Well the blog author doesn't say how he calculated the 1 in 500 number (he acknowledges that at least some of the risk numbers were calculated himself, and he has already adjusted those numbers 3 times at the bottom of the post after commenters pointed out his faulty math.) He does generically cite the CDC as a source.
The
CDC says that:
Quote:
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In 2003, 3,919 women died from cervical cancer.
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That's deaths actually in the US (compared to 250,000 worldwide, according to the
National Cancer Institute.) I have a hard time believing that 4,000 out of roughly 150 million total population of women equals a 1:500 chance of cervical cancer death over one's lifetime, but I'd be happy to see the math.
Keep in mind though, that you have to compare equal populations--according to your link, there were roughly 750 cases of severe side effects (like blood clots and transverse myelitis) after 20.4 million doses. Multiply by a factor of 7.35 to see the number of side effects that would be seen if the entire population of women were vaccinated, and you've now got just over 5,500 women severely damaged by this vaccine, compared to under 4,000 who are dying from it. Some might say you should also multiply by three at this point, because one must get at least 2 more booster shots of the vaccine to retain immunity over the years, but on the other hand someone who's already been vaccinated once with no side effects is probably less likely to suffer side effects later on. Not impossible, but less likely. So now we're at somewhere more than 5,500, but less than 16,500. In the meantime, the number of deaths from the vaccine has also gone up to somewhere between 150 and 450 (using your site's numbers of 20 deaths) or somewhere between 320 and 970 (using my site's numbers of 44 deaths.)
Now also, don't forget that fully 30% of those 4,000 cervical cancer deaths are
caused by other types of HPV that are not included in the HPV vaccine. So really, only 2800 people are dying each year from the type of HPV that could be prevented by the vaccine. And the National Cancer Institute still notes that the majority of those could also be prevented by getting regular pap smears and sticking to a few monogamous relationships over one's lifetime.