To vaccinate or to not?

Okay, this is my first ever post with the label 'HEALTH'. (Does this mean I'm getting older that I start to care about health?)

Well, you see, I was thinking of going for HPV vaccination quite some time ago but did not take any action because I was too distracted by my research experiments that time. Just 2 or 3 days ago, our health minister announced that the government might want to give free vaccination for all 14 years old school girls next year onwards. So, I was considering seriously perhaps I should really go for those jabs since government also 'feels' the importance.

I decided to do a bit of research online about cervical cancer vaccination (you see, scientists tend to do a bit of literature research before they do anything) and found out that there were actually many news or reports about the side effects of these vaccinations. Some resulted in paralysis. Gee... that's serious. And late afternoon yesterday while I was waiting for my agarose gel, I browsed through the net and discovered that a British girl was dead after HPV vaccination. Oh oo, now that's really very SERIOUS!

I mean the vaccination is supposed to prevent me from dying from the cancer but now there are actually people dying due to the vaccination itself? Although there's no evidence yet to show that the vaccination directly causes these side effects or deaths, I personally feel it's risky to take it now. I mean the vaccination is only effective against 2 or 4 types of HPV virus and there are altogether 15 high risk HPV types. If an individual has previously been in contact with any of the HPV type, the vaccine will be useless. Coincidentally, I received an email from friend with links about HPV vaccination (click here to watch the YouTube) and I think I'm clearer now about my decision.

I'm not a medical doctor, so whatever that I wrote here is just my personal view. Yet, being a molecular biology student working on cancer, I knew that cancer is a multifactorial and multistep disease. I guess what is more important for me now is to start living a healthy lifestyle.

For more info about cervical cancer, click here.