Im 16 and im about to get the HPV vaccine, this is for vaccinators, not for anti-vacs.?

The Gardasil (HPV) vaccine is completely safe and has been improved over the earlier version. A possible sore arm for a few hours is usually the worse one suffers. It is usually given to 12 year olds, male and female, (in Australia) with a second dose some 6 months later.

Your science teacher is a poor science teacher. They should be teaching science. Science involving experiment, observation and then looking at the numbers before reaching a conclusion. That is the scientific principle. What isn't the scientific principle is gossip and unverified testimonials.

You should not be making decisions based on what a neighbors friend of a friend told another friend about.

The vaccine is safe not only based on the reporting of all events but also based on the investigations of such reports. There have been many, many people vaccinated and so the numbers are known and if people were getting paralyzed and dying at an alarming rate then the vaccine would have been pulled off the market and yes some experimental vaccines have been pulled off the market because they were unsafe. That one is quite relatively safe.

Years ago there was a story on 60 Minute about people who were injured by car seat belts. They were in the back seat, so no 3-point belt, just a seat belt. The cars they were in crashed into something and their body was thrown forward violently but their legs and pelvises were held firmly by the seatbelt, and the result was that their spines were broken down about waist level and they were paralyzed.

Now you think 'What a horrible thing to happen!' And I agree. But the thing is, there are maybe 5 people this happened to, and you weight that against the TENS OF THOUSANDS of people whose lives were saved by seatbelts just in that year. So I'll continue to wear my seatbelt.

Vaccines are the same way. Some people are killed by vaccines, but that's just extremely rare. Weigh that against the ENORMOUS success we've had in preventing horrible epidemics. When I was a kid (in the 50s) everyone knew someone who had a kid with polio in their family. We had polio victims in my school, and you could tell in a second because they were on crutches, had braces on their legs, etc. It was just a horrible thing. Going back another 50 years, a married couple might have six kids hoping to raise 3 to their teen years. More than a third of all kids died before age 12 from horrible childhood diseases--diphtheria, TB, german measles, whooping cough, tetanus, really HORRIBLE diseases. That's all gone now because of vaccines. (I mean these diseases still exist but they are very rare! Do you know anyone who had one of them? You would have, just 50 years ago.)

Now the thing about vaccines is that they don't work well if only some people get them. To wipe out a disease, as we have with all these terrible diseases, you need to have like 90% of kids vaccinated. So we make it a law. It would be really wrong for the govt. to FORCE medicine on people, but we allow it in this case because of the 'greater good'.

HPV is a pretty bad disease. Not as bad as what we used to have to fight (thank God) but still bad enough that we force vaccines on kids in school so it won't spread. Yeah, there's some risk, but you'd incur more risk driving 100 miles in a car, or walking across the street against the light.

Yes, it's safe, take a read of what's going on in Ireland right now and be glad you're getting vaccinated

Almost every school gives these out every year and in my personal experience the worst I’ve heard about HPV vaccines was my friend who fainted from the needle but she faints all the time. It hurts and your arm goes stiff for a bit but it’s safe.