Guard Yourself Against the Gardasil Vaccine

I focus my practice on diet, exercise, sleep and stress but as an doctor I have given out my share and then some of injections including immunizations. It all started to go off the rails for me when my hospital suspended me for not getting the flu shot. Then I discovered that they give babies on the first day of their lives a shot to protect them from Hepatitis B. Now you know you get Hep B from dirty needles and unprotected sex. The shot only protects for 10 years at the maximum so it will have long worn off well before the child is actually engaging in dangerous activities. I am told the shot is given early to make sure the child is protected in case the mother had Hep B. That sounds quite reasonable except that virtually all mothers are checked during their pregnancy for Hepatitis B. If the mother is Hep B negative the child has virtually no risk –so why is every baby given this shot?

Well, the investigations continued from there and I turned the all seeing eye of Sauron on the vaccines available for treating Human Papillomavirus … referred to as HPV. There are over 100 strains of this virus and some of the strains are associated with warts, cervical and anal cancer. There are three vaccines out there … Gardasil, Gardasil 9 and Cervarix. Cervarix is marketed only for girls but the other two are for boys and girls age 9-26. Now preventing cancer is a noble idea but guess what? This vaccine has never been shown to prevent cancer. It has only been shown to diminish the presence of these viruses that are associated with cancer.

The facts are that, according to the experts, that most of us will acquire these viruses and clear them naturally. If certain strains persist too long they can stimulate changes that result in cervical and anal cancer and warts. Only a few of the strains are known to cause cancer and the vaccines don’t contain all those strains. Of course these viruses are not the only risk factor for cervical cancer … co-infections, age, number of pregnancies, use of birth control pills, smoking, etc. are all risk factors for cervical cancer and at least a third of cervical cancers are not associated with the viruses.

Now 4,000 deaths a year occur from cervical cancer. This is no joke. But you have to put it in perspective … roughly 60,000 deaths a year in women from lung cancer and 40,000 deaths a year in women from breast cancer. We have cut the rate of death from cervical cancer in half … not from the vaccine but from pap smears. And guess what? … even if you get the vaccine you still have to go for regular pap smears so what’s the point of getting the shot?

We are immunizing 4 million girls a year with a vaccine that protects only against ½ the strains for perhaps a period of as little as 2 years against a cancer they are not likely to get for 20 years! 4 million women vaccinated to possibly prevent 4 thousand deaths is not particularly cost effective. Especially when it’s one of the most expensive vaccines ever brought forth by Big Pharma. Roughly 400 dollars for the the 3 shot series.

In Medicine we use a term … number needed to treat … the NNT. You want a low NNT … that means the number of people you had to treat to get one person benefit. For example in treating H Pylori, a bacteria that causes ulcers, if you treat 10 people you usually cure 10 people and that gives you a number needed to treat of 1. Every person you treat benefits. That’s great and thats rare. Experts say that if the NNT is greater than 40 it’s probably not a great intervention. Another example is using cholesterol drugs … statins … to prevent heart attacks. In primary prevention the NNT for statins is at least 250. That means 249 people will take a statin and get no benefit and still be exposed to risks and side effects for one person to not have a heart attack. Not a good NNT at all and one of the reasons I don’t routinely recommend drugs for high cholesterol unless you have already had a heart attack or stroke. Now the NNT for the HPV vaccines are greater than 1,000!!! Way more than 1,000 women have to get the shot for possibly one women to not get cancer. Not great odds even in Vegas.

HPV Strain

Ok … so efficacy is questionable … at least we can be assured its a safe shot. I mean its safety and efficacy that are the watchwords for all vaccines aren’t they? Well, hold on Hamilton because safety with this vaccine is a real issue. First off it uses a high dose of Aluminum. Aluminum is toxic to the brain, the bones and the kidneys. The FDA states the the maximum parenteral dose allowed for aluminum in a day is 25 mcg. Each shot of Gardasil contains 500 mcg of aluminum. Thats 20 times the daily recommended amount. How is that appropriate? Did I mention the well documented fact that if a women is already infected with one of the strains found in the vaccine that it can make the infection worse and accelerate cancerous and warty changes? Don’t forget the polystyrene 80 and the borate that’s in the vial. Just ask your doctor next time you decide to get a shot … Can he or she name three ingredients in the vial? I know I couldn’t until I started studying these things.

Next let’s looks at the reported trouble with the vaccines. According to the National Vaccine Information Center by 2015 there were over 35,000 reports of adverse events from these vaccines including over 200 deaths.

There have been reports of all sorts of serious side effects included Guillain-Barre syndrome, transverse myelitis, motor neuron disease, venous thromboembolic events and fainting … which is very common with this vaccine.

Lets looks internationally … India has a huge problem with cervical cancer … It’s a major killer there … because they don’t have a Pap smear program … they have decided NOT to routinely use the vaccines due to side effects. Japan is another developed country with a long history of vaccination use. Their use of these vaccines has plummeted from over 70 percent to less than 5 percent. Must be some reason for that.

Finally and what disturbs me as much as anything is the attempt to make these vaccines mandatory. Why is our government so adamant about insisting we get these injections? Whatever happened to free choice. If vaccination is really effective the only person who can be hurt by not vaccinating myself is myself. I am free to smoke myself to death. I am free to drink myself to death but I am not free to get anal warts if I want to run that risk? Something doesn’t make sense here and until it does we should treat and immunize lightly. This is the land of Freedom and we should guard those freedoms well. There are many more vaccines of questionable benefit coming down the pike … Fine for you if you make an informed choice … not fine if some unknown committee decides all Americans should be forced to take a shot to work or attend school etc.

Of course you should not make decisions about your health from some article you read in the paper no matter how compelling. You must do your our research … after all it’s YOUR health and YOU are in charge of it. I think you will find your discussion about vaccines with your health care provider to be a very interesting one. I don’t personally know any Doctors who have done any vaccine research at all but I don’t get out much. Hopefully your physician is up for a reasonable and reasoned conversation about what’s being jabbed in your arm!

Until next month … get well … stay well.

Dr. Barry