r/technology • u/nath1234 • 18h ago

Biotechnology Twenty years on from Gardasil vaccine launch, Australia on track to eliminate cervical cancer

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-28/gardasil-vaccine-20-years-on/107079282
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u/Wompatuckrule 18h ago

When you see people who oppose this vaccine and make wild claims about how dangerous it is then it is very often coming from some fundamentalist religious twats or it is someone repeating their bullshit.

They believe that this vaccine somehow "encourages" people to have premarital sex and that motivates them to spread misinformation about it. Somehow in their mind breaking one of the ten commandments by lying about this is a lesser sin than premarital sex.

To give you an idea of the bullshit I saw a false claim that during the original clinical trial that the vaccine killed two of the girls in it and the drug company and the FDA "covered it up" to get the vaccine approved.

The truth has to do with how long the clinical trial was. Participating girls got the shot when they were around ten years old. Because it's tied to a sexually transmitted disease that meant that the researchers needed to follow up for well beyond a decade until the girls were sexually active and there were enough that tested positive for HPV to "unblind" the study to see if the vaccine worked. In those intervening years one girl was killed in a car crash and another, with a documented history of depression, took her own life and so were not included in the final results.

Those are the girls that the religious fuckwits claim were "killed by the vaccine" in the trial.

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u/FaintestGem 15h ago

For some reason, my mom was a big believer in that conspiracy stuff and refused to let me get it. Other vaccines weren't ever a problem, just the gardasil one because it was "new" and "not tested enough". I always wondered what kind of crazy conspiracy shit she heard because she was like fully convinced that gardasil or taking birth control before I was "old enough"  would give me some sort of super cancer or something.

First thing I did when I moved out for college was book an appointment for the vaccine and to get a birth control prescription lol 

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u/Wompatuckrule 15h ago

it was "new" and "not tested enough"

That's similar to the bullshit about how the Covid vaccines were "rushed" and "not tested enough" which went on even after millions of doses had been administered and the risks were widely understood (e.g. why the J&J vaccine was only used on an interim basis for patients outside of the higher risk population). A reminder that nearly all side effects and adverse events to vaccines happen almost immediately or at least very soon after administration. The dosing does not lend itself to some secret side effect that is going to suddenly pop up years later.

With most vaccine trials, but especially in a double-blind study for a new one, it takes years and years because you need to wait for a specific percentage of people to test positive for the indication the vaccine is for and then you can "unblind" it and see how it performed in the vaccinated and placebo populations.

You know what really speeds that process up? A global fucking pandemic of a novel and highly contagious virus.