The Media Can Be Very Irresponsible When Reporting About Vaccines

[Flannel Boy]

In the UK, teenage girls are being given HPV Vaccines to prevent cervical cancer and the 700 deaths it causes each year. Instead of focusing on the good of the vaccine, the Daily Mail publishes an article to scare parents. From the very begging of the article, the paper asserts--as fact--that the vaccine is causing major side effects, stressing the most attention grabbing reactions.

  Concerns over safety of cervical cancer vaccine after 1,300 girls experience adverse side-effects

More than 1,300 schoolgirls have experienced adverse reactions to the controversial cervical cancer jab.
Doctors have reported that girls aged just 12 and 13 have suffered paralysis, convulsions and sight problems after being given the vaccine.

The Natural News echos the Daily Mirror in article from two days ago:
http://www.naturalnews.com/026293.html

1300 Girls Harmed by HPV Vaccines in UK; Bizarre Side Effects Like Paralysis and Epilepsy

More than 1,300 girls in the United Kingdom have experienced negative reactions to the government-mandated Cervarix vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV), according to adverse events reports collected from doctors by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

But according to the MHRA, the group that released these numbers, most of the reported side-effects were minor and short-lived and the more serious side-effects may not have even been caused by the vaccine. The MHRA said that some of the reactions "were due to the injection process and not the vaccine itself." And other more severe reactions "may have been coincidental events." And the organization is correct: just because someone suffers from an ailment, doesn't mean it was caused by the vaccine. These reports don't isolate cause and effect, a fact newspapers should stress to their readers.

Even if all the alleged reactions were caused by the vaccine, the harm is still outweighed by the benefits of the vaccine--the prevention of 700 deaths a year.

[Phoenix Dark]

the harm is still outweighed by the benefits of the vaccine--the prevention of 700 deaths a year.

Yea, but you could get paralyzed!!

[Bildi]

Yeah, I think I'd rather die than not be able to fap for a week.

I'm glad I don't have a cervix.

[Flannel Boy]

the harm is still outweighed by the benefits of the vaccine--the prevention of 700 deaths a year.

Yea, but you could get paralyzed!!

and Anorexia.

one girl was reported as developing anorexia.

Must have been the vaccine.

[Phoenix Dark]

I wonder what we'd find if we followed the money trail behind the anti HPV vaccine propaganda

[demi]

Yeah, I think I'd rather die than not be able to fap for a week.

I'm glad I don't have a cervix.

Men

[Flannel Boy]

I wonder what we'd find if we followed the money trail behind the anti HPV vaccine propaganda

The Illuminati?
Order of Skull and Bones?
Jews?

[Fresh Prince]

I know things are bad when Malek starts posting current affairs news.

[Flannel Boy]

Flannel Girl [X]
The Beatles [X]
Current Affairs [X]

[Fresh Prince]

It is the most subtle of the signs, yet probably the most important.

[Mandark]

Not surprised that this came from the Mail.  It's a conservative paper with the largest percent of female readers out of the major British dailies.  So you've got a (presumably government-administered) vaccine being given to girls to make sex safer and it's naturally a target for them.

But yeah, reporting is disturbingly shoddy in general.  Almost every person I know who has been interviewed for a story in the paper (outside local-color puff pieces) has been upset by how the reporter botched either the story or their specific quote.

[Flannel Boy]

There was some controversy when the HPV Vaccine was brought into Ontario schools. Some radio hosts and columnists explicitly said they didn't like the vaccine because it would remove a reason for girls to abstain from sex. In essence, they wanted to use cervical cancer to prevent girls and women from having sex, to punish them into chastity.   

[Joe Molotov]

If you're not scared of something, then the media's not doing their job. "Ooooooo, Cervical Cancer!" but oh wait now we have this vaccine, but "Oooooooo, paralysis!"

[Fresh Prince]

So this is stopping Flannel Girl from seeing you? 

[Flannel Boy]

If you're not scared of something, then the media's not doing their job. "Ooooooo, Cervical Cancer!" but oh wait now we have this vaccine, but "Oooooooo, paralysis!"

The following headlines don't sell papers: "The benefits of the HPV vaccine vastly outweigh the potential risks" and "Cause and Effect Relationships are Difficult to Prove, So We Will Refrain from Inferring One."

[Flannel Boy]

So this is stopping Flannel Girl from seeing you? 

If only she received the vaccine when she was a teen!

[Kara]

There was some controversy when the HPV Vaccine was brought into Ontario schools. Some radio hosts and columnists explicitly said they didn't like the vaccine because it would remove a reason for girls to abstain from sex. In essence, they wanted to use cervical cancer to prevent girls and women from having sex, to punish them into chastity.   

It's a lovely sentiment, don't you think?

[Mandark]

There was some controversy when the HPV Vaccine was brought into Ontario schools. Some radio hosts and columnists explicitly said they didn't like the vaccine because it would remove a reason for girls to abstain from sex. In essence, they wanted to use cervical cancer to prevent girls and women from having sex, to punish them into chastity.

Same thing's happened with state-level HPV vaccinations here.

It's a microcosm of the logic behind social conservatism.  Pleasure-seeking behavior is inherently immoral, and we need to preserve the adverse consequences to keep people in line.

So it's important not to vaccinate girls against HPV, give rescue kits to junkies, hand out free condoms, etc.  After all, people get AIDS for a reason.

Then there's this:

Young girls had an array of birth control devices. There was the shame of being an unmarried mother; marriage was still seen as the ‘natural’ environment for a child to grow up in, thus ‘maternity benefits’ were only available on your husband’s National Insurance number — no husband, no benefits. There was the time honoured method of ‘keeping your legs crossed’, primitive but effective. Rape was an issue then as now, countered by asking and expecting a brother or respectable friend to ‘walk you home’.

The arguments in favour of the Abortion Act were a product of the feminist movement, women were seen as victims, no longer responsible for their choices. In hindsight, it was an early example of the cult of victim-hood for all. The mini skirt arrived, and women demanded the right to walk home alone and apparently, by the mores of contemporaneous society, half dressed. The Abortion Act would remove the consequences of their actions. Not all women could or would have an abortion. The government decided to abolish the consequences of that choice - in future these ‘victims’ would be given a council flat, and benefits to remove any disparity between them and women who had made different choices.

Women need to take responsibility for their slutty clothes and their scandalous unaccompanied travel.  Yep.

[Flannel Boy]

Burkas for all; abortions for none.

The logic is consistent:

You did something I disprove of, such as wearing a short skirt, having sex, taking drugs.
Your decisions led to some negative consequences, such as rape, pregnancy, addiction, or poverty
Those consequences can be partially ameliorated.
Fuck you!

[Human Snorenado]

From the very begging of the article

The real tragedy of this thread is that it went several days and a Malek edit of the op without anyone pointing out this Arvie-ism.  Which one is which again?

[Dickie Dee]

The one thing I've never understood about this finger waving about female sexuality is who are all the "boys will be boys" young men with free rein supposed to be fucking, the village goat?

[Mandark]

The one thing I've never understood about this finger waving about female sexuality is who are all the "boys will be boys" young men with free rein supposed to be fucking, the village goat?

I know this one!

The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother.

The virgin-whore dichotomy just makes things so much simpler, don't you think?

[Flannel Boy]

The real tragedy of this thread is that it went several days and a Malek edit of the op without anyone pointing out this Arvie-ism.  Which one is which again?

It happens.

[Flannel Boy]

Mandark the behavior isn't totally irrational; men don't want to be cuckolded.

[Mandark]

Neither do chicks, generally speaking.

The relevant point is Kass writing, in the year 2005, that women and only women should be stigmatized for having premarital sex.  I still don't know how he submitted that without thinking "goddamn I'm an ass."

[Don Flamenco]

awesome, like the "vaccines gave my kids autism" crowd need more fuel.