Go to the dictionary or, pardon me, ‘Google,’ and look up the words MUCKRAKER and SUFFRAGETTE.

I was in a dreamy sub-awakened state when I was thinking about the courageous people in our past who spoke truth about a particular passion, and they were harmed, physically, emotionally, professionally.

This same feeling comes over me when I think of the HPV vaccine and what it represents.

During my decades long practice of medicine within the hallowed halls of the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, I was encouraged to speak with all my patients to have this expensive vaccine, three injections over time. I was to educate them that this vaccine prevents cervical cancer, a virulent cancer that ravaged my patients in the 1960s before Pap smears were commonly done as they are now.

This PAP test, I might add, has saved millions and millions of lives and has reduced the death rate significantly, actually by greater than 85%.  With yearly Pap smears, there is no reason women must die of cervical cancer.

Yet I was to have convinced my young teens and their mothers that this was a wise choice.  After all, sexual activity is beginning in early teen years, and in some cultures, pre-teen years.  And we are finally understanding that cervical cancer is caused by the HPV virus, so a vaccine sounds perfectly appropriate.

But understand that it protects against only two of the many subtypes (16 and 31), and two subtypes which cause genital warts (6 and 11).  Furthermore, its effects only last 5 years, so it must be repeated.  Now they are speaking about giving it to young boys!!  …and did one of our political candidates mandate this in his state recently?!

Years ago on a website, Health Freedom, I learned of the deaths caused by this vaccine.  Yet when I shared my concern with my partners, I was told these are rare circumstances.  Now, however, when I listen to the sage counsel and startling statistics of young women at the prime of their lives dying or becoming neurologically impaired – sometimes permanently – I must speak out my feelings.

My friend and colleague, Dr. Sherrill Sellman (www.whatwomenmustknow.com)  in her series, The Gardasil Files,  interviews scientists, pathologists, parents, whose lives have been affected by this vaccine.  I do urge you to listen, and form your own opinion.

My writing is not to stir you into fears about a conspiracy to keep us in the dark for self-serving reasons.  But rather, to remind you that we exist in two paradigms: that of the scientific approach, which is often tainted by agendas less than honorable, and that of the emerging belief that we are responsible for our health, and must question everything.  Again, somewhere in the middle exists that term I am always striving for: BALANCE.

Years ago, before understanding how horses were abused and their lives made miserable by making Premarin, the largest selling hormone, and at one time, most lucrative drug on the market, I nonetheless felt repulsion for it, that higher self again, suggesting that there must be a gentler way to create hormones for women.  And there is: soy beans, wild yams.  The pharmaceutical industry has been creative and found ways of patenting plant-based hormones, so we are making advances.  And this came about,  interestingly, from women speaking out against the harm done to our horse sisters (pregnant mares, not stallions were used).

Transparency is the new byword in all walks of life: religion, corporate America, politics, entertainment.  We are hungry to understand the underpinnings of how they work, and rise and how they fall.  The same with my profession, which is the only one I can intelligently speak on, having been immersed since 1961.

The drug Fosamax, which every woman is encouraged to take to prevent osteoporosis, the somewhat invented disease in America, now has a blackbox warning because its use causes non-healing fractures, besides destruction of the jaw bone and esophageal cancers.  Does this not cause pause, and the question which I always ask: what are you doing good for yourself?  Are you remembering that everything you put into your body becomes you, so eat healthy?  Are you moving those lovely bodies to engage your happy bubbles and keep strong and supple?

In every way, we are becoming awake to realize that we are responsible for our health.  Young women are responsible for maintaining boundaries and having discernment in how they use their bodies.  Sexual intimacy is a most powerful force, and engaging in intimacy without understanding the ramifications of this power is responsible for thousands of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, not the least of which is AIDS.

So, my beloveds, back to the original thesis: To Be …or HPV: do we get a vaccine that has been plunged into so much controversy, yet steadfastly recommended by my colleagues?  My suggestion is that we read the science not promoted by the industry producing the vaccine, but engage your skepticism by hearing what the authorities not reaping financial rewards are saying, and you decide.

I think medicine kick starts our drive, our dreams, but the true doctor within emerges like a butterfly to speak the truth that God has buried deep within.

HBL