Warning! Federal Panel Recommends HPV Shot for Boys

Josh Voorhees
Slate.com
Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:11 UTC

© Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A pediatrician gives an HPV vaccination to a 13-year-old girl.

The CDC says that boys as young as 11 should be given the controversial STD vaccination.

A federal advisory panel is recommending that boys as young as 11 years old be given the controversial HPV vaccination shot currently given to girls to prevent cervical cancer.

CNN reports that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted in favor of the recommendation at a meeting in Atlanta on Tuesday. Twelve members of the panel backed the measure, with one abstaining.

As the Associated Press notes, the advantages of vaccinating boys is thought to be twofold: It would protect boys against genital warts and some kinds of cancers, while also potentially curbing the spread of HPV to girls.

The vaccine has been approved for males since 2009, and the American Academy of Pediatrics added it to its list of recommended vaccines for boys last year. Still, it hasn't been heavily promoted for boys, with the lion's share of attention surrounding the HPV shots instead being devoted to the debate over whether the government should mandate the vaccination for girls.

Human papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the U.S. Roughly half of active people are thought to get it at some point in their lives. The HPV vaccine is already recommended for females between the ages of 9 and 26 to cut down on the risk of cervical cancer, and the CDC recommends that girls be given the vaccination at the age of 11 or 12.

Comment: Warning! Big Pharma is at it again, using scare tactics and propaganda to convince the public that now boys need to be vaccinated against HPV. It would appear that organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics have not done the research into the many side effects associated with the HPV vaccine. Read the following articles for more information:

New Worries About Gardasil Safety
Deaths Associated with HPV Vaccine Start Rolling In, Over 3500 Adverse Affects Reported
Uncovered FDA Documents Reveal 26 More Gardasil Deaths
Study Reveals Serious HPV Vaccine Problems: Fainting, Blood Clots, Death Among Risks
Researchers Question If HPV Vaccine Is Worth the Risk
CDC doctor opposes law for HPV vaccine - HPV is not a contagious disease like measles
HPV vaccine's suspected side effects cause concern; CDC says drug is safe
8 more deaths connected to HPV vaccine: Adverse reactions from Gardasil number in thousands

HPV Scientist Speaks Out:

"This is a real danger zone, " says Dr. Diane Harper.

Why might you care about what she says? Dr. Harper is one of the world's top experts on the Human Papilloma virus, HPV, which can lead to cervical cancer. In fact, she's one of the leading scientists the pharmaceutical industries turned to for help to conduct clinical trials - including those that led to approval by the US Food and Drug Administration of Gardasil - and the recommendations that followed.

According to Dr. Harper, "the vaccine has not been out long enough for us to have post marketing surveillance to really understand what all the potential side effects are going to be. We feel it is very safe." However, she adds, "We don't know yet what's going to happen when millions of doses of the vaccine have been given and to put in process a place that says you must have this vaccine, it means you must be part of a big public experiment. So we can't do that until we have more data."