Letter to the Editor

Cervical cancer awareness month

Monday, January 9, 2012

Dear Editor

January is cervical cancer awareness month. In the U.S. more than 12,000 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer and more than 4,000 women died from cervical cancer.

High-risk HPV -- human papillomavirus -- types are directly related to cervical cancer, yet many women are unaware of what HPV is or the relationship it has to cervical cancer. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted virus in the U.S. There are more than 100 types of HPV. About 20 million people in the U.S. are infected and about 6.2 million more get infected each year. Even if a woman has had the HPV/cervical cancer vaccine, she needs to continue to get her regular exam as recommended.

Although in the past 40 years, the number of cases of cervical cancer and number of deaths from cervical cancer have decreased significantly, the disease remains a serious health threat. Cervical cancer is preventable and curable if caught in time. Important strategies to reduce your risk are by getting annual exams as well as prevention of HPV with the vaccine.

Becky Brooks,

Clinic Nurse,

People's Family Health Service,

McCook, Nebraska

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  • I know if I raise objections to a vaccine there are certain people who will try to discredit me with various tactics, such as name calling, branding me a nut or such. I expect bigoted comments from these comments.

    There are several unspoken but implied assumptions about HPV vaccines and their ability to protect against cervical cancer: that the HPV vaccine is effective; that the HPV vaccine is safe; that the HPV vaccine is necessary; that there are no alternatives to the HPV vaccine.

    EFFECTIVE AGAINST OVARIAN CANCER ? UNPROVEN !!

    Merck, the manufacture of Gardasil has been forbidden by the FDA to market this vaccine as a anti cervical cancer vaccine. It is marketed as a vaccine for HPV. There are no clinical trials which would establish efficacy as a treatment for cervical cancer. Why ? Because a clinical trial would take about 50 years, as Girls inoculated with the vaccine would have to be tracked though about age 60, as cervical cancer does not show up early. Any claim that the HPV vaccine is a cervical cancer vaccine is based on ignorance, or gross speculation.

    This vaccine is only good for 70 percent of the known virus strains, and its dangerous to give it to anyone already exposed to a strain of HPV. There is no pre-testing of people given the vaccine to see if they are already exposed, this based on the assumption that the virus is only transmitted sexually. Because they do not test for HPV exposure, the vaccine is not available to older women.

    SAFETY

    In 2009, Dr. Diane Harper, lead researcher in HPV at University of Minnesota Gynecological Cancer Prevention Group went on record stating that the rate of serious adverse reactions to the HPV vaccines was greater than the rate of cervical cancer. These reactions include death ( so far over 60 reported ) and permanent sever disabilities ( over 300 reported ) ( numbers are for the U.S. ) In other words, there are more problems caused by the vaccine than cervical cancer. Treatment of cervical cancer, according to the CDC, has a success rate of about 75 percent. There is no known treatment for death caused by this vaccine.

    ADDITIONAL UNCERTAINTIES

    The affect of this vaccine on fertility is unknown, and likewise, it is unknown if this vaccine itself could cause cancer in humans.

    INFLATED CLAIMS OF CANCER RATE

    Proponents of HPV vaccinations like to cite the world wide rate of cervical cancer to scare people into accepting HPV vaccines. They fail to mention the rate for the U.S. where regular screening occurs is much lower. According to the CDC for the U.S. cervical cancer represents one percent of all cancers, about ten thousand per year, with a twenty five percent mortality rate.

    ALTERNATIVES

    Testing a potential partner for STD is an alternative not generally suggested. There is an assumption that HPV infections are inevitable.

    TRUSTING FDA, MERCK ?

    Since the approval process was accelerated for pharmaceuticals products ( drugs, appliances, vaccines ) as instituted in the Clinton administration, one quarter of all approved products have been recalled and banned. Why ? Because they either kill people or are ineffective. Take Merck's Viox for example. Viox was allowed to be on the market for five years, killing somewhere between thirty five thousand and one hundred thousand people via heart attack. To put this in perspective that is approximately three to five times the rate of death than the current rate of death for cervical cancer. Merck has great incentive to make a killing off Gardasil vaccine, as it has to pay for the wrongful deaths caused by its Viox drug. Now we are supposed to trust Merck and the government that the deaths associated with HPV vaccines are purely coincidental ? That's the same nonsense that they clung to for years with Viox, while people died. Does the Leopard change its Spots ? I don't think so. Death and disability are apparently part of the cost of doing business in the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry.

    CONCLUSION

    Just say no the the unproven, unsafe, and unnecessary HPV vaccines that are promoted to be cervical cancer cures.

    Taking an unproven cure from a disease that may be occur thirty

    five years later is unprecedented. Why risk death and disability of

    the youth ? This promotion of the HPV vaccine as a 'cure ' for

    cervical cancer assumes there will be no advancements in medicine

    in the next thirty five years, so go with this risky, unproven

    treatment we have today. This is pure nonsense.

    I think its ironic, that the mainstream medical industry holds the double blind, controlled clinical trial as the gold standard for proving efficacy, and would condemn any alternative that doesn't provide this scientific testing and a list of ingredients as snake oil or quack medicine, but does not hold the HPV vaccines to the same standard.

    -- Posted by wagonerjc on Tue, Jan 10, 2012, at 2:33 PM
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