How To Stick Your Dick In A Bear Trap

Or your tits, whichever.
Stupid knows no gender.

Metaphorically speaking, of course, because a real bear trap doesn't require detailed instructions for this - even if you are stupid enough try it, you're probably still clever enough to figure it out yourself.

Clearly I should know better,
I should have learned my lesson the first, second, fifth, fiftieth, five hundredth time around.
Obviously I did not, so here we are, talking about Gardasil. Again.
Fuck.

I don’t want to talk about it.
There are other, more productive things I could be doing with my day.
But those will have to wait, there’s counter propaganda to be writ.

“Anti-vaxx fears mean American girls are ten times more likely to have HPV”

Which is just a breath away from:

“Australia is soon set to become the world’s first country to eliminate cervical cancer.”

For those who’ve somehow managed to miss my entire long history of proselytizing on this, and related topics, I’m not against vaccines. Some vaccines work very well, and in terrible and septic conditions like those common in India for example, the benefits clearly outweigh the risks.
No vaccine (or injection of any kind) is completely free of risk,
As is typical of LIFE IN GENERAL.
There’s risk involved.

Rationality is all about determining the ratios of things, like risk versus reward.
That’s supposed to be at the core of science and medicine.
If you’re covered in horseshit all day while working with sharp rusty farm implements,
It is well worth the risk of harm from the tetanus shot, because contracting tetanus is worse, and fairly likely.

But in a year where the CDC dun goofed and the flu vaccine is only 10% effective at its best,
Where the symptoms of flu are generally not that severe outside of specific groups,
Then it’s not worth the risk or the expense.

Not all vaccines are the same, and not all diseases are the same.
And while this may seem obvious and patronizing as hell,
It is unfortunately necessary for me to spell out all the things I am NOT saying before saying the thing I AM saying, otherwise people mistake my argument for a hay field in autumn and start propping up straw men all over the fucking place.

“Does this mean you’re IN FAVOR OF CERVICAL CANCER?”
“Are you advocating abstinence?!”
Et cetera.

So, what’s wrong with Gardasil?
Specifically, this one vaccine, for this one disease.
Not all vaccines always. Y’all still with me?

There are a bunch of things fundamentally wrong with the science backing Gardasil’s claims.
Point One:
Without long term studies on this relatively new treatment,
We don’t actually know this will stamp out cervical cancer in all of Australia.
It’s not a huge logical leap to suspect it might if there’s only a 1% HPV infection rate,
But there’s isn’t any actual evidence to back up such a claim, yet.

The entire sales pitch from Merck has always been to say everything except the words “this cures cancer” because no one is allowed to say those words, so they’ve got everybody convinced that because everyone with cervical cancer has HPV, when nobody has HPV there will be no cervical cancer.
This is what’s called the correlation fallacy.
Everybody with cervical cancer has HPV. Everybody with cervical cancer also has a cervix.
Therefore by that logic, if we remove everyone’s cervix, there will be no more cancer.

Everybody with cervical cancer also has EBV, perhaps because EVERYBODY (>90%) has EBV.
We’re not trying to stamp out Epstein Barr with the same ferocity despite similar associations.

It’s also important that many women with HPV DO NOT have cervical cancer.
So while it is a strong correlation, if it were purely causal, all HPV infected women living past a certain age would very reliably get cancer and die, and statistics would bear that out.
They do not.

The reality of the pitch is more like this:
"Hey, you know, you might get this one very specific type of cancer someday, maybe, and if you were gonna get it, if you get this injection right now, maybe you're less likely to get it, if you were gonna. Probably."

Point two:
The studies done to verify safety and efficacy were rushed to get FDA approval and push this out to the market, and at this author’s last review of the material, data was woefully incomplete to verify safety for target markets whose age range as low as 13.
When the drug was first released, clinical trials had been conducted on a small group of women aged 18-23 if I recall correctly... And only over the course of a few months, not long enough to confirm cancer prevention or the absence of long term side effects.
But that didn’t stop the Minnesota senate from immediately trying to create a legal mandate similar to Australia’s, for all the 13 year old girls too dumb to make their own health decisions.
They failed, fortunately, which just goes to show that sometimes lobbying power just isn’t enough, and you do actually need two or three voters who have the slightest fuckin’ idea what you’re talking about.

By now more studies have been done, and I don’t want to review them but I suppose I’ll probably have to. At a glance, several sources have already taken a look and claim exactly what I suspected would be the case:

“There’s no evidence that the HPV vaccine causes serious harm, but an investigation shows the trials weren’t designed to properly assess safety.” - Slate

https://slate.com/…/flaws-in-the-clinical-trials-for-gardas…

Gotta stay fair and balanced, of course:
“Digging for data in VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, in an attempt to show some relationship between report adverse events and Gardasil is a form of “dumpster diving” for data. VAERS, a passive reporting system, is barely more than an anecdotal reporting system, not scientific.” - skepticalraptor

https://www.skepticalraptor.com/…/one-stop-shop-science-my…/

That does give one the impression raptor thinks it is the consumer’s job to prove products are dangerous rather than the company’s job to prove they are safe, and that the consumer is doing a poor job at it. That’s neither here nor there.

Several years later I’m able to find an article outlining the comparison between gardasil and placebo along with several claiming that no such study was undertaken… At the time, if it had been done I couldn’t find it, and now that I have it - bonus points - tested in the age range of 9-15.
Somebody finally scienced it up good, and the results are favorable to Merck, showing a low incidence of long term side effects.
https://sciblogs.co.nz/…/20/gardasil-vaccine-compared-plac…/

As you can tell, there are EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE volumes of propaganda on this topic, on both sides. Antivaxxers are convinced that Gardasil is worse than putting babies on spikes, and the Pro-Pharma folks are 100% confident that it’s even safer than sliced bread which you could potentially choke on and die.

And I haven’t started any new myths!
“It will kill all the babies and Australian girls are all gonna have legs growing out of their heads, and double buttholes.”
Nope.
That’s not what I’m saying.

Here’s what I’m actually saying;
Point Three:
What the fuck is amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate?
Where do I find details on this compound I’ve never seen anyplace else before?
How do I get any idea what these chemicals in this arrangement will do to an organism?

Aluminum adjuvants are common in vaccines of all kinds, and the debate about aluminum rages on hotly in numerous comment threads, but this one is special, because Merck invented it.
They own it. It’s licensed and patented and it’s apparently a trade secret because I can’t find anything about it in any literature anywhere - except about its function as an adjuvant in related trials.

“AMORPHOUS ALUMINUM IS GOING TO KICK YOUR DOG AND SHIT IN YOUR MAILBOX.”
No, that’s not what I’m saying either.

I just get suspicious when a massive corporation with way more lobbying power than puny voters (and enough power and wealth to successfully leverage scientists against their tenure,) invents a brand new chemical compound that never existed before, promises long term safety after a few months of clinical trials, starts injecting it into everybody…
And then loudly proclaims it has averted an epidemic of cervixes falling off,
On an entire continent,
With very little data.

I’m a naturally suspicious person.
Can’t help myself.

Any chemists want to weigh in with some peer reviewed science showing how amorphous aluminum compounds interact with mammalian biology? I'm genuinely curious.
A cursory glance did not yield any such studies.

Oh, and the article that started this rant;
https://apolitical.co/solution_article/anti-vaxx-fears-mean-american-girls-are-ten-times-more-likely-to-have-hpv/