Parental Attitudes on Sex, Costs Stymie HPV Vaccinations

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-25/parental-attitudes-on-sex-costs-stymie-hpv-vaccinations.html

Parental concern that getting vaccinated for the human papillomavirus may increase teenagers’ sexual activity is among the attitudes discouraging use of the inoculation to prevent cervical cancer, researchers found.

Seven years after the Merck & Co. (MRK)’s Gardasil vaccine was approved in the U.S. for girls to prevent the sexually transmitted virus, barriers ranging from parents’ views to cost to lack of information have held back vaccination against HPV, the report said. The research, an analysis of 55 studies from 2009, was published in JAMA Pediatrics.

The study is one of the first to try to better understand the obstacles to HPV vaccination across multiple race and ethnic groups, said Dawn Holman, the lead study author. Parents need information about the shots that is easier to understand and doctors must be provided additional support so they, too, can provide a more compelling case for the vaccine, she said.

Parents should “think of this as another vaccine we are providing for their child so they have a safe and happy adolescence and adulthood,” Holman, a behavioral scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said in a telephone interview.

[Ninga]

1. Been reading all over FB, stories from "mothers" warning others NOT to have daughters

vaccinated because of "lasting" side effects such as blinding headaches...

As a grandmother, I would like to respond, but want to be accurate.

[xchrom]

2. i'm not sure accurate helps with this hysteria.

science based evidence is thrown off pretty easily any more.

we've had our own misguided anti-vaccine and especially anti-hpv myths tossed around here.

it's disturbing.

[Ninga]

3. am researching to refute FB assertions. nt

[winter is coming]

4. "Blinding headaches" sound like migraine, which begin for many people in adolescence.

My daughter gets them occasionally now, but it doesn't appear to be related to getting vaccinated. Unless it's a SooperDooperUltraPowerfulDemonCloud vaccine, that, once administered to a girl, can time-travel into the past and give the same sort of headaches to the girl's unvaccinated mother and grandfather.