Gardasil IS fantastic. Thanks to those of you who've got your facts straight on it, like Weedhound and Katyowns (always reliable voices of medical reason and sanity here).

You who mistrust vaccines need to spend one day, or maybe only a few hours, with one of the diseases they prevent. You'd change your tune quickly. No one can fully appreciate the prevention till you see what happens without it, and that's a hard thing to do with diseases that have almost been abolished because of vaccines. You're having to put faith in something you essentially can't see.

Gardasil vaccine is a wonderful advance in preventing a disease, but it's important that we be clear it doesn't cure cervical cancer. It immunizes against four of the major strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV) that, if women contract them through sexual contact, cause 70% of cervical cancers. So it prevents the HPV viruses that would later cause cancer by inoculating the recipient's body and causing its immune response to see those viruses as something she's already been exposed to, which prevents her from contracting them later from a sexual partner or spouse.

Any criticism that Gardasil is not to be trusted because it's man-made is ridiculous. The fact that it's man-made makes the inoculation/disease-prevention possible, and vaccination employs the very same process through which people develop natural immunities to certain viral diseases after they've contracted them.

There are no major problems with the vaccine other than some site reactions and soreness from the injections themselves, which all vaccines from the flu shot to the pneumonia vaccine have. A site reaction is a heck of a lot easier to deal with than a deadly cancer.

I believe everyone should get their daughters these vaccines and, if you're female and within the age range of up to 26 or 27, get them yourselves. I hope they can soon develop a similar vaccine that prevents HPV infection and transmission in young men. If I had a daughter, she'd have already had those immunizations. I have a son instead, and if and when the male version of the vaccine becomes available, I'll have him at the head of the line to get it.