HPV and Gardasil

HPV, and the vaccine Gardasil, have been in the news a lot lately.  A few weeks ago (yeah, I’m bad about getting to these), I received the following question:
Disclaimer:  I’m not asking you to practice medicine.  
What are your thoughts about Gardasil?  In your opinion, has it been thoroughly tested?  Are there side effects besides making you an incurable slut, according to the 700 club or whoever?  I’m going in for a GYN appointment soonish (a few months) and I plan to ask about it then too but I want a second (zeroth?) opinion too.  And I trust you and I know you and all that jazz.  🙂
You know, it’s good that you are not asking me to practice medicine, because I am not a doctor and I’d probably screw you up more than otherwise.  All I can pretty much tell you is what I know about HPV and Gardasil.  From there, you gotta make your own decision.

Cool Post Alert!

There’s a great post up at Neurophilosophy on a stage II clinical trial for antidepressants.  The drug, BCI-540, stimulate neuronal growth.  Right now it’s hypothesized that antidepressants work, not via direct serotonin increases in the brain (in the case of SSRIs), but my promoting growth of neurons in the brain over a long period of time.  This new drug could circumvent all the side effects of SSRIs by causing neuronal growth directly.  I was going to do a post in the nearish future (one I get through all the other stuff I have to do) on SSRIs and BDNF, but for right now I definitely recommend heading over the read Neurophilosophy!