John Crown (Independent)
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I will try to contain myself. Uniquely, I am probably the only person in this room who has ever had to tell somebody that she had cervical cancer and might die from it or might never have children again as a result of treatment. Uniquely in this room, I have heard people with tear-streaked eyes question whether they had this disease because they were infected with the virus. I would do all in my power to save any one of those people from having cancer, provided the safety benefit ratio showed it was effective. Clearly, the safety benefit ratio shows that vaccination is effective.

I apologise but I will be a little less diplomatic than I normally would be because of the reaction to vaccination. In the way that honey attracts bees, there is something about the issue of vaccines that attracts people from a paranoid fringe who will blindly and obliviously cocoon themselves away from facts in pursuit of prejudices. It has come to light on this issue.

Let us have a few facts. Members have heard about the rarity of cervical cancer in Ireland. We have 75 to 100 deaths a year from cervical cancer in Ireland. These deaths occur at a younger average age than deaths from other cancers. This is primarily a disease of the younger middle-aged woman. It is also a disease we see in women in their 20s and 30s.

While the witnesses may argue that between 75 and 100 deaths per annum is not enough to justify vaccinating 30,000 girls, I believe they do justify vaccination. Even if that were not the case, what about the other women who get cervical cancer but are cured? At this point, the cure for cervix cancer involves the use of less mutilating surgery in a tiny number of cases. For most people, however, there is a choice. They can have surgery to remove the womb, ovaries, fallopian tubes and part of the vagina. For many of the women in question, their reproductive ambitions will be no more and in addition to the physical and psychological stigmata of surgery, they will live with the knowledge that they will not become parents. For most others, they can have radiotherapy and, increasingly, chemotherapy. This will involve having the entire pelvis radiated, that is, the vagina, uterus and part of the rectum and bladder. I do not want to frighten people who are going through this treatment because it often cures people who would otherwise die. However, any woman who has this treatment will always know she has had it because it is life-changing. It is not like having a small growth removed from the skin. It is a treatment that will likely leave the person with profound sexual issues and probably bladder issues and issues relating to discomfort in the rectum, etc. The treatment also has a small but finite risk of causing one to get a second cancer such as leukemia later in life. We should seek to do anything that will preclude 300 women from having to get this treatment, of whom between 75 and 100 will die despite it.

There are another few nuances to this issue. It has been shown in trials, although the witnesses may be dispute the figures if they wish, that the vaccine that is widely used here decreases the incidence of the very early cervical cancer lesions. While these will not proceed to cancer in some cases, in many cases they will proceed to cancer. In every case of advanced cervical cancer, these lesions are the first warning that the cancer will occur. Nobody skips straight to advanced cancer by never having an early stage cervical cancer. Again, a large amount of nonsense has been spoken on this matter.

Many hundreds of women, probably thousands of them, have lesser degrees of surgery and surgical interventions and treatments such as laser treatment performed for other pre-cancerous lesions that have the potential to develop into cancer. For these reasons, I had my two beloved daughters vaccinated when they were young teenagers approximately ten years ago and before a national programme was introduced. I did so because the data were so compelling. Harold zur Hausen is one of the saints of modern medicine and one of the few people who goes to bed every night knowing that all around the world hundreds, if not thousands, of women are saved because of the research he did. I am old enough to remember when people believed cigarette smoking and herpes caused cervical cancer. To hear the name of this sainted genius who worked out the cause of cervical cancer being blemished and to have him misquoted in this room is highly irritating. Professor zur Hausen is a supporter of cervical cancer vaccination. On a previous occasion when a politician tried to raise spurious arguments against the vaccination, he demolished the arguments made on radio.

As to whether the vaccination works, the randomised trials clearly show that the incidence of early cervix cancer is dramatically decreased with vaccination. In addition, 80% rather than 100% of cervix cancers are caused by-----