The HPV vaccine article doesn't give us the total number of people who have received the injection, so when they say that x large number have experienced side effects, you can't compare it to the total number to see if it's a lot of people or not. Then they go on to say that the side effects
include all these nasty things. What they don't say is how many of the side effects reported were redness at the injection site, and how many were sudden death. To absorb this information we need a chart. Boing Boing ran a
link to a chart a few weeks ago. The chart shows that the vaccine is very safe for the overwhelming majority of girls.
99.9% of girls injected with the vaccine experience no side effects at all
99.993% of girls injected with the vaccine experience no
serious side effects
99.9999% of girls injected with the vaccine don't die from it
the lifetime risk for a woman dying of cervical cancer is one in 500.
the lifetime risk for a woman dying from the HPV vaccine is one in 145,000.
It sucks if you are that one person in 145,000, but look at the overall numbers and compare risk.
I'm no expert in the HPV vaccine, but we will need to make the choice soon about whether our daughter should get it. It helps to have charts that show the risks, not scare articles that throw numbers around without any context. Sure, if you focus on the one girl who dropped dead an hour later, it's scary as hell, but what about 20 million who are just fine after getting the vaccine?