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  • 2016-01-06 (xsd:date)
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  • FALSE: One-Third of Doctors Won't Recommend Gardasil HPV Vaccine (en)
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  • In early January 2015, social media users began sharing links to articles about an item published in the journal Pediatrics, with many of their posts claiming a study had indicated a third of pediatricians refused to recommend the Gardasil HPV vaccine to patients. A popular iteration from Facebook, through which many readers were only exposed to comments and excerpts lacking context, misconstrued the Pediatrics item's assertions, implying that a significant number of doctors didn't recommend the vaccine due to adverse side effects. That, in turn, created the impression the doctors were shunning Gardasil over rumors about its safety. A popular excerpt described doctors as increasingly hesitant to recommend Gardasil due to the purportedly high amount of adverse side effects described in the quoted material: Not all social media users were fooled by the sleight of hand, however, and some reporting was clearer on the source material's findings: The material on which both news articles and inaccurate rumors were based originated with the February 2016 edition of Pediatrics. The item in question, titled PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIANS' PERSPECTIVES ABOUT HPV VACCINE, didn't describe its method of research as a study. Also, the published material clearly took the perspective that Gardasil vaccination rates appeared to be suboptimal and tried to determine why doctors might not be recommending the vaccine to patients consistently: The article concluded by noting: A 4 January 2016 Associated Press article reported on the research's in-depth findings: In short, it was true that researchers surveyed 600 doctors and that the result of that survey appeared in a February 2016 Pediatrics article about Gardasil vaccination rates. However, the study found the only thing about which doctors were hesitant was parental objection, not vaccine safety, and that a secondary cause of their hesitation was an underestimation of teen sexual activity rates. A number of social media items inaccurately suggested that a third of doctors had expressed reservations the efficacy and/or safety of Gardasil itself, even though the Pediatrics article plainly stated that was not the case. (en)
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