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Cancer jab or safer sex?
• A JULY 21 Channel 4 Dispatches programme about planned mass vaccinations for teenage girls – The Jab That Can Stop Cancer – left me with concerns.
This vaccine, to protect against cervical cancer, was not promoted via health professionals, but gained interest from mothers through an emotive campaign by the drug companies who sell it: “even if it saves only one life, that life might be your daughter’s.”
It seems research for this vaccine was conducted on 15-year-old girls whose monthly hormonal cycles are probably well established. This vaccine is to be given to 12-year-olds who may have started menstruating but whose fertility cycles will be in a crucial stage of physiological development. What research has been done on the impact this vaccine may have on their future reproductive health?
Healthcare professionals like me, know there is a serious crisis with increasing rates of all sexual infections, in not only our 16 to 24-year-olds but in older age groups too. Would it not be more morally and financially sensible to spend the half a billion pounds allocated for the vaccines on mass, age appropriate, safer sex campaigns? Safer sex can help protect against sexually transmitted diseases as well as unwanted pregnancies.
Some media have reported ethical concerns that the safer sex message encourages teenage promiscuity but most research implies the opposite.
Two great resources available for parents and teenagers can be found at www.teenagehealthfreak. org and www.likeitis. org.uk
CABBY LAFFY, NW5
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