There is been an element of risk with every vaccine ever produced. Anyone from the medical or scientific community who declares any single one "completely safe" is a liar.

The bottom line is that the overall benefits to the population far outweigh any negatives. Of course if you or someone close to you is a victim of adverse reaction that fact is not likely to impress.

There are disturbing elements to this story. Mostly so that now Gardasil vaccine has been widely administered to a great number of young Australian females (including my daughter who chose to receive it when on offer free to the under 25s, thankfully without ill effect to best knowledge)there does not seem to be the appropriate continuing scientific and medical monitoring to measure effiency or ongoing safety.

This is not good medicine.

A comparison can be made to using seat belts. These devices reduce road deaths by only 25% and there are numerous cases where the constraints of a seat belt have caused death.

However given the thousands saved by wearing seatbelts compared to the handfull of deaths caused, I buckle up and recently allowed my daughter to be vaccinated.

As far as the hysteria this post generates I suggest that you read this link where the reactions have been catalogued and analysed.

http://www.tga.gov.au/alerts/medicines/gardasil.htm

A grossly distorted view and a very strange article. One would wonder why anyone would in their right mind want to deny an effective cancer prevention strategy to young girls on the basis of two or three anecdotal reports when 43 million doses have been disseminated safely. Of all the official reported adverse effects, 20% are psychologically based brought on by hysteria such as this. The others are mild and self limiting or chance events. Illnesses happen anyway so some are going to happen to some people around the same time as a Gardasil injection.

I am at a loss to understand such lunacy. I guess the founder of the "Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering" could be expected to spew forth such nonsense.

Atman - there is no way 43 million doses have been administered 'safely'. There are bound to be real adverse effects with some individuals. This is an inevitable consequence of all vaccines. Just like some people will die after taking aspirin - uncommon but well known.

The $64 question is whether the effects of Gardasil are being properly monitored - now and into the future.

Obviously what needs to be scientifically verified and reported is the incidence of cervical cancer in vaccinated subjects over at least the next 2 decades and the frequency, type and severity of adverse reactions to the vaccine itself.

Not to have this happening would be bogus medicine.

Otherwise as I stated in my earlier post "The bottom line is that the overall benefits (of vaccines) to the population far outweigh any negatives. Of course if you or someone close to you is a victim of adverse reaction that fact is not likely to impress."