wonder how many of these pharma boys have kids? Just shows they are
uneducated!



Educated parents less likely to let daughters get HPV shots

Updated: Wed May. 05 2010 7:49:52 AM


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The Canadian Press

TORONTO - It might seem counterintuitive but it also appears to be true:
Parents with more education were less likely to get their daughters
vaccinated against HPV during the first year of British Columbia's free
school-based program, a new study shows.

The finding of the study, published Tuesday in the journal PLoS Medicine,
adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests vaccination efforts are
being eroded not by people who are under-educated, but by upper-middle class
folks with degrees.

"I think it's the combination of people who are used to making decisions,
people who believe they can become experts by reading things on the Internet
which would trump what public health officials or academics or doctors are
saying," vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit said when asked to comment on the
study.

"They're used to making choices in their jobs and in their life, one. And
two, they make those choices based on information. And the information that
one gets here probably is primarily through places like the Internet, which
is a source of both good and bad information about vaccines."

The study comes on the tail of another published Tuesday which showed that
there has been a sharp increase in the percentage of U.S. parents who are
refusing to vaccinate their children or delaying vaccination against the
advice of the medical community.

That study, presented at an international conference in Vancouver, found 39
per cent of parents refused or delayed vaccinations for their children in
2008, up from 22 per cent in 2003.

Offit, who is chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia, was not involved in either study.

The HPV study was conducted primarily by researchers at the British Columbia
Centre for Disease Control and the University of British Columbia.

The group surveyed parents of Grade 6 girls who had been eligible to get HPV
or human papillomavirus vaccine through a free, school-based program in B.C.
in the 2008-09 school year.

Lead author Dr. Gina Ogilvie said lots of studies had explored whether
parents intended to let their daughters get vaccinated, but the group wanted
to follow up to see what drove parents' decisions to grant or decline
permission for their daughters to get the shot when it was available.

About half of the 4,000-plus randomly selected households agreed to take
part. Just over 65 per cent of the daughters in those households had
received the vaccine; 35 per cent of the parents had refused permission.

Parents were asked to describe the primary reason behind their decision and
asked for secondary reasons as well.

Nearly half (47.9 per cent) of those who let their daughters get HPV shots
said they did so because they had confidence in the effectiveness of the
vaccine. Advice from a doctor and concern for the health of the daughter
also played into yes decisions.

Among the parents who said no, concern about vaccine safety was listed as
the major reason for the decision (29.2 per cent). A substantial portion -
15.6 per cent - felt their daughters were too young to get the vaccine and
listed that as their major reason.

When the researchers compared the families that said yes and those that said
no, interesting differences came to light.

Girls from two-parent households were less likely to have been given
permission to get the shot. And parents with more education were more likely
to have said no.

Ogilvie called it "the main surprise" of the study. "This is a flip from our
traditional understanding," she said.

But Offit said this has also been spotted by researchers looking into trends
in childhood vaccine rates.

A 2004 study by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control showed
children of black, single mothers with no college degrees were more likely
to be under-vaccinated - meaning they hadn't received all the recommended
shots.

But children who hadn't received any shots at all "tended to be white, to
have a mother who was married and had a college degree, to live in a
household with an annual income exceeding $75,000 and to have parents who
expressed concerns regarding the safety of vaccines and indicated that
medical doctors have little influence over vaccination decisions for their
children," said the study, published in the journal Pediatrics.

Offit said the trend is indeed a shift.

"The surprising part is that someone who would be better educated would be
less likely to get the vaccine," he said. "That's exactly the opposite of
what one saw say in the mid-1800s when smallpox vaccine was first required."

Ogilvie suggested a key lesson of her study for public health officials is
that they have to do a better job getting accurate information about the
safety and effectiveness of HPV vaccine to these types of parents.

"If this is where parents are getting information, we need to be there,"
Ogilvie said of the Internet.

"One of my big concerns is that in communities, very often ... educated
parents can be opinion leaders for other parents. So we need to also make
sure that those educated parents have at their disposal the balanced
information and evidence-based information so they can make their
decisions."