John+M.+-+POSITION+PAPER


 * If you can cure cancer, why won't you? **

If there were a way to completely wipe out a disease, would you jump at the chance to get rid of it? Rick Perry, governor of Texas in 2008, stated that cervical cancer killed a total of 34,000 Texans alone in 2008 (EBSCOHost). 6.2 million people in the U.S. are affected by cervical cancer each year (ABC-Clio). In 2007, a vaccine was created to cure this disease called Gardasil. The vaccine only works for people who have not been infected with disease already. For the vaccine to work most effectively, boys and girls around the age of 13 should get the vaccine. Vaccines were created to prevent sickness and in some cases cure them and it should be necessary that people get these vaccines so the diseases are eliminated.

HPV, only recently discovered, is already affecting 6.2 million people in the United States alone and several million ore around the world (ABC-Clio). It doesn't necessarily kill all of these people because only about 30% of HPV viruses cause cervical cancer. Sadly, cervical cancer does kill over 30,000 people each year though (Perry). Cervical cancer on effects women because, obviously, only women have a cervix. However, it is possible for men to translate the disease to women so it is almost just as important for men to get the shot so that they do not have HPV. Gardasil is meant to be given to women, age 9 to 26, and also men, age 9 to 26.

Immediately following the discovery of this disease, cancer researchers started to develop a vaccine for it. Gardasil was originally created for women until it was found that cervical cancer can be transmitted from men into women. Gardasil is meant to be given to women, age 9 to 26, and also men, age 9 to 26 (Guardasil.com). Though Gardasil prevents HPV, it does not cure it which is why the ages recommended for the shots are so young. The vaccine has been saving well over 20,000 lives each year (ABC-Clio). The number has been increasing which shows that the number of people getting the vaccine is rising as well.

In 2007, a Texas governor decided to make it mandatory that 6th grade girls get the HPV vaccine to stop the cervical cancer problem in Texas. The governed himself is actually predicted to get prostate cancer because very generation of his family since 1850 has died from prostate cancer so he is most likely going to have a type of cancer. He knows how bad it is because he went through his dad's death of prostate cancer and all he is trying to do is prevent cancer for future generations (EBSCO Host). While giving a speech about how he is determined to make Texas the leading state in the search for a cure he said, "' I'm really serious about this. Don't pooh-pooh a disease that is killing 34,000 [Texans a year alone],'" (Rick Perry). It is completely reasonable to make this vaccine mandatory because of how many lives it saves and Governor Perry is off to a good start of making this a nationwide program.

Cervical cancer currently affects 6.2 million people each year. This disease comes from something called the human papillomavirus (HPV) and 70% percent of these 30 types of diseases cause the life-threatening cervical cancer (Marchini). Cervical cancer claims about 4,000 lives in the U.S. each year (ABC-Clio). This cancer is a sexually transmitted disease and can be spread fairly easy. A vaccine was only recently discovered for cervical cancer but saves around 22,000 lives each year (eLibrary). If more and more people start to get the vaccination, the disease will slowly die off and be gone in a matter of decades just as polio is now.

As you can see, vaccines have been very impactful solutions to these diseases. However, these vaccines are only taken through choice and that is why there are thousands of people that die each year from these viruses each year. If only everybody would receive the vaccines then the diseases would disappear.

In 1796 the vaccine was created by Edward Jenner, an English surgeon. He was concerned about the smallpox disease and noticed that cowpox was quite a similar disease. His idea was to take, "material from the cowpox sores of a young milkmaid and [scratch] it into the arm of a healthy 8-year-old boy," (eLibrary). Although it may sound gross, what this did was introduce the cowpox disease, which was very similar to smallpox, into the child's immune system. He got mildly sick with the disease but recovered quickly. In doing this, his immune system was introduced to the disease and it built up specific proteins to fight of the disease so that if it was ever introduced to him again, nothing would happen. Vaccines have been used since Edward Jenner's discovery and have been modified since then to cure other diseases such as polio and cervical cancer.

Polio arose in 1942 with 5,000 cases and jumped to 55,000 cases in 1949 (Kent). Then, by 1951 the number of cases decreased to around 28,000. However, from 1955 to 1956, cases dropped by 50 percent because of the discovery of the Salk vaccine (e-Library). It was proven later, in 1960 that the Salk vaccine could wipe out the paralytic polio entirely. It was wiped out because people became afraid and decided to get vaccinated. If a fear factor is what is needed to make people get the Gardasil vaccine, then people should just look at the basic facts that of people who are killed every year by this disease. That will scare them for sure.

Vaccines are a very important part of American lives. They have been a way to prevent diseases or even just to deal with them ever since they were invented in 1796. I believe that they are the best way, and pretty much the only way, to wipe out diseases. Polio was wiped out by vaccines and I think that vaccines that prevent life-threatening illnesses, like polio and cervical cancer, should be mandatory to receive at the age that is suited best for them. These shots would be provided by the government so they would be completely free and, "no charge would be placed on families for the vaccine," (Edelman). Many parents believe that for some vaccines, there is a direct correlation between the vaccines and their children having autism. However, as stated by a writer for CQ Researcher, there is not enough evidence to accept or decline the correlation between these vaccines and autism (Glazer) so parents should not come to the conclusion that these vaccines can cause autism. Some people say that the reactions to these shots outweigh the benefits of the shot. Several people ask the same question about the HPV vaccine, Gardasil. The question they ask is: Does it work? Most of the people who are asking this question are the parents of the teens who are recommended to take the shot. Since the vaccine has not been used for a very long time, there is not much feedback on side effects or how cancer-proof it is. Dr. Christian Fiala, a practitioner from Vienna, Austria, "asserts that HPV is not even itself responsible for causing cervical cancer, which makes the vaccine completely useless at accomplishing the very thing for which it was marketed," (Huff). He also exclaims that there is no proof of a relationship between HPV and cervical cancer.

If the vaccine is useless at accomplishing what it was made for as Dr. Fiala said, then why has this vaccine reduce the number of deaths since it was made? In 2012 the vaccine is estimated to prevent about 22,000 deaths related to cervical cancer and has saved around that number in previous years (ABC-Clio). The only reason it would not work is if the person was already sexually active and had contracted HPV which is likely to turn into cervical cancer. The vaccine has yet to fail in preventing cervical cancer so this makes it extremely preventable. An article written by Dr. Melissa Lingohr-Smith who has a Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology writes that, "The National Cancer Institute stated that studies have demonstrated that Gardasil prevents almost 100 percent of precancerous cervical cell growth that is caused by the particular HPV types that the vaccine targets," (Lingohr-Smith).

Many people also argue that their 1st amendment rights are violated when being forced to take this vaccine. The first amendment states that people have the right to free choice (1st Amendment). There have been several cases in which the parents of a minor have denied their child the option to get a certain vaccine or transplant. Their argument is that, "minors do not have the legal capacity to consent to medical treatment," and in turn say, "the law generally presumes that only parents have the authority to make medical decisions for their minor children and that in doing so they will act on their child's best interest," (Derish). On the other hand, many experts agree that the decision on who should make the final choice on whatever the matter may be should be made by the physician. The Journal of Pediatrics published an article called 'A proposal concerning Decisions to Forgo Life Sustaining Treatment for Young People.' This article came to the conclusion that, "the physician is obligated to determine the maturity level in the seriously ill juvenile and to facilitate the patient's self determination," (Derish). The author of the article that talks about this article writes for The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics.

The main argument, though, is that many people believe it could cause severe side effects or future diseases like autism. The vaccine was only released recently so there has not really enough known about it to see how much damage it could do. People's fears are that since there are vaccines similar to this one that have been mentioned to cause autism that this vaccine might do something just as dangerous. The vaccine most similar to this is the hepatitis B shot. A woman started fighting against this vaccine when, "her brother and a medical student who had worked for her developed severe complications following a series of hepatitis B shots," (Koch). Another shot that has been assumed to be the source of some problems is the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) shot. A study done by an English scientist showed that eight autistic children developed symptoms after receiving their MMR shots (Glazer). Some parents of autistic children still argue that this vaccine was the cause of their child's autism.