Study Casts Doubts on Gardasil Vaccine

From the L.A. Times: "New data on the controversial HPV vaccine designed to prevent cervical cancer have raised serious questions about its efficacy, researchers reported today, potentially undercutting the efforts in many states to make vaccination mandatory.

"...the data also hinted that blocking the targeted strains might have opened an ecological niche that allowed the flourishing of HPV strains previously considered to be minor players, partially offsetting the vaccine's protection."

An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, responding to the new information, urged parents to take a "cautious approach" to the vaccination.

In light of this new information, it is to be hoped that those governors and legislatures who insist this vaccine for a non-communicable disease should be mandatory will have second thoughts. The approach of governors such as Rick Perry of Texas, requiring schoolgirls to have the vaccine, has been anything but "cautious."