Antivaxxers aren't really fond of the Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil - primarily because it is adiscussed the myths surrounding this vaccine in the past, and I even wrote a blog piece that explained none of the deaths that antivaxxers associate with Gardasil have been proven to actually be a result of the vaccination.vaccine. They attribute many medical issues to the vaccine and even go so far as to blame it for numerous deaths. Of course I have
Rest assured, even in spite of overwhelming evidence surrounding the safety and effectiveness of the Gardasil vaccine, and even though it has been shown to save at least 2,500 lives each year due to the reduced risk of cervical cancer, antivaxxers are unwilling to concede the vaccine might actually be a good thing... because once again it is a vaccine.
Antivaxxers don't really care if vaccines work because they are predispositioned to believe all vaccines are bad. In fact, most antivaxxers believe society would be better if nobody was ever vaccinated for anything (because apparently losing hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives each year to diseases like smallpox and polio is better for society).
So since it is so easy to discredit many of the claims made by antivaxxers surrounding Gardasil, and because they have absolutely zero data to support their claims about deaths and serious injury caused by the vaccine, some antivaxxers decided to take a new approach. One of the more recent claims is that the HPV vaccine is a bad thing because it teaches girls that they can be sexually active with no ramifications. The premise here is that allowing a girl to get the vaccine would therefore be suggesting to her that it is OK to start having sex.
Imagine the outcome of teaching girls that sex at a younger age is perfectly fine. Teen pregnancy rates would rise, the transference of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV would rise, and the net effect of the vaccine would be more damaging than HPV was in the first place. Except that isn't happening, and we now have data to prove it. Technically we had the data before, but a recent study simply analyzed the available data and summarized the findings.
Psychology Today: HPV Vaccine Doesn't Cause Promiscuity
So with that out of the way, it makes you wonder what excuse antivaxxers will decide to use next. Time will tell, but the one thing we know for certain is that they won't start admitting that the benefits of the Gardasil vaccine far, far outweigh any risks... because that would be allowing the data and the science to lead them to a conclusion, and we all know antivaxxers aren't very good at allowing the data to tell the story.
