That is definitely within your right. I have substantial first- and second-hand experience with HPV – should they make it available to men, I will definitely be in line.
Having a family history or personal experience would make a huge difference in my outlook, but for me, the side effects for any vaccine are far scarier than the small chance my children would actually get the diseases they’re meant to prevent–my kids rarely if ever get sick; even colds and flu usually pass through our home harmlessly, maybe giving them a day of being extra sleepy at worst. But my oldest has had reactions to routine vaccinations, and that was something i could see rather than numbers and graphs and warnings from doctors that my babies *could* get sick. Actually watching one of them suffer put it in the perspective that i have now, and that’s unlikely to change. I do recognize that vaccines are generally a good thing, for most people, though, and i do my best to be informed and keep an open mind about individual vaccines and health situations. But unless it seems like a danger specific to my family, i’m going to default to “vaccine = bad” mode.
(please understand that I totally respect your decisions as a parent, and if this is something you did long ago, I’m not trying to besmirch you!) Have you tried seeing if your child is allergic to eggs? A good friend of mine’s daughter is very allergic to eggs, which came out due to a vaccine-related experience.
We’ve never done official testing, but are very um…aware? Or…maybe the word is ‘paranoid’ or perhaps even ‘obsessive’ about food allergies, because our oldest does have a few (with more popping up every now and then), mixed with a history of asthma. But eggs are not currently on the suspect list. What is on the list are mass-dose vials that have been in the fridge god-knows-how-long at our county health department.
I don’t know if i made it very clear that i’m not *completely* against vaccines–what i’m against is blindly following the suggested/required vaccination schedule set forth by the medical community to treat the masses. I think vaccines should be single dose (to avoid as many additives as possible), when appropriate (as a child grows vs. loading down tiny infants with everything imaginable in those first few weeks), and as needed (when there’s a local threat, family history, etc.).
Also, I think kids that were breastfed or have other natural immunities should go by an entirely different schedule. And in a perfect world, people would be tested for immunity before their doctors would even suggest immunizations. But i fully realize these are completely unlikely scenarios that cost money and time, and will probably never become common practice. So i do the next best thing by delaying vax and relying on my own intuition to make decisions about individual vaccines. I could be completely wrong, but if i make a terrible mistake, it won’t be for lack of effort, because i didn’t think through the options, or because i blindly trusted a study, doctor, or product. I’m just as much against the idea of never immunizing for any reason as i am for immunizing for everything, early and often.
Please read this article in Wired before coming to any definitive conclusions on vaccines, either in general or in particular. There is, alas, a lot of misinformation in the Internet regarding health matters… and our “gut feelings” are regretably poor at accurately judging degrees of relative risk.
— Steve wouldn’t normally interject, but epidemiology really is a trouble spot for balancing individual freedom vs. public safety and there have been concerted efforts to bias the debate on what the best balance should be.
Thanks; that was a good article, but please don’t think it’s the first i’ve read. I’ve read a lot over the last 8 years, from both sides. Along with research papers, books, medical journals, etc. I’ve even talked with doctors, some of which even agreed with my stance on the issue, in regards to our family in particular. i do appreciate the link though; i try to stay current with things, despite how easy it might be to say “Meh, my kids are older now; i already made my choices.”
A female friend’s experience in trying to get it as an adult is that most docs will tell you there’s no point because it is pretty much assumed that almost all sexually active adults already have some strain of HPV. Since there is no test to see which strains of HPV you may have had in the past, it’s a crapshoot on whether or not you haven’t already been exposed to the strains the vaccine protects against. She was able to get it (at her own expense) only because at that point she had only had one sexual partner, ever, and her doctor agreed that she was one of the few adults that would gain benefit from it.
Now, this is from the female perspective and I don’t know if it’s easier/possible to test men, but this is what I’ve seen happen when sexually active adults try to get vaccinated.
Two different doctors told me a few years ago that the only reliable test for men was the visual test (this was before Gardasil and the like, so maybe things have changed).
The troubling thing is that the HPV that causes warts and the HPV that causes cancer are not the same strains. The HPV vaccine is supposed to guard against those strains that cause cancer, or at least most of them. I have never heard that the HPV vaccine is useless for those exposed to some form of HPV in the past – clearly, if you already have a cancer-causing strain it will not help you, but I presume it will not be useless in training your body to fight cancerous HPV you have not been exposed to.
Thanks for that – I’m going to bookmark it for the next time someine gives me shit for vaccinating Britt. :P
Love it – I’d love to see a graph like that of everything that’s supposedly scary and dangerous.
That whole blog is really cool.
Interesting, but i’m still not on board with it. Thanks for sharing though.
That is definitely within your right. I have substantial first- and second-hand experience with HPV – should they make it available to men, I will definitely be in line.
Having a family history or personal experience would make a huge difference in my outlook, but for me, the side effects for any vaccine are far scarier than the small chance my children would actually get the diseases they’re meant to prevent–my kids rarely if ever get sick; even colds and flu usually pass through our home harmlessly, maybe giving them a day of being extra sleepy at worst. But my oldest has had reactions to routine vaccinations, and that was something i could see rather than numbers and graphs and warnings from doctors that my babies *could* get sick. Actually watching one of them suffer put it in the perspective that i have now, and that’s unlikely to change. I do recognize that vaccines are generally a good thing, for most people, though, and i do my best to be informed and keep an open mind about individual vaccines and health situations. But unless it seems like a danger specific to my family, i’m going to default to “vaccine = bad” mode.
(please understand that I totally respect your decisions as a parent, and if this is something you did long ago, I’m not trying to besmirch you!) Have you tried seeing if your child is allergic to eggs? A good friend of mine’s daughter is very allergic to eggs, which came out due to a vaccine-related experience.
We’ve never done official testing, but are very um…aware? Or…maybe the word is ‘paranoid’ or perhaps even ‘obsessive’ about food allergies, because our oldest does have a few (with more popping up every now and then), mixed with a history of asthma. But eggs are not currently on the suspect list. What is on the list are mass-dose vials that have been in the fridge god-knows-how-long at our county health department.
I don’t know if i made it very clear that i’m not *completely* against vaccines–what i’m against is blindly following the suggested/required vaccination schedule set forth by the medical community to treat the masses. I think vaccines should be single dose (to avoid as many additives as possible), when appropriate (as a child grows vs. loading down tiny infants with everything imaginable in those first few weeks), and as needed (when there’s a local threat, family history, etc.).
Also, I think kids that were breastfed or have other natural immunities should go by an entirely different schedule. And in a perfect world, people would be tested for immunity before their doctors would even suggest immunizations. But i fully realize these are completely unlikely scenarios that cost money and time, and will probably never become common practice. So i do the next best thing by delaying vax and relying on my own intuition to make decisions about individual vaccines. I could be completely wrong, but if i make a terrible mistake, it won’t be for lack of effort, because i didn’t think through the options, or because i blindly trusted a study, doctor, or product. I’m just as much against the idea of never immunizing for any reason as i am for immunizing for everything, early and often.
Please read this article in Wired before coming to any definitive conclusions on vaccines, either in general or in particular. There is, alas, a lot of misinformation in the Internet regarding health matters… and our “gut feelings” are regretably poor at accurately judging degrees of relative risk.
— Steve wouldn’t normally interject, but epidemiology really is a trouble spot for balancing individual freedom vs. public safety and there have been concerted efforts to bias the debate on what the best balance should be.
Thanks; that was a good article, but please don’t think it’s the first i’ve read. I’ve read a lot over the last 8 years, from both sides. Along with research papers, books, medical journals, etc. I’ve even talked with doctors, some of which even agreed with my stance on the issue, in regards to our family in particular. i do appreciate the link though; i try to stay current with things, despite how easy it might be to say “Meh, my kids are older now; i already made my choices.”
A female friend’s experience in trying to get it as an adult is that most docs will tell you there’s no point because it is pretty much assumed that almost all sexually active adults already have some strain of HPV. Since there is no test to see which strains of HPV you may have had in the past, it’s a crapshoot on whether or not you haven’t already been exposed to the strains the vaccine protects against. She was able to get it (at her own expense) only because at that point she had only had one sexual partner, ever, and her doctor agreed that she was one of the few adults that would gain benefit from it.
Now, this is from the female perspective and I don’t know if it’s easier/possible to test men, but this is what I’ve seen happen when sexually active adults try to get vaccinated.
Two different doctors told me a few years ago that the only reliable test for men was the visual test (this was before Gardasil and the like, so maybe things have changed).
The troubling thing is that the HPV that causes warts and the HPV that causes cancer are not the same strains. The HPV vaccine is supposed to guard against those strains that cause cancer, or at least most of them. I have never heard that the HPV vaccine is useless for those exposed to some form of HPV in the past – clearly, if you already have a cancer-causing strain it will not help you, but I presume it will not be useless in training your body to fight cancerous HPV you have not been exposed to.