Youch. I'm wondering what the stats are on the STDs they didn't test for... 

All of these STDs can pass unnoticed, of course- you can be infected and not have any symptoms, but still transmit them (same deal with many STDs, including HIV.)

What on earth is up with our education and our healthcare systems that this can happen to the richest nation on the planet?

Make the vaccine available at no charge to young people who are unable to afford it. Provide vaccinations for girls during school hours. And require the vaccine to attend public schools and colleges.

I don’t think education about safe sex is the most cost effective way to deal with this problem; however, it is certainly part of a larger course of action for STD prevention.

Let's get something straight about this HPV cervical cancer hoopla. It's nothing more than a scare tactic to control the populace, make sex dirty and meaningless, and condition the people. It's all about money for politicians, and for MERCK. We do live in a soft form of fascism where the COORPERATIONS, not the people or even the politicians, run the country. If more people would actually research HPV and Gardasil, then we would have some very enlightened, angry people running about. Here's why.

The FDA has admitted that there is no direct link between cervical cancer and HPV, although a mere 1% of women who get cervical cancer do have HPV. THink about it though, if 1 in 4 women and girls have HPV, and only 1 % of these women develope cervical cancer, that's really not very many at all. Take into consideration, also, that a great many other factors play a role in a woman developing cervical cancer.

MERCK, the company who developed Gardasil, (HPV vaccination) have been involved in scandals such as people dying from VIOXX, a medicine that was responsible for the deaths of oodles of people. MERCK was sued for millions of dollars. Recently MERCK was found making deals with hospitals that went something like this. Anyone who was prescribed to antacid medications that were not sold by MERCK, had their prescriptions switched over to antacids that were made by MERCK without the patients' knowledge or consent. MERCK lost money on that scandall, too.

Just prior to the release of Gardasil, MERCK's patent for one of their best-selling drugs expired.

MERCK is paying politicians off to work towards making Gardasil vaccinations mandatory to girls ages 9-12

Girls are becoming seriously ill and even dying from this vaccination. Pregnant women who have been given the shot were reported to have  spontaneous abortions, fetal abnormalities, miscarriges. Women are dying of blood clots and heart failure after having the injections. One little girl developed vasculitis 27 after only one injection. Before that first injection, she was a healthy girl. Her mother took her to a specialist. That specialist told her mother not to let her daughter get the other 2 vaccinations.  

This is a genetically altered vaccine. There are at least 150 strains of HPV. Gardasil has 4  of the strains in the vaccination. If a woman goes in and gets the vaccinations, not knowing she has any of these 4 strains already, an injection of Gardasil can actually speed up the symptoms and make them MORE likely to develope cervical cancer.

MERCK has not tested this vaccine prior to marketing it. The test is now, while people are wilingly, ignorantly taking these vaccinations. They don't know anything about this drug.

The ingredients in Gardasil are as follows: Purified inactive proteins that come from HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18. Amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate, sodium chloride, L-histidine, polysorbate 80, sodium borate, and water.  Aluminum is linked to Alzheimer's, breast cancer, and autism. Why do you think all of a sudden children are just developing autism at 18 months, coincidentally right after their third round of immunizations? All th e aluminum in the injections. Autism used to be something you were just born with, not something you developed.

YOu want to keep your children from getting an STD? Teach them to respect themselves and others. Teach them to take care of their bodies so they have healthy immune systems that are able to combat STDs like HPV. It's just a virus, you know. The  common cold is a virus. Healthy people don't get near as many colds as the unhealthy ones. Think about it.

Do yourselves a favor and research this issue before taking your daughters to the chopping block. Do not be a perfect example of

"IGNORANCE IS KNOWLEDGE"

"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY"

"WAR IS PEACE"

go to youtube and watch some videos..

*Gardasil- YOu could be one less        (watch that one first)

*The Antiterrorist on Vaccines, Merck, and Guardasil.. There are three parts.

*HPV Vaccine - putting our daughters at risk

Sorry this has been so long, but the truth often requires more explanation than a simple lie.

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I'd like to see some of the sources/citations on that comment.

There's a pretty full history of Gardasil's development and testing process on Wikipedia. Worth pointing out straight off is the double-blind clinical trial that involved 12,000 young women. Also worth pointing out is the fact that these four strains of HPV are precursors to approx. 70% of cervical cancer cases. So it's not a catch-all, but it's a LOT more than 1%.

And yes, there have been stories going around of adverse reactions to vaccines. In fact, most vaccines can cause reactions (I had a bad reaction to a polio vaccine as a kid, which messed up my knee...) but generally public health officials tend to think that the tradeoff is worth it.

VASabina, I'm curious as to why you don't think education is cost effective. Imagine the combined medical bill for treating these 3 million teenagers. You've got doctor's visits, medications, etc. Last time I looked at my medical insurance (yep, I'm one of the lucky ones) even a routine checkup ran to $100! So you're looking at $300 million just to have each of these teens seen by a doctor- by the time you've treated those STDs, you're talking about a billion, easy.

How many hours of teaching/training time can you buy for a billion dollars? Well... crunched a few numbers here, and I reckon you could put every single teenager in the US through ten hours of sex education.

The nonprof I work for trains young people in sex ed every month, and we reckon we can give people a pretty comprehensive 'prevention toolkit' in about three hours.

Obviously there are always going to be people who ignore the advice and don't practice safe sex... but I think you'd see a HUGE drop in those numbers.