diagnosed with cervical cancer.
You’re also presenting a false choice–between 11 deaths reported to the FDA from Gardasil that we know of so far and thousands of deaths from cervical cancer. Gardasil has never been proven to prevent even one case of cervical cancer, and it’s not the only HPV vaccine that will ever be developed. It’s not a panacea, and asking for a safe, proven effective vaccine for HPV is not unreasonable.
Nor is asking for a safe vaccine against measles, or any other disease. The fact that most people seem to accept high complication rates from vaccines has nothing to do with the fact that vaccines are inherently neccessarily dangerous. The could be made safer if we demanded that they be.
You’re also presenting a false choice
I rather got the impression that “we don’t need Gardasil, we need early detection” is the false choice being presented.
Demanding vaccines be made safer is hardly the same as refusing to vaccinate, or insisting that we just need to reach preventive-medicine Utopia and we won’t need them.
Since my youngest child was born in 1995, and all the children who have autism/asbergers I have been in contact with are in this cohort - this is my frame of reference.
My brother is 44. My brother has Asberger’s. He had several other diagnoses going through school - likely misdiagnoses. My grandmother was, in retrospect, flamingly asbergian!
It is believed that rates of Asbergers are up, but not as up as much as they would be if we didn’t have a preexisting epidemic of “oddballs” “screwballs” “people who must have soemthing really wrong with them” and “hyperactive” people.
As for Thimerosol, it is simply easier and cheaper for the drug companies to keep it in. Do I think it causes autism? Evidence points to “no”. Do I think it should be in vaccines? HELL NO! Mercury is toxic to kids. End.
Grubby, you are laboring under the questionable assumption that women - particularly young women - have access to routine care in this country. Without that routine care, there is no early detection.
Add racial and economic disparity and stir.
The could be made safer if we demanded that they be.
um. how, exactly?
on balance, a couple jabs in the arm are still going to be much more pleasant than treatment of cancer, no matter how early that cancer is caught. in a country with a sane healthcare system, we could maybe hope for most cervical cancers to be caught early and treated. we don’t have one of those, though, which is why more health problems aren’t caught early enough. kids can get the vaccine while still covered under parents’ insurance or state health programs. as adults, some are lucky enough to live in areas where PP and the like provide low-cost gyn exams to the uninsured, but not all do, and that’s only a way to afford testing and diagnosis of cancer — not treatment.
Mythago wrote: “I rather got the impression that ‘we don’t need Gardasil, we need early detection’ is the false choice being presented. Demanding vaccines be made safer is hardly the same as refusing to vaccinate, or insisting that we just need to reach preventive-medicine Utopia and we won’t need them. “
Um, here’s what I actually said:
I’m upset about the 3,000 deaths due to cervical cancer as well. I wholeheartedly support prevention and early detection for all women, since it is an almost foolproof guarantee of cure. Nearly 100% of cervical cancer is curable if it is caught during it’s early stage.
A vaccine would be a valuable tool to fight cervical cancer, if it were one that actually works and is not possibly permanently disabling more women per year than the number of women who actually get cervical cancer. My point is that the more evidence that comes in, Gardasil looks less and less like it’s that vaccine.
Ms. Kate wrote: “Grubby, you are laboring under the questionable assumption that women - particularly young women - have access to routine care in this country. Without that routine care, there is no early detection.”
I’m not laboring under that assumption at all, I understand how terrible health care is in the U.S. But getting vaccinated with Gardasil actually requires more access to healthcare than regular pap smears do.
Gardasil costs $300-$500 (every five years) while yearly well-woman exams (which include pap smears for detecting cervical cancer) tend to be cheaper (around $50) or free in many places.
kidlacan wrote: “‘They could be made safer if we demanded that they be.’ um. how, exactly?”
To start with, not accepting that there are neccessary serious complications from vaccines. If the cure is worse than the disease, how can it be called a cure?
kidlacan wrote: “in a country with a sane healthcare system, we could maybe hope for most cervical cancers to be caught early and treated.
I agree that we have an insane healthcare system. But under the one we have now, I think women can more easily afford $0-$50 or so for a yearly pap smear than $300-500 for Gardasil every five years.
grubby: the pap smear is not a preventative tool. it’s a diagnostic tool. even if a woman is able to shell out for a yearly pap, what’s she supposed to do if it comes back with findings of abnormal cells? the state-of-the-art early treatment techniques you mention aren’t going to be something she can afford. by the time she is able to scrape together the necessary funds, the early-treatment techniques might not be enough.
vaccines will never be risk-free. no medical intervention ever is. of course only safe vaccines should be used, and of course we should work to make them safer. the benefits must outweigh the risks. but vaccines work by triggering an immune response. there’s always going to be a chance that something will go wrong. there will always be a risk of complications, up to and including death, from any vaccine. hell, OTC medications carry that risk, even. it’s always there.
so far, from the data available, i still think the vaccine is likely worth the risks. are more people dead or disabled from gardasil than from MMR? how does it compare to other vaccines?
(and, again, kids can get the gardasil series for less than the $300-500 you’re citing, provided it’s covered by insurance or by the state. where that option’s available, it’s not a bad one to take.)
Kidlacan,
Actually, Medicade covers cervical cancer treatment (Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act of 2000), and many of the early detection treatments aren’t state-of-the-art, just regular biopsies with a scalpel or freezing the cells off with argon gas or liquid nitrogen which most doctors use to remove things like warts (cryosurgery).
even “regular biopsies” are likely to top $1000. (hell, a trip to the ER for a simple injury can cost that.) for someone not quite poor enough for medicaid, that might be too much. i’ve been uninsured, many of my friends have been/are uninsured, and while some doctors are understanding and will work to figure out methods of payment, not all will, and finding one who will, and who has the time to treat you, is not easy. after the surgery there are sure to be follow-up visits and tests, all of which will cost. there’s time off work to consider, too, plus the stress of, you know, being diagnosed with a disease that could kill you. if the vaccine is effective, isn’t avoiding all that a better course?
Oh for pete’s sake. The whole discussion (not this thread but the idea that this is “news) is ridiculous. My brother and I used to get allergy shots every other week when we were children. They were very painful and for days afterwards we could torture each other by punching the other person at the injection site. We survived the ordeal just fine.
You can’t tell me that the Gardasil injection is more painful than a body piercing or a tattoo. How many young women choose to do those things for “fun”?
A painful shot and a maybe a couple of days of soreness vs cancer? That’s a no brainer.
“so is gardasil worth it for the old and monogamous? i’m about to turn 26 and have been with the same partner for some years now, and i don’t expect insurance would cover it.”
I’m in roughly the same boat, except that my insurance covered it. My rationale was that it looks like the younger you are, the better coverage you can expect from it, and it’s hard to say for sure that you’ll never want/need it. If your partner cheats, if you cheat, if the relationship ends, etc., you may find yourself wanting the extra protection from a common STD. You may want to call your insurance company and check, since the full series takes about 9 months to administer.
Mythago, before the regression, my daughter would have been probably gone on to be diagnosed as Asperger’s. There is nothing to blame Asperger’s on, as it is genetic. Besides, Asperger’s is only as disabling as you allow it to be. In many ways, it’s pretty cool.
While we are talking genetics, it seems that a good number of these kids on the spectrum have some sort of immune dysfunction. In fact, the MET gene is pretty common among those on the spectrum, and it is responsible for immune function.
You see, my daughter has “classic” autism, at one time- a complete lack of communication, eye contact, smile. For moths, she was empty, blank. That is what many of us are “blaming” the vaccine on. I would thank my lucky stars and throw a party if tomorrow they told me my daughter has asperger’s. That won’t happen. My daughter at 4, is just now telling me when she wants a drink, pizza, cake. (her 2 new favorite things). Soon we may try potty training, when she is no longer afraid of the toilet. If my daughter were asked what her name is, she would not be able to tell you. But I do have hope, as she has progressed further than any doctor has expected.
Before the reaction to live virus vaccines, she was a vibrant, attentive, happy child. The week after the reaction, she stopped looking at us, seemed deaf, spun in circles, and began grinding her teeth.
3 months later, (I hadn’t even looked online about autism, yet asked the doctor, which he agreed she may be) she had the DTAP, and within 2 days began screaming, hitting herself in the chest and having awful facial tics. As a side note, the package insert to the DTaP says that it is contraindicated for children with neurological disorders.
It was seeing my daughter in that state that caused me to type autism into google. I then learned of the vaccines, and the irreversable horror that I just witnessed with my beautiful 20 month old daughter.
It sucks that doctors tell me, “No, she should have not had the mmr or varivax”, “Yes, she had a reaction”, “She has regressive autism”, “She has an abnormal immune system”, “She has pituitary damage” “Of course there is absolutely no connection between any of it, stop reading about it online”.
You know, in 2000 we switched from the OPV- Oral Polio vaccine, which was a live virus vaccine to the IPV- Inactivated polio vaccine. Why? Because children with immunodeficiency developed POLIO from the vaccine. (A little bit of info I learned online)
Vaccines CAN become safer than they are today, but only if we are not so complacent with our current vaccination program. That includes demanding accurate safety trials, and effective post market surveillance of ALL vaccines, including Gardasil. With what I have learned, my family now has a new policy regarding vaccines and medications- Only if they have been on the market for a minimum of 2 yrs (when most are recalled).
What I’ve actually been saying is that early detection is THE best way to prevent cervical cancer and the entirely avoidable, preventable ensuing deaths from it.
You seem to be confused about what “prevention” is. If you are experiencing changes in your cervical cells, you have not “prevented” cancer. You have caught it in an early enough stage that you can treat it. If they do an ultrasound on my breast and find a pea-sized lump, they didn’t “prevent” me from getting breast cancer. They only stopped it from reaching a more dangerous stage.
If Gardasil works, they won’t have to check for the early stages of cancer anymore, because you will never contract the virus that causes those cervical changes.
Early detection =/= prevention. Please stop pretending that early detection and prevention are the same thing.
A vaccine would be a valuable tool to fight cervical cancer, if it were one that actually works and is not possibly permanently disabling more women per year than the number of women who actually get cervical cancer.
You may not have noticed, but the 3,000 figure I mentioned above was deaths from cervical cancer. The number of women who are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year is more like 11,000. Please present your reliable, peer-reviewed statistics showing that more than 11,000 girls (or even more than 3,000) have experienced serious side effects from Gardasil. Fainting and crying do not count as serious side effects.
Is Gardasil perfect? Of course not — no first-generation vaccine is. Better versions will be developed. Should we allow thousands, if not millions, of women to be infected with a potentially cancer-causing virus while we wait for the perfect vaccine with no side effects that never needs a booster shot and gives you a fluffy kitten to take home, too?
Kidlacan, there is no income requirement in the Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act of 2000, so it apparently covers those that are “not poor enough”. You must fall under other conditions: be uninsured and not otherwise eligable for Medicade, under 65, and have been screened by a provider deemed acceptable in your particular state (each state has its own requirements on this I guess).
All the surgeries for pre-cancerous cells are non-invasive, outpatient deals as I understand it.
However, if a vaccine that prevented HPV that was safe and affordable and effective were available, that vaccine might be a better choice. However, given the evidence I’ve seen, costs and benefits weighed out–Gardasil doesn’t appear to be that vaccine.
Before the reaction to live virus vaccines, she was a vibrant, attentive, happy child. The week after the reaction, she stopped looking at us, seemed deaf, spun in circles, and began grinding her teeth.
Monica, that’s something I’ve heard before (from autistic people themselves, no less), and that specifically is something that I don’t think has been sufficiently studied. It makes perfect sense (and should be studied), but way more time and money has been poured into the “contamination” theory with thimerosal, time and money that could be spent more productively by looking at whether the actual vaccines negatively impact people with neurological deficits, not something “other” that’s within the vaccine.
However, if a vaccine that prevented HPV that was safe and affordable and effective were available, that vaccine might be a better choice. However, given the evidence I’ve seen, costs and benefits weighed out–Gardasil doesn’t appear to be that vaccine.
You may want to try getting evidence from places other than Judicial Watch. Maybe try the CDC or the WHO instead of a bunch of conservative conspiracy theorists.
mnemosyne, in the case of cervical cancer early detection is prevention–early detection of pre-cancerous cells and their removal is to prevent cervical cancer from developing.
Please present your reliable, peer-reviewed statistics showing that more than 11,000 girls (or even more than 3,000) have experienced serious side effects from Gardasil. Fainting and crying do not count as serious side effects.
I did, in my first post. Peer-reviewed, published (in JAMA) estimates that only 1% of serious vaccine complications are reported to the FDA. Gardasil has had 371 serious vaccine complications reported to the FDA between June 2006 and May 2007 and 347 reported in the subsequent 4 months. That’s an estimated 37,000 serious adverse reactions in the first year and 34,700 in the subsequent months.
Serious adverse reactions usually included permanent disability, most often some kind of permanent nerve damage or paralysis, not fainting and crying.
Should we allow thousands, if not millions, of women to be infected with a potentially cancer-causing virus while we wait for the perfect vaccine with no side effects that never needs a booster shot and gives you a fluffy kitten to take home, too?
Who is allowing this and who is waiting? If we contined the research into a better vaccine and took the money we’re spending on Gardasil right now and used it to encourage/pay for all women to get regular pap smears, we’d be preventing a hell of a lot more cervical cancer than Gardasil currently is, especially since it apparently gives such a false sense of security:
If Gardasil works, they won’t have to check for the early stages of cancer anymore, because you will never contract the virus that causes those cervical changes.
This is magical thinking. HPV is a huge risk factor in cervical cancer, but it is still only one among many possible ones. Gardasil only promises to protect against certain strains of HPV as it is.
Even if–magically–all strains of HPV were wiped out tomorrow, lots of women would still get cervical cancer, and we would still need pap smears.
You may want to try getting evidence from places other than Judicial Watch. Maybe try the CDC or the WHO instead of a bunch of conservative conspiracy theorists.
Sorry, but the evidence I presented is from the FDA and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Judicial Watch just had articles citing the FDA evidence.
Just to let everyone who keeps quoting the CDC and thinks the book is closed on vaccines and autism- the only studies to disprove it have been epidemiologic. That is a big word for the study of numbers. They have used numbers, never done any actual physical research on the matter.
The Netherlands Study- in that, groups of children included at one age, were left out of the count at another age. Why?
Numbers can be manipulated, and so can our government and health care system. It hapenned back in the 50’s, when the “father of epidemiology” Ronald Fisher had the nation convinced that cigarettes did NOT cause cancer. We were fooled for over a decade, because we beleived his epidemiology.
Epidemiology, the studies of numbers, that is all the CDC has got.
http://www.jpands.org/vol9no2/bradstreet.pdf
“All the surgeries for pre-cancerous cells are non-invasive, outpatient deals as I understand it.”
It may be outpatient, but seriously, having even something as minor as cryosurgery to remove a mild dysplasia performed in one’s vagina isn’t exactly what you think of when you hear the term “non-invasive.”
I’d much rather have the shot, even if it does need periodic boosters (the idea that you’d need the whole series every five years isn’t the most plausible one I’ve ever heard), than have to go through a dysplasia removal again. When all was said and done, at Planned Parenthood’s broke-ass-student pricing, it still cost somewhere between $250 and $300, not counting the pap that detected the abnormality, and left me dealing with the surgery’s after effects for over four weeks. And my dysplasia was not HPV-related, so it was a (hopefully) one-time thing, rather than the beginning of a life-long game of whack-a-mole, only you know, on my cervix. With a knife or liquid nitrogen.
The vaccine, even if naysayers are right and it only protects recipients for five years, prevents infection by the two types of HPV responsible for the lion’s share of cervical neoplasms and two types responsible for an assload of standard-issue sexually transmitted warts for those five years. You’re usually not running the same risks of exposure at every point in your life. If those five years coincide with a person’s most at-risk years, it could theoretically prevent infection, period, for about the same price as the removal of a pre-cancerous spot and with a tenth of the trauma.
And on the topic of Gardasil, Grubby is right, it is estimated that only 1% of reactions are reported.
You know who has screamed the most about this vaccine? The doctors who write to the NEJM, or New England Journal of Medicine, anyone can subscribe.
Gardasil would be great, just as you have said mnemosyne- “If Gardasil works,”. The truth is, we do not KNOW if it works. We think it MAY work, against SOME strains of HPV. But the truth is, we really do not know. We DO know that it can, and has injured quite a few.
Honestly, go to the NEJM site, and search past issues pertaining to Gardasil, it has been a hot topic. Some fear it stands to hurt more than it helps.
See, the FDA has the responsibility to ensure that a vaccine, or medication’s benefits outweigh the risk.
Sometimes we find after a drug has been on the market, that the risks outweigh the benefits, so a drug or vaccine is either discontinued, or recalled.
Remember the bare belly commercial Zelnorm? Record sales it’s 1st yr on market, yet the FDA pulled it, as the risks were greater than the benefits. Even worse yet, remember Vioxx?
Do not rely on the ads you see while watching TV to make decisions on your health care.
You will also see in past issues on NEJM that doctors and our government are both furious that pharmacuetical companies will not comply, and allow for 2 yrs post market surveillance on any new drug or vaccine before advertising it. Our government wants to protect us, and have a smaller sample size in those first two yrs to moniter for adverse reactions, thus ensuring a smaller number of adverse reactions. Seems smart, right? Pharma companies have said that is against their “freedom of speech”, and will continue to advertise.
Will you be one more?
Peer-reviewed, published (in JAMA) estimates that only 1% of serious vaccine complications are reported to the FDA.
And yet the FDA specifically states on their website for reporting adverse effects:
You honestly believe that 37,000 girls have been permanently paralyzed by the vaccine, but the AP ignored that huge story in favor of a few reports of fainting? Really?
Not to mention this from Medical News Today:
Now, I admit that I’m not very good at math, but if there have been, as you contend, 37,000 unreported problems with the vaccine, an 8 percent rate of neurological symptoms that includes, but is not limited to, cases of facial paralysis and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, means that 2,960 girls may have been affected by those symptoms. Which is, I need not point out, still less than the 3,000 women who die of cervical cancer each year in the United States alone. It’s more like 240,000 worldwide.
Agh. My links are in moderation. I hate that.
Short version until they turn up: of the adverse reactions reported to Gardasil, eight percent involve some form of paralysis, up to and including Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Assuming that Grubby’s theory that there have actually been 37,000 unreported adverse reactions is correct, we’re talking about 3,000 cases of the most serious side effects. The vast majority of side effects reported have been the ones detailed in this article: arm pain and fainting.
Hmmm. Three thousand serious side effects, or 3,000 deaths. That’s a hard choice, isn’t it?
Just to let everyone who keeps quoting the CDC and thinks the book is closed on vaccines and autism- the only studies to disprove it have been epidemiologic. That is a big word for the study of numbers. They have used numbers, never done any actual physical research on the matter.
With due respect to the problems your kid has (and I have a second cousin who is profoundly autistic), you should probably consider the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy.
While further research probably couldn’t hurt, if the numbers don’t support a causal link, then you have a problem. Intuition isn’t enough.
i’m finding it really hard to believe, this idea that there are 80,000 people out there severely disabled by gardasil, and we just don’t know it. you really can’t crunch your numbers in that haphazard fashion and expect them to come out right. gardasil, if anything, is under more scrutiny than most vaccines — most vaccines have been around for decades *and* they don’t have the stupid slut-shaming attached. this thread started as a discussion about a news article devoted to the mildest possible reaction to a gardasil shot — that injections, you know, hurt sometimes, which is a totally good reason not to vaccinate girls. that’s the level of fearmongering we’re dealing with. you really think there wouldn’t be stories about neurological damage and death related to gardasil, however tangentally?
mostly, ‘we’ are not paying for gardasil. insurance companies (or individuals) are paying for gardasil. some states are paying for it, too, i think, but the bulk of it is not coming out of public health budgets. better public health funding for the uninsured and underinsured would be absolutely awesome, but that really is a separate issue. not vaccinating now is not going to translate somehow into better funding for pap smears. research is continuing, but it makes no sense for parents and young women to send the money they would have spent on a course of gardasil to a bunch of R&D departments.
i don’t think it gives a false sense of security. as far as i know, the pap smear recommendations haven’t been changed for girls and women who have had the vaccine. it just makes pap smears more likely to be uneventful. that’s a good thing!
you really are conflating prevention and detection here, still. abnormal cells/precancerous cells are good to catch before they become tumors, but finding them still means you’ve found very early stage cervical cancer. by removing them, you’re not “preventing” cervical cancer, you’re finding and removing it. even if it’s just at the stage of a few cells.
Phoenician, with regards to “post hoc ergo propter hoc”, that theory would be great if the labs and science did not back up the link with my daughter.
To say that she had a documented reaction to a vaccine she should not have had, has pituitary damage as a result, and also regressed into severe autism the week of the reaction, yet the autism is just a giant coincidence, is incredulous.
There is a reason we vaccinate against chicken pox and measles. Not because they are itchy, but because they can cause neurological damage, ranging from simply encephalitis to Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. This is a good reason for healthy children to be vaccinated against the Measles.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/subacute_panencephalitis/subacute_panencephalitis.htm
I know it is hard to believe that horrors like this can happen right within our own country, but they can, and they do, to innocent beautiful children like mine every day.
Phoenician, with regards to “post hoc ergo propter hoc”, that theory would be great if the labs and science did not back up the link with my daughter.
Cite?
(Well, obviously not private medical records, but can you give us a link to these findings?)
Phoenician is not in the US.
“And on the topic of Gardasil, Grubby is right, it is estimated that only 1% of reactions are reported.”
Grubby’s cite was from 1993-exactly super-recent. While I’ll go ahead and assume that it’s applicable to your average vaccine, I doubt it’s applicable to this brand-new-to-the-market, controversial, optional, zomg-ur-daughter’ll-become-a-whore vaccine. Vaccines that have been accepted as standard, necessary parts of not dying of something preventable are probably going to see a lot fewer people reporting than are out there suffering for a whole slew of psychological and medical reasons.
Vaccines that just hit the market, have made headlines as the devil’s work, and had a metric tonne of political hay made over whether or not they should be mandatory/public-funded/offered to school children? You’re pretty much guaranteed to have recipients and doctors reporting much, much more faithfully.
Monica part of the problem with studying any link between MMR and autism is that the period when parents generally begin to notice something is “off” coincides with the age range during which toddlers receive the MMR (anywhere from 12-18 months) so Phoenician is right to invoke the post hoc fallacy here. I am not suggesting that in your daughter’s case the vaccines were not responsible for worsening her autism and other medical problems, just that they didn’t CAUSE her autism.
As a parent, sometimes we spend so much time around our kids that we fail to notice markers that others with more casual acquaintance with our children immediately notice. This is one reason that pediatricians have become so much more proactive during well-visits and asking about specific developmental milestones that could indicate autism. So many parents say “my child was totally normal and then one day boom! they had autism” but when asked about specific traits shared among autistic children they will admit that signs started to appear long before the vaccine that “caused” their child’s autism. As someone mentioned above, studies are pointing to a genetic factor with autism, which may , given more study, contraindicate vaccination.
I agree that parents need to be careful to ensure that vaccines are best for their child, based on that child’s unique medical history, and that we should demand that pharma companies keep developing safer vaccines, particularly if the severe side effects are unacceptably high. But I have yet to meet an anti-vaxer willing to accept ANY level of risk and most pretend that the vaccines are worse than the diseases they prevent. Sadly, some children will experience severe reactions to vaccines no matter how safe they are and honestly, it is the price we pay for the greater good (and sucks if it’s your kid).
I would just like to point out to commenters that are grasping at all sorts of straws as to reasons why we should not have Gardasil; yet wait for another vaccine to come out, that, um…
that includes performing trials on women. if one is really so concerned as to possible side-effects of a vaccine, then does it not make sense that we expose people to those nasty side-effects, when going through clinical trials?
when KU was doing clinical trials of Gardasil on sexually-active women (which is why I did not qualify at the time- wish I had, as I am looking forward to that “non-invasive” colposcopy), uh, they were testing the vaccine’s effects on women.
what I’m trying to say here, is:
if you’re so afraid of the potential side effects of Gardasil, how do you suppose we’re going to/or are test(ing) for side-effects of the upcoming vaccine?
I’m at the point that I really think that when one acts more up in arms about possible side-effects of a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, than the numbers of deaths each year from cervical cancer itself, that really we’re just being slut-shamers.
I’m saying I consider your “concerns” slightly invalid, in the face of hard numbers.
Oh, and if we are really slut-shaming; do I need to point out that I’ve only had two partners that I have not everytime used a condom with. Oh, and that I haven’t had that many partners? only pointing this out, so maybe we can move beyond the obvious slut-shaming; because, really it’s none of your business, but might help put things in perspective for you.
oh, and yes, let’s reiterate: yearly testing does not prevent abnormal cell growth. Gardasil just might. Think about it.
I am a little late coming into this thread, but I just wanted to add that I got my last shot of Gardasil on Friday. My left arm is still a little sore, actually, but it’s nothing serious. My only regret is that Gardasil came out a month after I decided to become sexually active, so I am not as protected against HPV as I could have been. I asked the nurse if I was still somewhat protected from HPV, and she said yes, but that, “it is designed for girls who are still virgins.” On that note, I still do not understand why certain right wingers do not believe that it would be a good idea for girls around 12 years old to get vaccinated. If I have a daughter someday, I will definitely have her get the HPV vaccine before she is old enough to have sex, because that’s what it’s designed for!
To say that she had a documented reaction to a vaccine she should not have had, has pituitary damage as a result, and also regressed into severe autism the week of the reaction, yet the autism is just a giant coincidence, is incredulous.
Okay, I’m a little confused. First you said that your daughter was already on the autism spectrum, though your theory is that it would have stayed more towards Asperger’s without the vaccine. Now you seem to be saying that the vaccine caused autism to appear from out of the blue.
There’s a difference between “the vaccine made my child’s pre-existing condition worse” and “the vaccine caused my child’s condition.” You’ve posted contradictory information — may I ask which you’re saying it is?
OMG. But the vaccine hurts!
Geez. So, so, sick of that on this thread. The populations I work with? I am expected to get Hep. vaccines, have to be up-to-date on my tetanus, repeat the MMR… the list goes on and on. I think I’ve had every single vaccination on here that someone has had the audacity to kvetch about the pain of the vaccine.
Mermade: many right-wingers believe that the vaccine think that it will give girls a reason to become wanton wee sluts. because, you know: even if she protects her fucking precious “diamond” until her wedding night, uh, hubby can still infect her with HPV. especially with all of the double standards for their menz and womenz.
oh, yeah: I’m also one of those that immediately realized that inoculating one-half of the problem is ridiculous. but, then there’s that whole onus on the female to keep her legs shut (in a heterosexual pairing, that is).
Oh, and mnem- I noticed that, as well. But, then, I couldn’t recall, initially (upthread), why in the hell I didn’t participate in KU’s clinical trials (there was even monetary compensation, and free health care provided!).
But, yeah… I noticed that discrepancy, as well.
My Gardasil shot didn’t hurt any more than I expected it to (now, my meningitis shot? That shit hurt for days. I couldn’t even lift my arm. Maybe I should have just gone ahead and risked a deadly brain infection). The second one hurt more than the first, but I think that’s because the PA who administered the first was a bit more skilled at it.
The one side effect that I did notice is that I became an absolute whore afterward. As soon as I left the clinic, I started thinking, “Wow, this newfound feeling of safety leaves me wanting to have sex with every single person I encounter. Like that guy. And that guy over there. And those two guys and that girl.” And the cumulative effect has been even worse. I’m having so much anonymous, unprotected sex these days that I can barely get any work done, and I don’t even go in for the third shot until February.
mnemosyne wrote: Now, I admit that I’m not very good at math, but if there have been, as you contend, 37,000 unreported problems with the vaccine, an 8 percent rate of neurological symptoms that includes, but is not limited to, cases of facial paralysis and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, means that 2,960 girls may have been affected by those symptoms. Which is, I need not point out, still less than the 3,000 women who die of cervical cancer each year in the United States alone. It’s more like 240,000 worldwide.
Well, you’re right about one thing: your math is wrong. The 371 serious adverse reactions I cited in the first year is out of over 1600 adverse reactions reported during the same period to the FDA. 371 is 22% of 1600–the 14% blackouts (including ones with seizures) plus the 8% versions of permanent paralysis you cited. If we just choose to include the 8% of over 1600, that’s 135 reports to the FDA, which is projected to be 13,500 estimated cases of permanent paralysis. I was including seizures as indications of permanent neurological damage as well, and how I arrived at “Serious adverse reactions usually included permanent disability, most often some kind of permanent nerve damage or paralysis, not fainting and crying.”
mnemosyne wrote: Hmmm. Three thousand serious side effects, or 3,000 deaths. That’s a hard choice, isn’t it?
No, because again–that’s not the choice. Deaths by cervical cancer and HPV are not going to be eliminated by Gardasil, now or ever. The only thing that has reduced the death rate over the last few decades and will hopefully continue to is more women getting regular pap smears.
Theoretically, Gardasil could reduce the HPV incidence and death rate, but as is obvious in this thread, people are instead getting the message that they don’t need pap smears and can avoid cervical cancer altogether, because Gardasil is some kind of miracle cure. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Because of that “I don’t need a pap smear” attitude, Gardasil may end us up with a higher incidence of cervical cancer, since most cases of cervical cancer now are found in women who don’t get regular pap smears.
preying mantis wrote: If those five years coincide with a person’s most at-risk years, it could theoretically prevent infection, period, for about the same price as the removal of a pre-cancerous spot and with a tenth of the trauma.
It’s actually more statistically probable that you get the shot and have some sort of permanent neurological damage than to actually be diagnosed with cervical cancer and have to go through any kind of treatment for it, so I’m not sure how you arrived at “a tenth of the trauma.”
“so I’m not sure how you arrived at “a tenth of the trauma.””
By comparing a medically normal series of shots to the medically normal removal of a mild dysplasia from the cervix followed by a medically normal healing process.
I’d also like to remind you that, contrary to the assumptions you seem to be working off of, having abnormal cells removed from a body cavity is no more risk-free than any other minor surgery.
I’d also like to remind you that, contrary to the assumptions you seem to be working off of, having abnormal cells removed from a body cavity is no more risk-free than any other minor surgery.
When did I ever make the assumption that it’s risk-free?
It’s really tiresome the amount of assumptions that other people have been making in this thread about what I believe that are completely contrary to what I’ve actually said or believe.
Criticisizing Gardasil has nothing to do with believing women are sluts, or that all vaccines are bad, or that the issue is even somewhat realistically a matter of choosing Gardasil over getting cervical cancer and/or pre-cancer treatment and/or death. There are so many argumentative fallacies and so much self-justification going on here that it reads like a textbook case from the book Amanda reviewed a little while ago, “Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me.”
I don’t have a dog in this race, I haven’t gotten the shot, haven’t defended or criticized the shot before looking at the evidence, or made up my mind about it prior to looking at the evidence. I am a woman who cares about her own health and the health of others.
What I have done is try to look at the evidence objectively, and subsequently found Gardasil to be problematic in many ways. Just posting what I know to inform others. That’s it.
Good luck, everybody.
i recall standing in lines like cattle on a regular basis for experimental vaccines in the navy way back when, and yet the worst shots i got were when i was headed overseas and had to get both typhus and anthrax and god only knows what all on the same day. they alternated arms and the corpsman looked at me with a whince of regret and said, “sorry.” i was going to the aleutians, but the island was on the line with japan and india and vietnam…
i couldnt lift my arms without aches for two days. driving was a big deal and i ran a light temp for three days. you just suck it up and know it goes away.
my daughter’s getting the shot.
and i want her to have a sense of her own joy in her body as she matures into a woman, not fear of it or of sharing herself with another human being in a positive and giving way for both!
I got Gardasil, and until this article I had no idea the needle was “different” nor did i find it any more painful than any other vaccination. My arm hurt for a few days after, but less so than a flu shot. I think it’s worth it.
that’s 135 reports to the FDA, which is projected to be 13,500 estimated cases of permanent paralysis.
Only if you assume, despite the fact that Gardasil is under much greater scrutiny than every other vaccine, that the 1% figure actually holds for this vaccine too. Do you really think that 13,500 cases of permanent paralysis would go unmentioned with all the controversy over this vaccine? Seriously?
Heh.
My husband and I had to get rabies shots about two years ago - we woke up and there was a bat in our room, and the CDC says if you’ve been unconscious in a room and cannot say I WAS NOT BITTEN, well, better safe than sorry.
Said husband, who is nearly seven feet tall and built like a steel fridge, went down like a fainting goat at his ninth injection.
Rabies is a terrible, terrible series.
It’s better than dying.
I mean, come on.
Do you really think that 13,500 cases of permanent paralysis would go unmentioned with all the controversy over this vaccine? Seriously?
Yes, seriously. The vast majority of pediatricians and family doctors fear liability for vaccine injury*, and thus are less likely to report vaccine reactions, especially serious ones, to the FDA. Reporting vaccine reactions to the FDA is voluntary for doctors, not mandatory. Thus the 1% estimated reporting rate.
I would imagine the controversy would only increase this fear vs. lessen it.
* Source: Freed et al., Vaccine-Associated Liability Risk and Provider Immunization Practices,Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1998;152:285-289.
Okay, I need some math help here:
There were 92.8 million prescriptions written for Vioxx between 1999 and 2003.
The FDA estimates that Vioxx led to the deaths of 27,785 people.
What’s the injury rate?
Besides, Asperger’s is only as disabling as you allow it to be. In many ways, it’s pretty cool.
I’m trying to teach my daughter with Asperger’s not to swear, but I think I’d give her a pass on telling you to go fuck yourself with a blender. Which she would, since she has Asperger’s and doesn’t think it’s “pretty cool” or “only as disabling as you allow it to be”.
But I guess minimizing and blaming somebody for their disability gives you some kind of sick pleasure.
Yes, autism is much worse. I know: my little brother is full-blown, low-functioning, lives-in-a-care-facility autistic. (He didn’t get it from a fucking shot, either.) That doesn’t mean Asperger’s is the neurological equivalent of a stubbed toe.
Hey, I bet somebody whose kid is in a persistent vegetative state would be thrilled to have a child with mere autism. Does that mean autism is “pretty cool”?
See previous reference re: fucking yourself.
Ok friends, I know I’m a little late to the party, but I’ve got some (slightly pseudo-) scientific result for you here.
I just came back from the doctor and got a tetanus booster shot in one arm, and HPV shot #1 in the other.
Needles going in hurt the same amount — not much.
Stuff going into arms — didn’t feel it for tetanus, ached a little for HPV. Nurse said it was cause the HPV stuff is thick.
Immediately after — tetanus arm felt fine, HPV arm ached a little near injection site.
Hour later (now) — both ache just a little near injection site, no big deal. Tetanus arm aches a little more, but that may be because it’s my right arm, and I’m right handed. I kinda feel like I don’t want to pick up anything really heavy, but that’s really it.
In conclusion: nothing to fear, re: getting the shots themselves.
And here’s a day later update on HPV v. tetanus shots.
My HPV shot arm feels fine, and has felt fine since last night. I was able to sleep on that side last night.
My tetanus shot arm, however, still aches. Lifting my arm or picking things up — in other words, anything that flexes the muscle around the injection site — makes it hurt. It also hurts if my arm gets touched within a couple inches of the injection sight. I had to be careful last night not to roll over onto that side, and avoid cuddling with boyfriend, who sleeps on that side when in my bed.
Conclusion: I’d rather have an HPV shot than a tetanus shot.