HPV Risks vs Cancer Risks vs Gardasil Risks
The Real Risk is the Vaccine!

Submitted by Peter Anderson
January 2008

After my girlfriend got an HPV vaccine, I did some calculations about the chances of getting HPV-related cancer and came to some interesting conclusions about Gardasil. I'm studying to become a scientist so I put Gardasil to a little math test. In this test, I give the HPV-virus the benefit of every doubt in all information I've found and create a "worst case scenario" of its cancer causing potential.

What I found is the risk of Gardasil-related death is greater than the risk of death from HPV-related cancer. Here’s how I figured this out:

  • Popular estimates say that 80% of all people will contract one kind of HPV during their lives.
  • In over 90% of cases, HPV is cleared by immune system with no medical treatment necessary.
  • Only two types of HPV out of over a 100 types are cancer-related.
  • Less than 10% of cancer-related HPV infections lead to cancer.
  • Almost all cancers will get detected and removed following pap-tests leaving maybe 1% that go undetected and untreated.

Now, if you are in a monogamous relationship, and since the vaccine doesn't offer protection if you already are infected, let's calculate odds using a hypothetical case of getting infected by sex outside a monogamous relationship. Keep in mind, calculations are based on a worst case scenario, the actual chance of infection or cancer would be much less.

There is 80% chance that you will have sex with a man who has HPV, a 10% he will not clear HPV naturally, a 10% that you won't clear HPV yourself, a 2% chance that the HPV you have is a cancer-type HPV, a 10% chance that the HPV you have gives you cancer, and a 1% chance that that cancer you have won't be detected.

Using these worst case scenario calculations (0.8 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.02 x 0.1 x 0.01 = 0.00000016, or 0.000016%), you have a 1 in 6.25 million chance of developing cancer related to HPV.

If you consider there have been 3 Gardasil-related deaths in the USA, and about 2 million vaccines distributed there, this gives you a 0.00015% death-rate, which is almost 10 TIMES HIGHER than the death rate from HPV-related cancer!