“The HPV vaccine is considered a life-saving cancer preventer, but is it a potentially deadly dose for girls?” This was the promo for Wednesday’s episode of Katie, Katie Couric’s daytime talk show on ABC. Couric, whose husband passed away from colon cancer, is known for being a relatively responsible journalist when it comes to health care issues, so despite this needlessly alarmist advertising, I held out hope that her show would demonstrate that no matter how adamant a very small group of people are that their health problems are caused by the HPV vaccine, there is no evidence that the HPV vaccine is dangerous. Sadly, my hopes were dashed as Couric spent a half-hour of her show drumming up fears that the vaccine will make you very ill or even kill you.
On the anti-vaccine side: Couric’s guests included a mother whose daughter died of undetermined causes 18 days after getting the vaccination; another mother and her daughter, who came down with a hodgepodge of symptoms that sound an awful lot like depression a few days after the vaccine; and Dr. Diane Harper, a skeptic of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s push to vaccinate all girls and who is careful to avoid obvious untruths but has been criticized for her involvement in the anti-vaccination movement. On the pro-vaccination side, Couric only hosted one guest, Dr. Mallika Marshall, a ratio that wildly underplays how dominant the pro-vaccination opinion is in the medical profession. Marshall was only given a few minutes to state that vaccines are safe and that the side effects mentioned by other guests were probably unrelated to the vaccine. Unfortunately, Couric and her producers allowed these facts to be totally overshadowed by the heartrending tales told by the two mothers.
On the anti-vaccine side: Couric’s guests included a mother whose daughter died of undetermined causes 18 days after getting the vaccination; another mother and her daughter, who came down with a hodgepodge of symptoms that sound an awful lot like depression a few days after the vaccine; and Dr. Diane Harper, a skeptic of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s push to vaccinate all girls and who is careful to avoid obvious untruths but has been criticized for her involvement in the anti-vaccination movement. On the pro-vaccination side, Couric only hosted one guest, Dr. Mallika Marshall, a ratio that wildly underplays how dominant the pro-vaccination opinion is in the medical profession. Marshall was only given a few minutes to state that vaccines are safe and that the side effects mentioned by other guests were probably unrelated to the vaccine. Unfortunately, Couric and her producers allowed these facts to be totally overshadowed by the heartrending tales told by the two mothers.
Then there’s Harper, who presents herself as a reasonable person, insofar as she openly admits side effects are rare and that the HPV vaccine does work. However, she then claims that the vaccine stops offering protection after five years, even though the CDC says that the effects are long-lasting. She also tries to minimize the vaccine’s efficacy by claiming that kids can get some kinds of HPV before they start having sex, while eliding that they are very unlikely to get the kinds that cause cervical cancer and ignoring that the rates of HPV transmission from sex are way higher. Harper also casually endorses the conclusion that these girls suffered from vaccine-related illness. But what’s really troubling is that she aggressively promotes regular Pap smears as the better and safer alternative to vaccines, claiming that with the new Pap test, we can prevent “100 percent” of cervical cancer. Never mind that despite this better test, the gaps in Pap testing mean that 4,000 women die a year of cervical cancer. And never mind that the Cleveland Clinic says there is a 10 to 20 percent false negative rate for the test. Indeed, she speaks so glowingly of Pap tests that the viewer walks away with the impression that the tests do something to prevent precancerous cells from forming. She doesn’t actually mention what happens if the Pap finds the cells (they have to be scraped off, often in a procedure that requires putting a patient under, which has its own risks), which is absolutely more likely to happen if you don’t get vaccinated.
Then there’s Harper, who presents herself as a reasonable person, insofar as she openly admits side effects are rare and that the HPV vaccine does work. However, she then claims that the vaccine stops offering protection after five years, even though the CDC says that the effects are long-lasting. She also tries to minimize the vaccine’s efficacy by claiming that kids can get some kinds of HPV before they start having sex, while eliding that they are very unlikely to get the kinds that cause cervical cancer and ignoring that the rates of HPV transmission from sex are way higher. Harper also casually endorses the conclusion that these girls suffered from vaccine-related illness. But what’s really troubling is that she aggressively promotes regular Pap smears as the better and safer alternative to vaccines, claiming that with the new Pap test, we can prevent “100 percent” of cervical cancer. Never mind that despite this better test, the gaps in Pap testing mean that 4,000 women die a year of cervical cancer. And never mind that the Cleveland Clinic says there is a 10 to 20 percent false negative rate for the test. Indeed, she speaks so glowingly of Pap tests that the viewer walks away with the impression that the tests do something to prevent precancerous cells from forming. She doesn’t actually mention what happens if the Pap finds the cells (they have to be scraped off, often in a procedure that requires putting a patient under, which has its own risks), which is absolutely more likely to happen if you don’t get vaccinated.
Correction, Dec. 4, 2013: This post originally misidentified the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Correction, Dec. 4, 2013: This post originally misidentified the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
