HPV
oracknows | January 8, 2013Remember Dr. Sin Hang Lee?
If you don't remember Lee, maybe you remember a while back, when the antivaccine group SaneVax touted findings that it claimed were devastating to Gardasil. Specifically, they claimed that there was vaccine-derived human papilloma virus DNA in Gardasi. Ring any bells yet? And it turns out that the guy who made this apparently horrific "discovery" was—you guessed it!—Dr. Sin Hang Lee. Back in 2011, Lee, apparently either funded by or working with SaneVax, "discovered" that there was DNA in his Gardasil. As I explained at the time, there was a lot less to this claim…
oracknows | October 30, 2012I guess this is in effect part two of yesterday's post. Regular daily readers (and you are a regular daily reader, aren't you?) will remember that yesterday I commented on the recent uptick in anti-Gardasil vaccine rhetoric coming from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism and other sources, in the process deconstructing speculation masquerading as a case report allegedly indicting the quadrivalent HPV vaccine as a potential cause of premature ovarian failure in a 16 year old Australian girl. The article was so bad and so biased that I couldn't believe BMJ Case Reports published it in the…
oracknows | October 29, 2012Well, I'm home.
AFter spending a fun-filled three days in Nashville at CSICon communing with fellow skeptics and trying to awaken them to the problem of quackademic medicine, I made it back home. There were plenty of attendees who didn't make it back on time because flights to the East Coast were being cancelled left and right, courtesy of Hurricane Sandy. For example, Steve Novella and the entire SGU crew were forced to rent a van and drive 950 miles to Boston after their flight was cancelled sometime Saturday night. Difficulties aside, if there's one thing that almost always happens…
sa smith | October 24, 2012Wull... 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'…
oracknows | August 23, 2012When I first started this blog, I had little idea of what I was in for. I thought I had some idea from having read a bunch of blogs and found role models whose blogging style I tried to emulate back in those early days, long before I developed the persona and writing style that most of my readers love and quacks and antivaccinationists really hate. Now that I've been at it for nearly eight years, there's very little that surprises me. Much of the quackery, pseudoscience, and nonsense that I see is stuff that I've seen before and possibly blogged about multiple times before. I'm starting to…
oracknows | August 8, 2012I must admit, I've been enjoying my vacation thus far and have hardly paid attention to the blog, other than a couple of quick posts. For me, this is quite amazing. Still, every so often there pops up a story that I can't resist commenting on, particularly given that I'm just sitting around watching the Olympics, and I'm deadly tired of beach volleyball. (As an aside, notice how it's always women's beach volleyball that NBC shows, not men's, no doubt because the powers that be think that toned young women in bikinis playing volleyball translate into big ratings. Unfortunately, they seem to be…
sa smith | July 16, 2012The 'debate' over the HPV vaccine has thus far has been a tug-of-war with radical religion/conservative politicians/nutbar anti-vaxers on one side, and the lives of women on the other side.
The HPV vaccine has been A Female Issue.
Turns out the people opposing the HPV vaccine were damning male children, as well.
Though I wrote about how HPV can cause head/neck/throat cancers in both genders before, there is more and more evidence coming to light that everyone, male and female, will benefit from the HPV vaccine series:
Local Inflammation and Human Papillomavirus Status of Head and Neck Cancers…
sa smith | July 11, 2012Herd immunity-- If a lot of people are protected from a pathogen then the people who arent protected, are still protected. The higher the percentage of 'protected' people, the better herd immunity works.
Here is a simple animation of how herd immunity works.
While we generally think of herd immunity as it relates to the very young/old, immunocompromised, those who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons, this concept matters to all of us. Like I said in my talk at FreeOK last year-- your immune response to a vaccine is random, so there are some of you reading this article whos parents…
sa smith | June 26, 2012File this under 'Religion has nothing to do with morality'--
Some religions have a problem with a vaccine that, when dosed appropriately early enough, virtually eliminates risk of cervical cancer, as virtually all cervical cancer is caused by HPV. Its even better if males get the vaccine as well, not only because if fewer males get HPV, fewer males can transmit HPV to females-- but also because the HPV vaccine might protect against non-cervical HPV cancers (which males can get).
I wish I was making this up, but some religions reject the HPV vaccine because it will turn little girls (its…
milhayser | December 19, 2011
On The Pump Handle, Liz Borkowski examines the ethical dilemma of testing the anthrax vaccine in children. If a widespread attack were to occur, we would want to know the safety and efficacy of the vaccine beforehand. But is an attack likely enough to warrant testing the vaccine on children? On ERV, Abbie Smith explains how vaccines are made: "Sometimes we use dead viruses. Sometimes we use crippled viruses. Sometimes we dont need to use whole viruses at all—little chunks of the virus are fine. Sometimes we just need chunks of the virus, but we keep them dressed up in hollow membranes."…
tsmith | November 15, 2011Oh, Discover. You're such a tease. You have Ed and Carl and Razib and Phil and Sean, an (all-male, ahem) cluster of science bloggy goodness. But then you also fawn over HIV deniers Lynn Margulis and Peter Duesberg. Why can't you just stick with the science and keep the denial out?*
But no, now they've let it spill into their esteemed blogs. I was interested to see a new blog pop up there, The Crux, a group blog "on big ideas in science and how these ideas are playing out in the world. The blog is written by an outstanding group of writer/bloggers and scientist/writers who will bring you the…
tsmith | November 13, 2011Aah, the things one learns when awake at 3AM on a Saturday night. Via a few different Tweeps, I ran across this article from Men's Health magazine, titled "Urgent Warning: Sex with Animals Causes Cancer."
I probably should have just stopped there.
But no, I read the magazine article, which states:
Brazilian researchers polled nearly 500 men from a dozen cities, and found that--we're not joking around here--roughly 35 percent of the men had "made it" with an animal. That's a problem, because screwing a horse, donkey, pig, or any other animal was found to up your likelihood of developing…
sa smith | October 26, 2011The HPV vaccine is one of my most favoritest vaccines.
From a public health perspective, its efficacy is unprecedented.
From an immunological perspective, learning how the HPV vaccine works is going to teach us something about our immune system we didnt know before.
From a virological and evolutionary perspective, we dont have to be worried HPV is going to evolve 'around' our vaccine, or 'new evils' will take the eliminated variants place.
Its a beautiful vaccine!
It would be great, for women, if boys got the vaccine too. Of course, boys cannot get cervical cancer, but they can carry the…
sa smith | July 12, 2010There was some big news last week, that believe it or not, did not involve delusional, myopic, hypocritical bloggers on the internet.
FOR REALZ!
At the International Papillomavirus Conference, at a symposium sponsored by QIAGEN, QIAGEN announced that their super awesome HPV test was approved for use in the Third World:
... the careHPV test makes HPV DNA testing simple, effective and affordable for women in low-resource settings. The careHPV Test can be performed by a healthcare worker in a community facility without mains electricity or running water and offers HPV detection results in a…
sa smith | April 15, 2010Vaccines rock.
So many diseases my mom and dad, my grandparents had to deal with, had to fear-- I never have to even think about. Viruses I read about in books, like a 5-year-old reads about dinosaurs.
And I really, really appreciate this fact.
Nowhere is this appreciation more vivid than with the HPV vaccine. Gardasil became widely available when I was 23, so I was still young enough that insurance humored me and covered the series of shots (though I had to harass the hell out of my OB/GYN at the time to actually get them). I feel like Indiana Jones, like I barely slid under a stone door…
tsmith | February 25, 2010Student guest post by Desiré Christensen
Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are small DNA viruses that infect epithelial cells. There are well over 100 subtypes of HPV. The subtypes that infect cutaneous epithelia are termed beta-HPVs and those that infect the mucosal epithelia are termed alpha-HPVs. Some alpha-HPVs have received attention as strong risk factors for the development of cervical cancer. Less public awareness has been generated over the role of HPVs in the development of other cancers such as vulvar, vaginal, anal, head and neck, and penile cancers. Only recent research has…
rskloot | November 5, 2009
Calling all academics: If you'd like a free advanced copy of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, get thee to Random House's academic blog and request a copy quick, while supplies last (which probably won't be long at the rate things are going). See below for more information on the book, and advanced praise. Added bonus: If you teach the book this spring, you can also get me to come speak at your school/in your classes as part of my book tour.
Here's Publishers Weekly on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:
Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with
this multilayered…
rskloot | October 3, 2009
Lots of excitement here at Culture Dish: The final cover for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has arrived (see left). And ... <drum roll> ... the the book's first pre-publication review has hit the press: In the issue coming out this Monday, Publishers Weekly gives The Immortal Life a starred review, calling it, "a remarkable debut ... a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society's most vulnerable people." (wOOt!) Full review here and here:
"Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with
this multilayered story…
rskloot | March 22, 2009Not long ago, I posted about the fact that the world was obsessed with Jade Goody's cancer, but not talking about the real story behind her diagnosis. Today, news hit that she has died. Unfortunately, this story brought out the worst in many people right to the end.
rskloot | February 28, 2009
London (and much of the U.S.) is currently obsessed with Jade Goody, who is dying of stage 4 cervical cancer at the age of 27 in a very public way: On television. One thing I find amazing is that, in the mountain of media coverage on this (including articles in the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, etc), I'm not seeing reporters mentioning one very important fact: According to one story (no longer online, but quoted in this interesting post at TBTAM), Goody had multiple abnormal pap smears in her teens. She went in for a few treatments to have the abnormal cells removed, then ignored…