HPV Vaccine: DRAT! Foiled again!

Wull... What the hell is the point in a whore vaccine that doesnt turn little girls into whores??

Boy, I hope some scientists are losing their membership in The Evil League of Evil over this:

Sexual Activity–Related Outcomes After Human Papillomavirus Vaccination of 11- to 12-Year-Olds

Risk of the composite outcome (any pregnancy/sexually transmitted infection testing or diagnosis or contraceptive counseling) was not significantly elevated in HPV vaccine–exposed girls relative to HPV vaccine–unexposed girls

Wull... wull goddammit!

*sigh*

Remember how we learned about 'adjusted odds ratios' the other day?  This paper uses a similar metric, 'adjusted incidence rate ratio'.  The idea is the same-- if the number is '1', and the confidence interval contains '1', then there is no difference between the girls who got the HPV vaccine (at least one dose) and girls who didnt.

  • Chlamydia diagnosis: 0.68 (0.06 to 7.71)
  • Pregnancy diagnosis (heh): 1.89 (0.33 to 10.79)
  • Other venereal disease diagnosis: 0.90 (0.09 to 9.07)

The HPV vaccine didnt even have an affect overall-- the number of girls who came in for any kind of 'testing/diagnosis/counseling' was the same between the two groups: 1.29 (0.92 to 1.80), which implies that the two groups of girls were relatively equally sexually active.

And insult to injury, there was no difference in age when a girl acme in for her first 'testing/diagnosis/counseling' appointment, implying the HPV vaccine does not make girls sexually active at a younger age.

In conclusion:

Receipt of HPV vaccine by 11- to 12-year- old girls was not associated with clinical markers of increased sexual activity– related outcomes, such as sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy.

So, I guess we have to conclude that the HPV vaccine is a failure.  All we are left with is 'nearly 100% vaccine efficacy in preventing cervical precancers, vulvar and vaginal precancers, and genital warts in women caused by the vaccine types as well as 90% vaccine efficacy in preventing genital warts and 75% vaccine efficacy in preventing anal precancers in men'.  And then all that 'preventing head/neck/throat cancer' nonsense.

*sigh*

What a waste, eh?

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The Thoroughbred of Sin is not happy about this.

Thanks for this.
I might quibble about the Poisson regression (assumes the risk is constant - but it probably increases with age instead) and their other covariates, but the hypothesis is so uninteresting for me that it's not worth quibbling. I do think that without the right covariates in there, you could see a difference, in either direction. We aren't randomizing here. So non-vaxed people might tend to have girls who have sex earlier (or later) or who use less protection or are less adept at it, for a host of reasons having nothing directly to do with the contents of the vaccine. Slutty people like me (not my fault, I'm +/+ at the slut locus!) may have more slutty daughters (she's +/- it turns out), but may tend to vax them more. I can go on all day.

I'm glad that I bug my public servants to give out grants to people who are doing useful things, like throwing GSA parties in Vegas.

So injecting satan in to the arms of babes doesn't increase the incidence of possession? Are you sure there wasn't "cross" contamination? Perhaps the carrier solution was accidentally blessed; maybe someone was watching Benny Hinn on cable the previous night and in advertantly carried some residual holy spirit in to work where the vaccines were prepared... I'll get my coat.

Really flawed study. Since all the participants got at least one vaccine, and those that got the one for HPV received (on average) one more vaccine than the control group, that group almost certainly had a much higher incidence of autism (which they don't report! What are they hiding!). And that's a population that is pretty low risk for whoring and what not. :-)