I am dis­mayed to learn that the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) strong­ly rec­om­mends that par­ents of chil­dren at­tend­ing RC schools should de­sist from al­low­ing their chil­dren to be vac­ci­nat­ed with Gar­dasil (I quote from their press re­lease). They cite "se­ri­ous dan­gers from use of the vac­cine, in­clud­ing death."

I am even more dis­mayed to find that the on­ly ref­er­ences and in­for­ma­tion con­cerned par­ents are re­ferred to by the CEBM are a ten­den­tious sin­gle-is­sue Face­book page and a Web site link that does not work. This sub­ject de­serves se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion and a ful­ly in­formed re­view of the best pos­si­ble avail­able da­ta. The US Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, the Eu­ro­pean Med­i­cines Agency and the Aus­tralian Ther­a­peu­tic Goods Ad­min­is­tra­tion are all world class, in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions staffed by epi­demi­ol­o­gy ex­perts who sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­view all ad­verse events re­port­ed af­ter vac­ci­na­tion ad­min­is­tra­tion. Col­lec­tive­ly, these in­sti­tu­tions an­swer to pop­u­la­tions num­ber­ing close to one bil­lion peo­ple.

Fol­low­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of around 60 mil­lion vac­cine dos­es, the Aus­tralian in­sti­tu­tion con­clud­ed in 2011, "no deaths di­rect­ly linked to the vac­cine have been re­port­ed in Aus­tralia, the USA or Eu­rope." I cau­tion those who have read some­thing dif­fer­ent on the In­ter­net to check the cred­i­bil­i­ty of their sources.

This is a se­ri­ous sub­ject, and for a num­ber of women it will be a mat­ter of life or death. Thus, I would urge se­ri­ous in­sti­tu­tions in pub­lic life to en­sure they help pro­vide sta­tis­ti­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed ev­i­dence to em­pow­er peo­ple to make in­formed de­ci­sions. Ig­no­rance and fear kills; so does cer­vi­cal can­cer. Gar­dasil does not. Those who have urged par­ents not to vac­ci­nate their chil­dren may be act­ing from the best of mo­tives, but they have suc­cumbed to a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly il­lit­er­ate form of "bland fun­da­men­tal­ism" (to para­phrase Dr Lennox Hon­ey­church) which will con­demn some young women to an ear­ly death.

Arthur Snell

British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go