Gardasil Cleared of Anti-Vax Nonsense (slate.com)

New submitter Zane C. writes: A new study once again shows vaccines have no link with yet another batch of medical disorders. The vaccine in question is a relatively new HPV vaccine called Gardasil, mainly targeting preteens to reduce infection. Phil Plait has more on this, debunking anti-vax claims and explaining why you should receive the vaccine: "It’s another typical anti-vax call to arms due to a complete and gross misunderstanding of how reality works. To them, if something happens after something else, it was caused by that first thing. This is the classic post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. But the Universe doesn’t work that way. And this kind of bad thinking has consequences. In the U.S. alone, 79 million people are infected with HPV. That’s more than a quarter of the entire population. Fourteen million new cases crop up every year. Gardasil can substantially cut those numbers back—it’s working, and working well, in the U.S. and Australia—but not if the fearmongering falsehoods by anti-vaxxers get traction."

Comments

Re:The herd's moving

[Agent0013]

One of the things many in medicine are worried about is that anti-vax people are going to provide a host population and something like measles will mutate and go back to killing millions of people.

It is all the lies that the government and Pro-Vaxxers spew forth that make me trust that the vaccines are safe even less. Measles has never caused millions of deaths. It is basically like getting chicken pox. But then again, that is now made out to be a scary and deadly disease by the pro-vaxxers also, so no surprise there. Then add in the fact that the vaccine is not as effective as Merck tells you it is and you have another reason to avoid it. And I'm not talking subtly different, it's more like 45% effective when you are told it is 95% effective. Nice bunch of liars in the pro-vaxx camp!