Blog Giveaway!!
I am so excited about this blog giveaway! Some friends of ours in Northern California have started a company called Blackflower & Company and we're doing a blog giveaway with them here! I received my tea a few days ago and it is, hands down, the best peach ginger tea I've ever had. I wanted to help them get word about their business spread and in the meantime, one of you gets to win pretty cool prizes :) The prize is 2 (4 oz.) bags of tea {your choice} and one of their very special teapots! This is an awesome giveaway, valued higher than $30 Here are the rules to follow: enter a comment in this post If you'd like to go to their website 1st, you can look around and let us know what flavor tea you'd chose and which color teapot you'd like if you win. If you have a Facebook account, be sure to 'like' them on FB and then you get to leave a 2nd comment here, letting me know and it will increase your chances of win...
Comments
He states that HPV infections are usually self-limiting. This is absolutely true. The problem is that sometimes they aren't and when the virus is not cleared by the immune system it can cause cancer several years later.
A VERY high percentage of HPV infections do not cause cervical cancer. Also true. As stated above, many, many infections are cleared, but it is the highly virulent strains when not cleared that cause cancer.
The Guardisil vaccine does not in any way cause cervical cancer. A negative statistical correlation can occur in a study due to confounding factors or lack of controls for appropriate factors. I have not read this study so I cannot comment specifically on why the authors report a negative correlation. But I am sure that no reputable physician or scientist would agree that the vaccine causes cancer. It is not even likely that this is the conclusion the study comes to with this statistic. I say this because the man in this video is completely misleading about the conclusions of the JAMA article. I took a look at this one myself. He states that the JAMA authors have found that the vaccine has no effect on the rate of progression of viral clearance or the progression of cervical cancer. The JAMA study was limited to women who were already infected with HPV at the time they received the vaccine. The vaccine, like every other vaccine we receive, is not effective against established infection. Vaccines expose our immune systems to viral proteins that make it possible for our bodies to mount an immune response when we are exposed to the actual virus and prevent infection.
HPV vaccines have been suggested for boys not because anyone thinks that a boy has a cervix. Males spread the virus. If boys receive the vaccine and then cannot be infected with it, they cannot then spread it to females.
This guy has his science wrong and I don't know why he is determined to demonize the drug companies in a conspiracy theory.
Thanks for your input
Gina, to answer your question: Human Papilloma Virus, the virus that causes warts on the hands and feet, genital warts and cervical cancer, is a lot different from the influenza virus, in that, influenza mutates rapidly to evade the immune response. From year to year the strains mutate, mostly in animals such as birds, and then spread to humans. HPV does not change from year to year. There are two strains, 16 and 18, that are highly virulent and thought to cause most cervical cancers. The other strains mostly cause genital warts. Guardisil immunizes against 16 and 18 and several other more benign strains.
HPV is not exactly shed from the body naturally. You do have to be exposed to HPV and your skin or cervix epithelium actively infected to shed viral particles. Whether or not you will have an infection following exposure is a bit random. Kind of like whether or not you will contract a cold virus when in a room full of coughy sneezy people. And as with a common cold, if infected, the body is often able to clear the virus rather rapidly. If the immune system is not able clear an HPV infection, the virus will continue to thrive in the cervical epithelium and eventually cause the cells to transform into a cancerous cell type.
There isn't any reason that a person who is less likely to clear HPV infection would be more susceptible to cancer having received the vaccine. But I'm really curious as to your rationale on that question. Maybe I can clear something up about how the vaccine works? In a nutshell, Guardisil is protein made in a lab that is identical to a surface protein of the virus. This is the viral particle that our immune cells recognize. The viral proteins are benign and have no infectious properties but the immune cells still recognize them as foreign and then recruit another type of immune cell to "remember" the foreign protein. These are actually called "memory B cells." So now, when the virus enters the body, the memory B cells make antibodies which will attach to the virus and recruit "killer T cells." No really, that's what they're called.
I hope that was clear but I would love to answer any more questions you might have.
I completely understand the irony of teaching your daughter abstinence and then vaccinating her for an STD. I guess the question is, do we leave our daughters vulnerable as a punishment for pre-marital sex? Or for marrying someone who cheats on her? While the vaccine might be something to wait on until marriage for some women--the vaccine definitely has proven efficacy through age 25, and I am convinced well beyond--on a public health scale this vaccine will save lives.
I will do it for my daughter just as soon as I can - you never know - what if, God forbid, she were raped, and the consequence down the road, on top of the horrendous experience, is HPV and cancer? I think my job as a parent is to protect them as much as I possibly can.
I am going to do more research and talk to Ethan's doctor (who we love so much) and come to a conclusion then.
I am going to do more research and talk to Ethan's doctor (who we love so much) and come to a conclusion then.
I will do it for my daughter just as soon as I can - you never know - what if, God forbid, she were raped, and the consequence down the road, on top of the horrendous experience, is HPV and cancer? I think my job as a parent is to protect them as much as I possibly can.
I completely understand the irony of teaching your daughter abstinence and then vaccinating her for an STD. I guess the question is, do we leave our daughters vulnerable as a punishment for pre-marital sex? Or for marrying someone who cheats on her? While the vaccine might be something to wait on until marriage for some women--the vaccine definitely has proven efficacy through age 25, and I am convinced well beyond--on a public health scale this vaccine will save lives.
Gina, to answer your question: Human Papilloma Virus, the virus that causes warts on the hands and feet, genital warts and cervical cancer, is a lot different from the influenza virus, in that, influenza mutates rapidly to evade the immune response. From year to year the strains mutate, mostly in animals such as birds, and then spread to humans. HPV does not change from year to year. There are two strains, 16 and 18, that are highly virulent and thought to cause most cervical cancers. The other strains mostly cause genital warts. Guardisil immunizes against 16 and 18 and several other more benign strains.
HPV is not exactly shed from the body naturally. You do have to be exposed to HPV and your skin or cervix epithelium actively infected to shed viral particles. Whether or not you will have an infection following exposure is a bit random. Kind of like whether or not you will contract a cold virus when in a room full of coughy sneezy people. And as with a common cold, if infected, the body is often able to clear the virus rather rapidly. If the immune system is not able clear an HPV infection, the virus will continue to thrive in the cervical epithelium and eventually cause the cells to transform into a cancerous cell type.
There isn't any reason that a person who is less likely to clear HPV infection would be more susceptible to cancer having received the vaccine. But I'm really curious as to your rationale on that question. Maybe I can clear something up about how the vaccine works? In a nutshell, Guardisil is protein made in a lab that is identical to a surface protein of the virus. This is the viral particle that our immune cells recognize. The viral proteins are benign and have no infectious properties but the immune cells still recognize them as foreign and then recruit another type of immune cell to "remember" the foreign protein. These are actually called "memory B cells." So now, when the virus enters the body, the memory B cells make antibodies which will attach to the virus and recruit "killer T cells." No really, that's what they're called.
I hope that was clear but I would love to answer any more questions you might have.