So according to Oprah's website (which I do *not* take as a credible source on vaccines, thanks to her pro-Jenny McCarthy stance, but I checked out when it showed up in my Google Alert that her site has an article on Gardasil), there are 23 million women who have taken the vaccine in the US (WAY more than the 7 million estimated above), and 4,400 women die per year of cervical cancer out of 155 million women in the US.
Then the author immediately says something stupid, which is "the odds are well against you developing cervical cancer - which is not what those statistics cite. They cite deaths.
She then goes on to say that another way to avoid cervical cancer is to just not have sex. Again, not accurate, since children of age 4 have been found to have HPV with no evidence of sexual abuse, and HPV is transmitted by mere contact, not penetration or fluid transfer, AND it ignores all the other cancers that HPV is linked to that, again, do not require sex.
And she points to the over 400 complaints against the vaccine, without reporting the result of the investigations that determine how many of those 400+ were *actually* caused by the vaccine, how many were not, how many were unknown, and the proportions of the various severity levels within that number.
I will say that the article is less stupid than I was expecting from Oprah, but she *does* make just a couple of mistakes that can skew an uninformed reader into choosing not to vaccinate.
no subject
Then the author immediately says something stupid, which is "the odds are well against you developing cervical cancer - which is not what those statistics cite. They cite deaths.
She then goes on to say that another way to avoid cervical cancer is to just not have sex. Again, not accurate, since children of age 4 have been found to have HPV with no evidence of sexual abuse, and HPV is transmitted by mere contact, not penetration or fluid transfer, AND it ignores all the other cancers that HPV is linked to that, again, do not require sex.
And she points to the over 400 complaints against the vaccine, without reporting the result of the investigations that determine how many of those 400+ were *actually* caused by the vaccine, how many were not, how many were unknown, and the proportions of the various severity levels within that number.
I will say that the article is less stupid than I was expecting from Oprah, but she *does* make just a couple of mistakes that can skew an uninformed reader into choosing not to vaccinate.