HPV vaccine

HPV vaccine benefits – anti-vaxxers pick bad study, ignore positive data

I’ve written a billion (± 0.999 billion) times that one of the greatest of HPV vaccine benefits is cancer prevention. This really isn’t in question with cancer scientists, but as you know Dunning-Kruger anti-vaccine zealots think they know more than real scientists, and they look for any reason to bash the cancer-preventing vaccine.

And if you know anything about cancer, there are just a handful of ways to actually prevent any of the hundreds of different cancers. And the HPV vaccine is one of them.

Which leads us to this moment. Two recent studies have been published on HPV vaccine benefits – one supports the vast scientific consensus on HPV vaccine efficacy, the other is so poorly done, it tells us almost nothing about HPV vaccine effectiveness. Guess which one the anti-vaxxers will cherry-pick?

Let’s take a look at these studies, but first, as I always do with HPV vaccine benefits, I’ll start with a few words about HPV, the vaccine, and cancer.Read More »HPV vaccine benefits – anti-vaxxers pick bad study, ignore positive data

Dr. Diane Harper, lead Gardasil scientist’s actual HPV vaccine research

by Michael Simpson
2020-09-27
Cancer, GSK, HPV vaccine, Merck, Vaccines

Anti-vaxxers love their false authorities, such as the infamous Tetyana Obukhanych. They also love to invoke Dr. Diane Harper as the authority of choice with regard to HPV vaccines. Obukhanych is truly a false authority, but Dr. Harper is much more complicated.

Because vaccine deniers lack any scientific evidence supporting their unfounded beliefs about vaccines, they tend to rely upon unscientific information like anecdotes, logical fallacies, misinterpretation of data, or false authorities to support their case about the lack of safety of vaccines.

The so-called “lead Gardasil researcher,” Dr. Diane Harper, a former “consultant” to Merck and GSK, had some responsibilities in the clinical trials for their HPV vaccines. But the claims about whether Dr. Harper supports or dislikes those vaccines are substantially more complicated than what the anti-vaccine zealots would like to claim about her.

Amusingly, every few months the social media haunts of the anti-vaccine crowd explode with claims that Dr. Diane Harper, lead Gardasil researcher, hates HPV vaccines.

Let’s take a look at the story and see what we find.

HPV vaccine uptake doubles over 5 years in USA – anti-vaxxers show sad faces

A new study has shown that, despite the false information of the anti-vaccine fanatics, HPV vaccine uptake doubled between 2013 and 2018 in US adults between the ages of 18 and 26.

The HPV vaccine is one of the few actual methods to prevent cancer, more important than drinking kale-blueberry shakes every day. Thus, this increase in the HPV vaccine uptake in both girls and boys will lead to a long-term decrease in the rate of many cancers.

Let’s take a detailed look at the results of this report.Read More »HPV vaccine uptake doubles over 5 years in USA – anti-vaxxers show sad faces

Falling cancer death rate – cancer scam artists crying homeopathic tears

Despite the various tropes from internet scam artists, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reports falling cancer death rates in the USA. Maybe we haven’t won the “war on cancer,” but it is far from bleak.

As you know, cancer myths run rampant on social media. One of them is that cancer is a massive epidemic these days, killing everyone. And the second myth is that “Big Pharma is hiding a secret cancer cure. So, according to the internet scam artists pushing fake cancer “cures,” not only are we dying more of cancer but the evil Big Pharma scientists are hiding a miracle cure from us.

Well, the facts don’t support those fake claims. This article will take a look at the new data from the American Cancer Society about the falling cancer death rates in the USA.Read More »Falling cancer death rate – cancer scam artists crying homeopathic tears

Gardasil facts – debunking myths about HPV vaccine safety and efficacy

by Michael Simpson
2020-09-27
500 Comments
Cancer, HPV vaccine, Merck, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Vaccines

The HPV cancer-preventing vaccine, especially Gardasil (or Silgard, depending on market), has been targeted by the anti-vaccine religion more than just about any other vaccine being used these days. So many people tell me that they give their children all the vaccines, but refuse to give them the HPV vaccine based on rumor and innuendo on the internet. This article provides all the posts I’ve written about Gardasil’s safety and efficacy.

As many regular readers know, I focus on just a few topics in medicine, with my two favorites being vaccines and cancer – of course, the Gardasil cancer-preventing vaccine combines my two favorite topics. Here’s one thing that has become clear to me – there are no magical cancer prevention schemes. You are not going to prevent any of the 200 different cancers by drinking a banana-kale-quinoa smoothie every day. The best ways to prevent cancer are to quit smoking, stay out of the sun, keep active and thin, get your cancer-preventing vaccines, and following just a few more recommendations.

The benefits of the vaccine are often overlooked as a result of two possible factors – first, there’s a disconnect between personal activities today and cancer that could be diagnosed 20-30 years from now; and second, people think that there are significant dangers from the vaccine which are promulgated by the anti-vaccine religion.

It’s frustrating and difficult to explain Gardasil’s safety and efficacy as a result of the myths about the safety and long-term efficacy of the vaccine. That’s why I have written nearly 200 articles about Gardasil safety and efficacy, along with debunking some ridiculous myths about the cancer-preventing vaccine. This article serves to be a quick source with links to most of those 200 articles.

And if you read nothing else in this review of Gardasil, read the section entitled “Gardasil safety and effectiveness – a quick primer” – that will link you to two quick to read articles that summarize the best evidence in support of the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.

Anal cancer rates have skyrocketed in the USA – get the HPV vaccine

Diagnoses and deaths from anal cancer, which is related to the human papillomavirus (HPV), have risen dramatically over the last 15 years according to a new peer-reviewed article. This study was the first to compare and categorize HPV-related anal cancer by stage at diagnosis, year of birth, and mortality.

One of the myths about the HPV vaccine is that its only purpose is to prevent cervical cancer in women. Although that is important, this study shows that preventing anal cancer should be one of the goals of getting the HPV vaccine.

Like I usually do with anything related to the HPV vaccine, let’s take a look at the disease and the study.Read More »Anal cancer rates have skyrocketed in the USA – get the HPV vaccine

Gardasil 9 safety – more published evidence supporting the HPV vaccine

Two new articles (plus an editorial) published in Pediatrics reinforce the evidence supporting Gardasil 9 safety. I have been writing about the safety of the cancer-preventing HPV vaccines for years, and it’s clear that it’s settled science.

Of course, I’m here to review any new articles about Gardasil 9 safety, because the evidence supporting it has become overwhelming. Nevertheless, HPV vaccine uptake has remained stubbornly low, around 49% in the USA as of 2017.

Let’s start with a quick review of HPV and HPV vaccines.Read More »Gardasil 9 safety – more published evidence supporting the HPV vaccine

Gardasil safety facts – debunking myths about the HPV vaccine

by Michael Simpson
2019-10-23
Cancer, Christopher Shaw, HPV vaccine, Vaccines

I’ve written nearly a metric tonne of articles about Gardasil safety facts over the past eight years. Most of my posts covered peer-reviewed studies and meta-reviews that support the overall HPV vaccine safety and effectiveness profiles. It is settled science.

There are so many myths, memes, and tropes about HPV vaccine safety, all of them based on anecdotes, false claims, and stories – all of them lack the support of robust scientific evidence.

For example, there have been several recent stories about the claimed dangers of the HPV vaccine, like Colton Berrett’s tragic suicide after contracting transverse myelitis. The parents blamed Gardasil for Colton’s disease, despite the fact that there is simply no evidence of such a link. Of all of the vaccines on the market, the anti-vaccine world appears to reserve their most unscientific hatred for Gardasil.

There is one common point about my boatload of articles about Gardasil safety facts – they are backed by literally dozens of powerful, unbiased, statistically significant, repeated clinical and epidemiological studies.

HPV vaccine autoimmunity – more bad science from Shoenfeld

We just posted an article by Professor Dorit Rubinstein Reiss who criticized many of Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld‘s anti-vaccine ideas, which include HPV vaccine autoimmunity. We need to examine and critique a new paper from Shoenfeld which tries to establish why the HPV vaccine might cause autoimmunity. Spoiler alert – it’s not very good.

For some reason, Shoenfeld has targeted the HPV cancer-prevention vaccine in much of his “research” lately. He has taken that niche and run with it. And, because the anti-vaxxers love their argument from false authority, Shoenfeld is a hero to them.

So is there any validity to the HPV vaccine autoimmunity claim? Not really, but let’s take a scientific critique of it.Read More »HPV vaccine autoimmunity – more bad science from Shoenfeld

Vaccines cause diabetes – another myth refuted and debunked

If you cruise around the internet, engaging with the anti-vaccine religion (not recommended), you will pick up on their standard tropes, lies, and other anti-science commentaries, like the claim that vaccines cause diabetes. Of course, once one digs into the scientific facts, you find little supporting evidence.

A lot of the vaccine deniers believe that vaccines cause a lot of everything and several claims that vaccines cause Type 1 diabetes (or here), based on little evidence. As far as I can tell, this myth is based on the “research” from J. Barthelow Classen, M.D., who has pushed the idea that vaccines cause type 1 diabetes, through some magical process that has never been supported by other independent evidence.

In another example of the anti-vaccine zealot’s cherry-picking evidence to support their a priori conclusions, they ignore the utter lack of plausibility supporting any link between vaccines and Type 1 diabetes. At best, Classen has cherry-picked statistics to support his predetermined conclusions, “comparing apples to oranges with health data from different countries, and misrepresenting studies to back his claim.”

Moreover, Classen seems to come to his beliefs based on population-wide correlations that rely on post hoc fallacies, rather than actually showing causality between vaccines and diabetes. It’s like finding that a 5% increase in consumption of Big Macs is correlated with a full moon. Those two things may happen at the same time, but it would take a laughable stretch of real science to make a cause for causality.

« Previous
1
…
4
5
6
7
8
…
22
Next »