At a family reunion last week, a cousin asked what I thought about giving the HPV vaccine (Gardasil) to adolescents. At 10 years old, our kids are getting close to the recommended age for this shot and there’s a lot of hype. I gave her an unqualified answer: DON’T DO IT.

The risks of getting the Gardasil vaccine far outweigh any possible benefit it may or may not bring. Getting the Gardasil vaccine may be something you and your child pay for over the rest of his or her debilitated life.

If watching a pharmaceutical get fast-tracked through the FDA without adequate testing and then seeing it be widely promoted for something you didn’t realize was a widespread problem and just-about-forced on the general public isn’t enough to make you nervous, then you are living in the wrong decade. Go back to the 1940s; we should know better by now.

If you don’t have children, you may not be aware of the Gardasil vaccine, which was approved by the FDA in 2006 after the manufacturer submitted short-term results from self-funded studies. The premise starts with the high incidence rates of the highly-contagious Human Papillova Virus (HPV) infection in young, sexually-active teens and adults. HPV is also known as venereal warts and may occur internal or externally on or inside the genitals of both sexes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “HPV is so common that nearly all sexually-active men and women will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lives… Most HPV infections (90%) go away by themselves within two years. ” Treatment may include freezing or removing visible warts or mutations, and most treatments are successful.

So, to start, while HPV may be an epidemic, cervical cancer resulting from HPV is not. In fact, it is extremely rare. A small, very small, percentage of cervical cancers (possibly 5% or less) may develop 20-40 years after an active, untreated HPV infection.

Even better, both HPV infection and the possibility of cervical cancer from HPV 20-40 years down the road can be avoided or treated by using condoms and by having regular pap smears, practices we should be teaching our boys and girls are mandatory anyway. The best part is that neither of these interventions have the possibility of leaving someone with severe loss of function for the rest of their lives.

A powerful documentary, The Greater Good, shows the danger of vaccinations and introduces a young girl who fell ill immediately after receiving the Gardasil. I highly recommend watching it to anyone debating the merits of getting the Gardasil vaccine for your kids. Another soon-to-be-released documentary, One More Girl, will do the same. It’s meaningful to meet the cheerleader who now has to be wheeled out for homecoming just because she got a Gardasil shot.

Beyond the devastating physical repercussions of this shot is the message that you won’t have to use condoms to protect against STIs because you’ll be protected by the vaccine.

While I have a number of reasons for avoiding this vaccine at all costs, Dr. Kelly Brogan does a great job of giving all the info on cellular function and the relevant statistics for why this is not only not a good vaccine, but one that could cause permanent, lifelong neurologic damage in your unsuspecting teen. She points out that the vaccine is only designed to address a fraction of the known HPV strains anyway.

Lest you think I am against all vaccines, let me assure you that I’m not. I believe in the efficacy and safety and necessity of the polio vaccine, for example. I do not, however, subscribe to the validity of the flu shot each year and choose to opt my family out of this particular government-led push.

Personally, I would rather talk to my children frankly about sexual activity and stress condom usage at all times over injecting them with potentially harmful chemicals for no good reason that may leave them damaged for life.