It's not often brought up, but there's several cancers caused by HPV that also affect men, like oral and penile cancer. I've long thought that the vaccine shouldn't just be marketed towards women.
It isn't. Does the US not vaccinate boys? Most advanced countries began routinely vaccinating boys in the same cohort as girls. In the UK certainly "Men who have sex with Men" is the next most significant group targeted for vaccination, up to age 45.
The reason this didn't happen from the outset is that you can't vaccinate the boys to protect girls because that's not a direct benefit to the patient, the early data was specifically for cervical cancer and if you don't have a cervix that isn't a benefit.
Europe vaccinated boys way before in the US. When I tried to get the vaccine back in college, I was denied. I argued that in Europe they were vaccinating boys, but to no avail.
In other words, at the time they knew the direct benefits for boys, but that wasn't a concern because girls had a higher rate of cancer from HPV. So they were prioritized.
> can't vaccinate the boys to protect girls because that's not a direct benefit
Medical ethics doesn't allow a procedure which is good for society, but doesn't directly benefit the patient.
However, I think that is wrong. Elsewhere in society we frequently do that - for example we put people into prison, which is of very little benefit to the prisoner. We stand up to let an old person take a seat on a train, which is of no benefit to the person standing up. We send bailiffs, which is of little benefit to the debtor. We pay taxes, which is of little direct benefit to the taxpayer.
Why does the medical world have a stricter ethical standard when there are clearly benefits to society that cannot be realised because of the different approach?
None of the examples you cite require the person to take something into their body that they do not want. You need an example where we effectively force people to ingest something or make a modification to their body without their explicit consent.
Consent is a separate issue. Medical ethics make it unethical to do something good for society but with no benefit to the patient, even with the consent of the patient.
Note that there are a few cases where these medical ethics are violated for historic reasons. For example, donating a kidney (no benefit to the donor). Another example: Taking a vaccine for an almost eradicated disease (at that point, you are taking the vaccine for the social purpose of eradicating the disease, not for the personal benefit of not contracting the disease).
These things are grandfathered into medical ethics, but would no longer be allowed if proposed today.
I'm a man and got the HPV vaccine in another country.
USA is very strange in this regard. Last summer, 4 out of 4 pharmacies refused to provide me a shingles vaccine, even if I paid them cash and had a doctor's prescription. They said that they would get into trouble. I am 49 years old. Had I been 50, any pharmacy would provide the vaccine.
A huge health win, that was opposed by the religious right because preventing cervical cancer encourages teen sex. This is 13 years ago. The very women the GOP was arguing shouldn’t get vaccinated while campaigning for president.
The fact that vaccines have become politicized is testament to how off the rails things have gone. There's other subjects too, but vaccines had bipartisan support until recently.
This shifts the blame away from where it ultimately lies. Being right politically has always meant anti-intellectual. The act of using scientific evidence to support a position in and of itself gives them justification to fight it.
This is victim blaming. I do not mock or humiliate the uninformed, but we cannot meet in the middle to coddle malicious ignorance.
I didn't make any statements about the left, but in what way?
And anything the left does that is viewed as science denial doesn't change anything about the right. If what you are saying is true, that means that both parties can orbit around their willful ignorance.
> This shifts the blame away from where it ultimately lies.
Do you state this as an objective fact regarding causality, or are you more so describing the norms of the (sub-)culture you were raised in, perhaps without serious scrutiny?
If the former, then I would expect there to be some sort of a widely agreed upon proof you could link to.
> Being right politically has always meant anti-intellectual.
Are you genuinely serious when you say this?
> This is victim blaming. I do not mock or humiliate the uninformed, but we cannot meet in the middle to coddle malicious ignorance.
You overlook nothing?
And if I happen to know you are overlooking something, does it follow that me being rude to you necessarily has no negative consequences?
To what degree should death be taken seriously? Seriously enough that everyone should question their faith, or only some people (coincidentally...)?
If you keep posting these cross-examination style comments, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, but we've already asked you several times.
If someone can't follow the scientific method, it isn't on the person who can to validate the opposing parties broken worldview. Discussion should be science vs science, let the truth win. Not feelings, emotions and ungrounded theories vs science.
Your style might be better suited to a lesswrong forum.
I think this might be one of those cases where how it is is a function of how you look at it, or the respective perspectives each of us is taking on the situation.
The perspective I am taking is that while it is clearly sub-optimal that a non-trivial percentage of the population "has issues" with taking vaccines, it is also sub-optimal to not think strategically about how to act when one finds oneself trapped in an environment (Planet Earth) with such people. I don't disagree at all that something is "on" anti-vaxxers to educate themselves about vaccines, but understanding the metaphysics of how to respond to such people, and the consequences of one's response, is also "on" everyone. You may not like the emotions of the people in your outgroup, but don't forget that some people do not like your and your ingroups emotions either - like many things, it is a two way street, even though it seems otherwise.
> Discussion should be science vs science, let the truth win. unfortunately a 2 way street.
I am not a fan of artificially constraining methodologies, or relevant causal variables - generally speaking, science does not take phenomenology into consideration when considering vaccines, whereas (proper) philosophy would take science and everything else causally relevant into consideration. I strongly oppose those who insist on suboptimal thinking methodologies (as you strongly oppose those who you believe are acting suboptimally), especially when it is enforced.
> Your style might be better suited to a lesswrong forum.
It might also be more suited to optimizing interactions between not entirely rational humans of all psychological tribes. I think dialogue and (attempts at) understanding are more suited than presumption and antagonism. I can acknowledge that it is plausible that I am wrong on this, but I suspect I am not - as you say: "let the truth win".
Here is something that I believe is very interesting and relevant: I propose that if abstract instances of such topics come up (say, a psychology study on logical fallacies, interpersonal communication, etc), most commenters on HN tend to align more with my take here, but when controversial, object level instances arise, people tend to act otherwise.
I'm not suggesting "live and let live", I am suggesting we approach the topic seriously - and if one is serious, one takes into consideration causality (that which causes things to happen as they do, which is sometimes other than how it seems).
Everyone likes to privilege their ingroup's form of unseriousness, but that doesn't make the consequences vanish.
What was opposed was forced vaccines on teens using a new vaccine. Our own family doctor recommended we wait until a few years had passed. A few years later - we got the recommendation.
> What was opposed was forced vaccines on teens using a new vaccine
Maybe in part, but there was a very large contingency that outright opposed it due to its perceived encouragement of "amoral" behavior. Exact same thing is happening now in the courts with Mifeprestone.
This is ahistorical. While it may have been true for you, it was not the argument put forth at the time. I knew this projection would happen, and that is why I linked to a contemporaneous article.
Teen pregnancy was the most vocal reason at the time.
Countries are “imagined communities.” Would you really care about what happened in Washington D.C. or some flyover state if it weren’t for newspapers and national TV news?
If you give 100million women a vaccine eventually to save 80k women death (assuming they die sometimes in their last 20 years of life), it's not instantly obvious if it's worth it.
There have already been studies that show getting herpes vaccines increases your odds of dementia. Less than getting actual herpes. But if you could tell yourself to marry a virgin (as a virgin yourself) and remain faithful, you wouldn't have to worry about the brain issues from either the vaccine or herpes.
And of course the possibility exists other yet unknown problems exist too. Most people that got the hpv vaccine probably weren't aware of the dimension risks at the time.
HPV is not herpes and you said herpes. Also this study shows there was a lower incidence of dementia from those vaccinated. More made up in your head BS.
That's not how you link to studies. It makes you look shifty. Also there's this downside that now every reader has to go look instead of just you, so the effort is duplicated (or rather multiplied by N).
How many HPV vaccine producers exist besides Merck ? Are there any independent evaluation of those vaccines ? I only saw Merck literature on this topic.
>Are there any independent evaluation of those vaccines ?
In the section of the linked statistical report from the American Cancer Society that covers HPV there are seven citations, none of which appear to be papers funded by Merck.
People who think young folks who have sex (who are going to have sex [1]) should suffer for the decision are the challenge to be mitigated. You can’t fix the mental model (they are rigid, among other influences), but you can box it in with policy (with, hopefully, a foundation grounded in evidence). Tactical vs strategic considering the continuing decline of religion in the US [2] [3] [4] [5]. You're protecting today's youth cohort until the future arrives. In this specific case, you're literally avoiding cancer with the vaccine.
> In recent years, the fertility gap by religion has widened to unprecedented levels. But while this difference may comfort some of the faithful who hope higher fertility rates will ultimately yield stable membership in churches and synagogues, these hopes may be in vain. Rates of conversion into unfaith are too high, and fertility rates too low, to yield stable religious populations. [5]
This post is endorsed by the son of a mother 16 years older who lived in a strict catholic household whose older sister also had a daughter she is 17 years older than.
In case anyone here knows someone with high-risk HPV who was too old to benefit from these vaccines... this is my favorite medical study: a combination of Reishi and turkey tail mushrooms boost the body's clearance rate from 5% to 88% in a 2-month period [0].
I firmly believe this would have been 100% if they'd continued past 2 months.
A friend of mine had a positive pap test for high-risk HPV, and I sent her this study. She started on this combo of mushrooms and at her followup the next month she was clear.
The abstract indicates that there was no control group without treatment, but two groups given two different mushroom combos. As such, the "baseline" clearance is not revealed by this work.
I noticed the same thing, FWIW (and I believe it's a valid concern), but section II.B. says "One control group (20 patients) received LS (Laetiporus sulphureus) (400 mg/d; two capsules) for 2 months."
I think they were concerned that various tree bark needed to grow the fungus could itself influence the outcome and wanted to "control" for any effects of the bark. Part IV says "LS grown on the same barks as TV or GL was chosen as a control since no anti-HPV property has yet been reported with this mycelium and because the influence of barks should be excluded."
Perhaps there are more studies out there with different "controls" that would add to this research to help rule out any influence from unknown properties of Laetiporus sulphureus.
