More irresponsible scare-mongering

No drug, vaccine or health care intervention can ever be 100% safe. Vaccines are substances designed to provoke an immune response in a person, so extremely rarely there will be reactions. With cervarix, out of the 700 thousand or so vaccines given, there have been 1300 reactions. The overwhelming majority of these have been of the "bit of a sore arm" variety, and serious reactions are numbered in single figures.

I do wish the press, and Lucy Johnston in particular, could learn something about risk perception, as it is clear they have no idea of the harm they do by their sensationalist comments.

Freda, you ask who you would rather believe, the scientists carrying out the trials or the politicians/pharma companies. I think you will find that the scientists have near consensus on HPV vaccine safety, and it is only a few mavericks who are trying to disparage it.

John Stone, I see it only took you about half a dozen words before foisting your bete noir "MMR" on us. We are sick of hearing about it, give it a rest will you. Your misrepresentations about what the Cochrane review on MMR said are well known (They did NOT say that "the safety studies both before and after MMR went on the market were largely inadequate" , they said that the DESIGN and REPORTING of safety outcomes in the studies was largely inadequate. There is a world of difference, so don't try and mislead people with your obsession on this sentence. Cochrane's conclusions were that although there was considerable selection bias within studies, overall the vaccine was safe and there was no demonstrable link to conditions like autism. Because evidence for safety was limited, that does not mean the evidence for safety was nonexistent, or that the vaccine is harmful, and they say so)

User Comments / Have Your Say

The opinions and views expressed in the above comment are purely those of the writer and in no way reflect the opinions or views of the Daily Express website, the Daily Express newspaper or Northern And Shell Media Publications. We accept no responsibilty legal or otherwise for the accurancy or truth of this comment.