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The cervical cancer scare
Opinion: The cervical cancer vaccine, do the benefits outweigh the side effects?
Young girls going into first and second year of secondary school are now being offered the cervical cancer vaccine (AKA the HPV vaccine). Many young women have fought tirelessly to get the vaccine administered free of charge to Irish women, and their campaigning has been successful. While two licensed vaccinations exist, Gardasil and Cervarix; Gardasil is the one which will be administered in Irish schools.
The main difference between the two is that Gardasil vaccinates against two of the high risk HPV strains known to be the cause of 73% of cervical cancers as well as two strains known to cause 90% of genital warts, whereas Cervarix does not immunise against the genital warts virus. While Gardasil is also licensed for use in men and boys aged 9-25 to prevent anal and penile cancers in the UK, the US, Australia and Ireland, the rare occurrence of these cancers in men means that it is not given free in any of these countries, as it is not a cost effective measure to administer the vaccine to males.
The vaccine is administered in three separate doses (two months after the first injection and again four months later) and the protective effects are expected to last for at least five years. However, there is one major issue: side effects. These have not been well advertised by the government at all.
The Gardasil leaflet insert reads as follows: “Allergic reactions that may include difficulty breathing, wheezing (bronchospasm), hives and rash have been reported. Some of these reactions have been severe. As with other vaccines, side effects that have been reported during general use include: swollen glands (neck, armpit, or groin), Guillain-Barré Syndrome (muscle weakness, abnormal sensations, tingling in the arms, legs and upper body), dizziness and headache, nausea and vomiting, joint pain, aching muscles, unusual tiredness or weakness, chills, generally feeling unwell, and bleeding or bruising more easily than normal”. There is no information provided to inform us of the frequency of these reactions or of their permanency.
A number of patients in Australia and America (where the vaccine has been widely administered already) have suffered from paralysis as a direct result of the vaccine. Professor Frazer, inventor of the vaccine, has even admitted that further trials could have been carried out before the drug was widely administered to the public. In an interview with Today Tonight (an Australian news programme) he claimed, "If we had to wait to see if the vaccine could be proved safe [long term], we would be having epidemics of polio each summer, because the polio vaccine was only introduced 50 years ago."
While the professor has a point, in that we would all like to see cervical cancer as a disease of the past, he is dismissive about the astonishing fact that one in 4,400 young women will experience one of these severe and disabling side effects. He concluded that “This sounds like a pretty small rate to me”. When you consider that on average 180 women in Ireland each year contract cervical cancer and well over half recover and are cleared, it’s worth thinking about. Is this under researched vaccine putting women at risk unnecessarily?
Cancer is a seriously scary prospect, and most of us would be willing to do anything that might protect our loved ones from the horrors of developing it. We need to bear in mind though, that an equally daunting prospect is that of a young girl dead or paralysed from the very thing that was supposed to save her.
Further Information:
IFPA
NHS
