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Japan banned Gardasil? No, but the anti-vaccine crowd pushes the myth

Japan Banned Gardasil

One of the most popular zombie memes and tropes of the anti-vaccine movement is that Japan banned Gardasil, the HPV vaccine. And like most of those zombie memes and tropes, the facts are a lot different than the anti-vaccine claims. Per usual.

Although I don’t quite understand the reasoning, the anti-vaccine religion absolutely hates Gardasil, possibly more than any other vaccine. These zealots maintain that the HPV vaccines cause all kinds of harm to teens and young adults. Yet, there are literally mountains of data derived from numerous huge epidemiological studies that the Gardasil cancer-preventing vaccine is one of the safest vaccines on the market.

So if you really want to prevent cancer, one of the best ways available to you is getting the HPV vaccine. The idea is so simple, yet is clouded by the myths about HPV vaccines – one of the most popular, of course, is that Japan banned Gardasil. Let’s examine this fable with a critical and skeptical eye.

Spoiler alert – Japan did no such thing.

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Gardasil facts – debunking myths about HPV vaccine safety and efficacy

Gardasil safety and efficacy

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.

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Bananas prevent cancer – debunking another myth about food

bananas prevent cancer

I wrote this article over five years, debunking the claim that bananas prevent cancer, and it remains the most popular article I’ve ever written. It probably gets so much traffic because of the ongoing memes about how bananas will cure every cancer known to man. 

Too many individuals see these memes on Twitter and Facebook, then they accept them as scientific facts. They rarely are. That’s why critical thinking is necessary. 

But if a meme is going to make an extraordinary claim, like bananas prevent cancer, then that claim ought to be backed by extraordinary evidence. But this wild belief about bananas is not even supported by ordinary evidence. It is supported by zero evidence.

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Japanese HPV vaccine study – new data destroys anti-vaxxer tropes

Japanese HPV vaccine

If you have been paying attention to the pages about the Japanese HPV vaccine, you would know about some controversies there. The whole experience there is the basis of numerous vaccine denier memes and tropes that have always been inaccurate. Now we have some scientific data that makes some of those lies quite funny.

Let’s take a look at this new data. Continue reading “Japanese HPV vaccine study – new data destroys anti-vaxxer tropes”

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Chinese vaccine scandal – not a concern for USA and many other countries

Chinese vaccine scandal

Recently, a Chinese vaccine scandal has been reported in many news sources. According to these reports, a Chinese vaccine manufacturer produced and marketed “low-quality” vaccines for infants. Moreover, they falsified production and inspection data on a rabies vaccine – as I’ve written before, rabies is a deadly disease, with almost 100% mortality after symptoms appear,  and the vaccine is the only choice to save lives.

This is an appalling story on so many levels. Authorities in the country had lax enforcement and regulation of their vaccine industry – the government was attacked on social media about the situation, a rarity in a communist country where free speech is strictly limited. As a result, the Chinese government will begin regulating their vaccine manufacturers more closely, although it may be too little and too late.

On the other hand, Hong Kong utilizes mostly “Western” manufactured vaccines, which has led to many Chinese citizens going to that autonomous region to get their children vaccinated. There are websites devoted to showing how parents can avoid Chinese vaccines and get the “good stuff.”

These kinds of outrageous ethical lapses generally do not happen in the USA, Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and many other countries. Falsifying data can lead to severe criminal prosecution and civil penalties, something that is far beyond the response from Chinese authorities to this scandal.

Of course, this has led to one of the most ridiculous myths of the anti-vaccine world – our vaccines are dangerous because they were manufactured in China. Under most circumstances, this would be a laughable myth, but with this Chinese vaccine scandal, it’s important that we know where our vaccines are manufactured – spoiler alert, they are made in the USA, Europe, Canada, and Japan, all of which have strict regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. Continue reading “Chinese vaccine scandal – not a concern for USA and many other countries”

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HPV vaccine caused neurological damage? Journal retracts article

HPV vaccine caused neurological damage

Stop me if you’ve heard this before – another anti-HPV vaccine paper gets retracted. Yeah, I’ve written about these retractions so many times (here, here, and here, and that’s just a sample), I could publish a book just about these “researchers.” And now we here about another anti-vaccine study, that was recently retracted, which claimed that the HPV vaccine caused neurological damages. This study heads to the dustbin of scientific research, as it deserves.

A mountain of high quality, robust clinical and epidemiological evidence has overwhelmingly established that the HPV vaccine is safe and effective. This is approaching the level of settled science.

With the retraction of the study that the HPV vaccine caused neurological damage, it’s clear that the anti-vaccine crowd has almost nothing to support their hatred of the vaccine. Not that it will stop them. Continue reading “HPV vaccine caused neurological damage? Journal retracts article”

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HPV vaccine safety study – biased, poor design and results

HPV vaccine safety study

If you want to read a quality HPV vaccine safety study, I can point to numerous high quality, unbiased, well-designed epidemiological studies that show that HPV vaccines are safe and very effective.

Here’s a review of a study of 200,000 subjects.

Here’s a review of a study with over 1,000,000 subjects.

Here’s a review of a study with over 2,000,000 subjects.

If you want to give us a new HPV vaccine safety study, it better have large numbers (to identify small differences in risks), be unbiased, and use some sort of control group.

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Japan HPV infection risk can be reduced with Gardasil

Japan HPV

As I’ve written previously, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare  had suspended recommending the cancer preventing HPV vaccine as a result of the worst statistical analysis ever. Of course, Japanese lawyers, looking for a quick yen, has sued the manufacturers of the HPV vaccine, despite the utter lack of evidence. Unfortunately, there is a growing body of evidence that the Japan HPV infection risk can be reduced after the reinstitution of the recommending Gardasil for young girls in the country.

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HPV cancer vaccine rates – Gardasil uptake remains low

HPV cancer vaccine

As I’ve written before, there are precious few ways to prevent cancer. But one of the best cancer prevention strategies is the HPV vaccine, which can prevent numerous cancers such as cervical, oral, penile and anal, all serious, and all dangerous. Maybe we should just rename Gardasil to “HPV cancer vaccine,” which could make everyone sit up and notice.

The HPV vaccination rate remains depressingly low in the USA. According to recent research, 39.7% of adolescent girls aged 13-17 received all three doses of the vaccine in 2014 up from 37.6% in 2013. HPV vaccination rates among teen boys are much lower than for girls, 21.6% in 2014 up from 13.4% in 2013.

There are probably a lot of reasons for the low HPV cancer vaccine uptake rate, so I thought I’d go through the most “popular” ones, debunking them one by one.

Hopefully, the reader can use this article as a checklist of the tropes and myths of the anti-Gardasil crowd with quick answers to them. Maybe you’ll convince one person to get their son or daughter vaccinated against HPV related cancers.

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Japanese HPV vaccine lawsuit – no science, no evidence

Japanese HPV vaccine lawsuit

The HPV vaccine, specifically the Gardasil 9-valent version, is one of the handful of ways to actually prevent cancer. Along with the hepatitis-B vaccine, the HPV vaccine helps prevent future incidence of dangerous cancers. Unfortunately, a Japanese HPV vaccine lawsuit has been filed in that country by 64 women.

Gardasil has had a tumultuous history in Japan. The vaccine is no longer recommended for Japanese teens, based on an unscientific analysis of evidence related to adverse events. The Japanese Health Ministry accepted supposed “adverse events” after Gardasil vaccine as causal, even though the rate of these adverse events after vaccination was LOWER than the general non-vaccinated population. It was total incompetence on the part of the Health Ministry.

Let’s take a look at this lawsuit in Japan – and we need to see what it really means.

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