But but but....Maher makes the same point he always makes, regardless of the issue..
So mainstream a thinker, so firmly rooted in his ideals, so much a tool.

Were fundies the only dissenters....No.
Are the reasons for the unwillingness for a mandatory vaccine purely religios and morality based?....No.
Is Bill an opportunitisc, yess-man for whatever network decides his is the voice of the writers, or funders, or politically motivated, or phatmaceutical companies? Yes, one of many that miss the fucking point!

The counter to the argument, obviously, "What is wrong with preventing cancer and std's?"

Nothing.
Do it with proper diet, listening to your body, and not fucking the afflicted without protection.....duh.
Oh, and by saying NO to drugs in a fucking bottle, if they do not serve to regulate your already fucked-up system, that you have destroyed with a poor diet, and bad habits.....

there is no protection against HPV other than the vaccine. condoms don't work, that's why ~80% of people are infected with the virus at some point in their lifetime. further, the seroprevalence of active chronic HPV infection among cervical cancer afflicted women has indicated an irrefutable link between the oncogene expression of the virus and development of cancer for many years. most of the so called mandatory vaccination initiatives have opt-out clauses built in.

The vaccine has some small chance of preventing an STD that has some small chance of causing cervical cancer. The corporate pharmaceutical company that invented it, Merck, wants it to be a mandatory vaccination because they want more than the billions of dollars they already have.

They, therefore, pay people like Maher, head of CDC Julie Gerberding, and Republican Gov. Rick Perry large sums of money to advance their cause.

Also note that Merck has said that the vaccine has only a 5 year widow of effectiveness so the target girls 9-12 years old will have the same risk of anyone else when they reach their late teens to early 20's - when they statistically become the most sexually active.

Some may argue that this is how what we neeeeeed, in a society ever increasing in number of units and number of uneducated units at that, is sold to the masses, by mandatory compliance:(yes the caveat to opt out is there, but to the derision of the rest of the folowers of the Pharma-Gods) those some have the primary motivation of money in mind, not the welfare of the people.....unless they want to keep us alive so we can pay them more....

reminds of some song lyrics...
Dead Kennedys
Trust Your Mechanic


TV invents a disease
You think you have
So you buy our drugs
And soon you depend on them
Pain is in your mind
Gotcha comin' back for more
Again and again and again and again
Gonna rip you off
Rip you off

Doctor says you need surgery now
Feelin' good 'til the side effects
Fuck up something else
You're ensnared by the medicine man
Paying up the ass
Again and again
Gonna rip you off

Trust your mechanic to mend your car
Bring it in to his garage
He tightens and loosens a few spare parts
One thing's fixed, another falls apart
And the rich eat you

A magazine says your face don't look quite right
Unless you wear our brand new wonder creme tonight
Never look right again
Unless you grease your skin
Again and again and again and again
Gonna rip you off

Told you're depressed
So of course you see the psychiatrist
Right when you hit your neuroses' roots
He confuses you
He fucks your head up worse
Gotcha feeling helpless
You're comin' back for more
Again and again
Gonna rip you off
Rip you off

Trust your mechanic
To make you well
You're seeing an awful lot of him now
The quicker he makes your life fall apart
The more money you put in his pockets

Trust your mechanic
To plug your holes
Trust him to make more
Somewhere else
Trust your mechanic
He'll always come through
And rip you off

I'm pretty baffled at the ignorance on display here regarding such a simple issue. The vaccine does not have "some small chance of preventing the STD", it has near 100% chance at preventing infection from the subtypes that it protects against. And the only people saying the "vaccine has only a 5 year window of effectiveness so the target girls 9-12 years old will have the same risk of anyone else" are conservative newspaper columnists and the like who actually seem to be hoping the vaccine doesn't work so they don't have to worry about explaining sex to little jane. I mean the mind just boggles here. The vaccine has only been around for 5 years and in that time it appears to confer near perfect (non-diminishing) protection against the virus. There is almost no reason to suspect the vaccine doesn't confer VERY long term protection as most other vaccines do.

Gluonium, read up dude: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine

It's actually 4.5 years effectiveness.

Don't be a tool, get the facts.

Enzo, you're mental if you believe Bill Maher is paid by the pharmaceutical industry.
If we have the means to safely prevent HPV, there is no reason we shouldn't.

And your argument about the minimum of 4.5 years effectiveness?
Women have to go see gynecologists on a regular basis - there's no reason a booster shot could not be administered before the vaccine loses its potency.

Do you tie your own shoes in the morning enzo? Because if so, I wonder how you manage. The article clearly says A MINIMUM OF 4.5 years effectiveness because that is time that has elapsed since the first innoculation and therefore that is the maximum time over which we can absolutley guarantee protection. The paper from which this figure comes is titled "Sustained efficacy up to 4.5 years of a bivalent L1 virus-like particle vaccine against human papillomavirus types 16 and 18: follow-up from a randomised control trial.". To then extrapolate from this, as you apparently do, that "Merck has said that the vaccine has only a 5 year window of effectiveness", well daftness doesn't begin to describe it I'm afraid. Do you understand the difference between the word "only" and "at least"? There is no more rational reason to expect the protection the vaccine confers will inexplicably cease in all vaccinated people tomorrow as there is reason to expect that the sun will go dark on the same day.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Contentious issue. I'm all for preventing HPV - I'm not down with my kids getting foreign bodies injected directly into their bloodstream.

Don't want to open the whole thimerosal, mercury, monkey tissue, formadahyde "hot lots" issue - but - whoops, just did.

I can certainly understand being wary about giving any injection to your kids, but we should be careful not confuse an absence of injection with an absence of risk to health. After all, there is only the absence of small risk from the vaccine itself if it is not received but the much larger risk contraction of the disease for which the vaccince confers protection of course still remains. Its not a pleasant decision, but if its of any use I think its worth noting that (arguments as to whether it ever caused harm in the first place aside) thimerosal has been eliminated in all childhood vaccinations (in the west anyway). Also, the monkey/vaccine origin of HIV theory has been roundly invalidated by phylogenetic analysis of the decoded HIV genome.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I wasn't refering to HIV - just that vaccines were cultured on rhesus monkey tissue.

My problem with Western medicine in general is that it's so susceptible to hubris. Over and over it's been "trust us we're doctors" - and then things like thalidomide happen. The fact that this current vaccine has only been in people for 4.5 years is scary.

Maybe it's my dislike for authority in general showing through - but I distrust the medical establishment thoroughly. You can guess my views on pharmaceutical companies.

You can say that "oh, well they've stopped putting mercury in vaccines - so don't worry". But what in fuck's sake made them think it would be a good idea in the first place to inject kids with mercury? It doesn't inspire confidence in their current descision making.

The mercury was used as a perservative - it was taken out when the whole autism flap happened (I'm not saying I believe it's a cause - the data seems inconclusive - but damn it can't help!). So they replaced it with another chemical perservative with a hard to pronounce name. Fantastic - mission accomplished - and er ... no thanks.

Thimerosal was originally added in the thirties because it worked so EXTREMELY well as a preservative for vaccine mixtures. Refrigeration wasn't nearly as available back then as now and if your vaccines became contaminated with bacteria or fungi on thier often very long hot journey to the patient, it may be rendered useless or you could infect the patien with harmful pathogens. So preservatives are a must for any vaccine. The original choice of a mercury containing compound as the preservative? Who knows why that was the case but it was probably assumed that since it was such a very tiny dose it would be harmless (one can of tuna contains roughly the same ~30 micrograms of mercury as an old hepatitis B vaccine). We should remember that it was preservatives like thimerosal that allowed, for instance, the smallpox vaccine to be delivered to the ends of the Earth and which permitted the eradication of that horrific disease. I suppose scientists and doctors could be considered "an authority" but I would argue that its a different kind of authority than the conventional ones we're all familliar with. Specifically, in that with science, all the cards are on the table, it's very reliance on sharing information as a means to flourish allows it to be transparent to the public. Though admittedly, the same of course unfortunately can't be said of pharmacertical companies as you rightly point out and they need strict oversight.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

You raise some good points gluonium - and you are very well informed. I would argue though that many cards are not out on the table for the average medical consumer. And when drugs or vaccines are given out - it may not be in the best interest of us.

Results are tweaked or downplayed from drug trials and there's the patronage system between pharmaceutical companies and doctors/ hospitals. (ask Merck & Co)

To believe that drug companies, hospitals, medical associations and your government are open about the medicines they create, dispense and approve is folly.

Your point about the tuna is well-made, but you have to admit there is a differene between ingesting chemicals into an organ that is used to dealing with partially edible/inedible substances and injecting directly into your blood stream where chemicals may be absorbed into tissue before hitting our body's filter system.

I should confess to having a very great deal of trust in science, scientific inquiry and evidence based medicine but its probably because I do science and I know scientists and so I'm comfortable with these things as a matter of course; I feel my trust has been duly earned. So your criticism of all the cards not being on the table for the average medical consumer may be right in that the average person is not equipped (nor should they be expected to be so equipped) to understand the exceptionally technically dense material of, for instance, the publication detailing the exact mechanism of action in the case of this particular vaccine which is called "Prophylactic quadrivalent human papillomavirus (types 6, 11, 16, and 18) L1 virus-like particle vaccine in young women: a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled multicentre Phase II efficacy trial.". I'm not sure how to solve that problem, as most people seem to care little for hard science to say nothing of the years of study required to understand a paper like that.

I really do think though, that drug companies, the government, medical associations, and hospitals (in that ascending order of trustworthyness with drug companies at the very bottom of the scale) are for the most part very open in the literature about the underlying mechanism, theory, screening and manufacture of the medicines they create. As I mentioned before it has been unequivocally shown that pharma giants will lie to keep unsafe drugs on the market and that is outrageously despicable in the extreme but I have to say that our governmental oversight of these corporations in the form of the FDA, Health Canada and Britains MHRA is fairly good, bad drugs are pulled quickly, coverups are punished (not harshly enough but that's another story) and regulation is pretty strict. The bad old thalidomide days, thankfully appear to be mostly over (back then double blind testing of drugs didn't even exist!) due directly to this oversight safety.

If its not already obvious, I REALLY want this vaccine and would gladly shell out the $350 for it in exchange for never having to worry about getting nasty gross genital warts and a vastly reduced risk of naughty bits cancer (HPV causes a large portion of anal and penile cancers) but no one will give it to me because its only been approved for use in females and it would be an off label use. And why would that be? Because Merck could get the vaccine to market faster and make money quicker if they tested only on females to begin with in order to prove efficacy in its largest target market. Like I said, I'm no huge fan of these companies either but a reasoned, dispassionate and ballanced view toward thier actions overall is what's most judicious I feel.

Sorry for the flippancy Gluonium, you do seem to have a better handle on things, it just gets me going ya know? Try opening a Woman's Day magazine and you have page after page after page of drug adverts all cleverly designed to sucker people into thinking there's a drug for everything. All with the "Ask your doctor to see if ___ is right for you" bs.

All this is business as usual, but when the law steps in and is intending to FORCE people to take these drugs, then I go nuts.

I don't seriously think Maher was paid to say what he did, it just angers me that he went that way and my guess is that it was the easiest way to make entertaining. I know for a fact that Perry was paid though.

We are all paid and played....the insight from researchers and lab-brats must come from folks like gluonium and god love em, they enjoy it, and are wired for the work.....

Toxins are toxins, small doses a or large, and if you are in a risk group for contracting whatevrthefk, of course, get the vaccine...or become aware, and un-risky...and for crissakes, worry about cancer before it is understood???

the issue here, mandatory: Immediate red flags arise....
follow the money to it not being spent efficiently, and lining pockets from the top down...

change the motivation, the pardigm ,and suddenly you have cures for disease, longevity systems, free energy, etc.....What disease is the most deleterious to mankind??? Lack of Knowledge....that ain,t book learnin' either...It is, perhaps, remembering how to flourish by living right...back to basics.

Let the free market decide. No mandatory or "free" shots for anyone.

Maher remains unfunny. There's no vaccine for his enduring failure to make me laugh.

End of line.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I knew it - Quantumushroom is really the MCP.

awesome tron reference.

*politics

Gold Star invocations (politics) cannot be executed by calvados because calvados is not a Gold Star member - sorry.

*politics

Video added to politics channel (politics called by gold star member ant)

Yes, let's not have mandatory vaccines like choggie suggests. It's all just a conspiracy! Like those evil Polio vaccines we were forced to take when we were younger. Seen anyone with polio lately around the US lately? Of course not...no polio, no need for the vaccine! Just follow the money, who's profiting from this un-needed polio vaccine? Also look at smallpox, no smallpox anywhere either. Just these massive faceless corporations looking to make billions of dollars!

Don't trust any science or vaccines or any doctor. If the good lord didn't want you catch any of these diseases...he wouldn't have made them in the first place!

/heavy heavy HEAVY sarcasm off

For those that don't want to vaccinate yourself against diseases because you think it's some conspiracy, then don't. We need the space on the planet and these diseases help weed out the ignorant and pig-headed people from the crowd.

The vaccine only prevents the more virulent strains of the virus, not all of them. Condoms don't prevent it, because it's transmitted by skin-to-skin contact. (balls on vulva etc)

Best line of defense, as far as my experience has shown me, is educate oneself, have an impeccable diet and reduced-stress lifestyle, regular pap-smears and if you do get the virus, lazer treatment, although painful, does an excellent job of getting rid of it.

*latenight

Adding video to channels (Latenight) - requested by eric3579.

Most women have HPV! it's reported by STDromance.com that about 70 million people with STD!~

*dead

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by jimnms.