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New Study Debunks Conservative Hysteria that HPV Vaccination Causes ‘Sexual Promiscuity’
Think Progress / News Report
Published: Monday 15 October 2012
Researchers used a sample of 1,398 teenage girls to compare the rates of what they considered “markers for sexual activity” — becoming pregnant, seeking birth control, or seeking treatment for sexually transmitted infections — among those who had been vaccinated around age 11 or 12 and those who had not received the vaccine.
A new study published in the Pediatrics journal today confirms there is no evidence that girls who receive the HPV vaccine — which federal officials recommend should be administered to young women starting at the age of 11, in order to help lower their future risk of cervical cancer — are any more likely to become “sexually promiscuous” than girls who are not vaccinated. The findings confirm all of the previous medical research on the Gardisil vaccine, which was first approved as safe for young women between the ages of 9 and 26 back in 2009.
Researchers used a sample of 1,398 teenage girls to compare the rates of what they considered “markers for sexual activity” — becoming pregnant, seeking birth control, or seeking treatment for sexually transmitted infections — among those who had been vaccinated around age 11 or 12 and those who had not received the vaccine. Unsurprisingly, they found no difference between the two groups of young women:
Looking at a sample of nearly 1,400 girls, the researchers found no evidence that those who were vaccinated beginning around age 11 went on to engage in more sexual activity than girls who were not vaccinated.
“We’re hopeful that once physicians see this, it will give them evidence that they can give to parents,” said Robert A. Bednarczyk, the lead author of the report and a clinical investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research Southeast, in Atlanta. “Hopefully when parents see this, it’ll be reassuring to them and we can start to overcome this barrier.” [...]
In addition to the HPV vaccine, federal guidelines also call for 11-year-olds to be immunized against meningitis, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis. Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, president of the North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, said parents almost never object to those vaccines for their pre-adolescents. But she regularly encounters parents who balk at the HPV vaccine “because of the nature of what it’s preventing.”
Although medical professionals and federal officials have been recommending Gardisil for the past several years as an important preventative measure to safeguard women’s health, studies like this are the direct result of a manufactured controversy around the vaccine that has threatened the fight against cervical cancer. Conservatives have raised concerns that vaccinating girls to lower their risk of cancer will somehow lead to sexual promiscuity, imagining that girls who take preventative measures against contracting HPV are more likely to take sexual risks without the threat of HPV to deter them. Some Republican lawmakers have even come out against bills that would mandate the HPV vaccine for young women in their states, flying in the face of the vaccination recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Unsubstantiated concerns that providing young people with resources to protect their sexual health will give them some kind of license to engage in promiscuous behavior is reminiscent of the misguided attitude that perpetuates harmful abstinence-only education in public schools across the country. Furthermore, using shame-based language to address girls’ “sexual promiscuity” runs the risk of degrading them for their normal, healthy female sexuality when they should be learning about the best ways to mitigate their sexual risks. Rather, as Dr. Jonathan Temte — a Wisconsin doctor who chairs the United States Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — told the New York Times, taking protective measures like vaccination to safeguard young people’s health is no different than giving them a helmet to ride a bike or play football.
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By Tara Culp- Ressler
9 comments on "New Study Debunks Conservative Hysteria that HPV Vaccination Causes ‘Sexual Promiscuity’"
October 16, 2012 2:08pm
Gardasil is one of the more dangerous and unproven vaccines. People have died. It's really too bad society hasn't gotten past the medical propaganda about vaccination in general, and how it saves so many lives. There is no proof of this, but only a theory, lies about the nature of infectious epidemics, and statistical trickery.
Moreover, the medical establishment and Government openly admit there is vaccine damage in the short term, otherwise there would be no VAERS, or Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The rationale is that "the benefits outweigh the risk." But there is no solid, scientific, double-blind evidence of benefit. Whereas, there is no doubt about risk.
Totally nonexistent in any case, is one single study establishing the safety of vaccines in the long term. Go ahead, anyone, try to find one. That is, people are mass injected with poisons whose short-term effects are potentially paralyzing and whose long-term effects are entirely unknown.
Yet, this is good for you—and the kids!
An independent group, called The Cochrane Collaboration, a widely respected research-analysis team, went over all the evidence, and entered its conclusion: In healthy adults, no flu vaccine delivers protection from the flu.
This report has been fully suppressed in "the news," whereas it should have been front page bigtime. The Cochrane review, published by John Wiley and Sons, appeared online on July 7, 2010.
If you didn't see it, you just must have missed the massive mainstream media coverage.
Investigative journalist Jon Rappoport ("AIDS INC.") reports on NaturalNews.com that "...all the promotion and all the pandering and all the scare tactics and all the 'expert medical opinion' and all the media coverage...useless, worthless, and irrelevant.
"Billions of dollars of financed lies about flu vaccines were just that: lies.
"It gets worse, because the entire theory about how and why vaccines work is sitting on a razor's edge, ready to fall into the abyss of discarded fairy tales."
Now, if anyone wants more information about this Frankensteinian medical mythology, he should read two books: "Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners, 2nd Edition: Guide to Immunization Risks and Protection," by Neil Z. Miller and Russell Blaylock, MD (neurosurgeon); and "Vaccination Is Not Immunization," by Tim O'Shea.
October 16, 2012 12:39pm
The side effects are one thing and generally rare.....every drug you take even aspirin can have side effects. But to dream up an idea it would make some kid more sexually active is really really nuts.
October 16, 2012 11:03am
I'm not worried HPV vaccination would make my daughter promiscuous; I doubt she'd even realize it had anything to do with a sexually transmitted disease unless I told her so. It would just be another shot.
But though I do understand that all vaccines can have their side effects and negative reactions, I'm not convinced that the health benefits of this particular vaccine outweigh the risks of serious side effects. Until there have been further studies and time for long-term outcomes to be well understood, I'm staying away from it.
October 16, 2012 7:51am
Oh, darn! If that doesn't cause promiscuity, what does? I didn't even know it was supposed to. Were the people making this claim afraid that everybody would want the vaccine, and supplies would run out?
October 15, 2012 6:18pm
Its a nice theory that a scientific study will change the minds of parents regarding this vaccine, but I strongly doubt it. A vaccine to prevent HPV is not just like giving a helmet for riding a bike or playing football, the difference being that parents are supportive of bike-riding and playing football, but do not want to be supportive at all of their children becoming sexually active before marriage. Many won't give their children access to contraceptives even knowing it might save their life, and they'll continue to be just as stubborn about this vaccine, though it, too, is a life saver. I suspect that some of them want there to be horrible consequences to "sinful" promiscuous behavior, even if those consequences fall on their own child's head. They value their faith in a judgemental God more than their child's life. Perhaps their children will choose a different belief system after experiencing that kind of home life.
October 15, 2012 4:00pm
New vaccines and medical chemistry always have problems. Polio and birth control being two perfect examples. We still use those two methods to prevent unwanted effects, even though people died and were harmed by early incarnations of each.
Look, you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The "promotes sexual promiscuity" is an old hat of conservative opposition to anything that remotely relates to "sex."
I wonder what the argument would be, or if we would just simply laugh at those who use it, if there were no disease or pregnancy concerns from having sex? You know, fucking just feels good, no harm done.
This old school medieval thinking is the same sort of thinking that produced the don't masturbate or you'll grow hair on your palms, or go to hell, or whatever, and is purely religious in foundation--that is, meant to control people for no good reason.
October 15, 2012 3:09pm
I don't care much about the promiscuity, which seems a silly argument, but the Internet is full of testimonials from young girls who got neurological damage from this vaccine.
October 15, 2012 6:05pm
With many vaccines, it is not so much the active ingredient which confers immunity that is so dangerous, but the preservatives used to keep the active ingredient active long enough to be effective. Thimerosal is one of these preservatives, and it contains mercury, which can cause neurological damage if a person is sensitive to it or already has been exposed to a lot of it from other sources (fish, broken fluorescent lamps, thermometers, amalgam dental fillings, thermometers, certain switches, etc). It is possible to request & get vaccines without the mercury preservatives. Also, some vaccines are cultured in eggs, which can be harmful for people who have allergies to eggs.
October 15, 2012 2:10pm
further reading http://www.scribd.com/doc/83093097/Annals-of-Medicine-HPV-Vaccine