LATEST: HSE raps Bishop for comments that cervical cancer vaccine could encourage promiscuity
A bishop has been warned by health chiefs that he is endangering women's lives over his opposition to a vaccine which helps prevent cervical cancer.
Bishop of Waterford and Lismore Phonsie Cullinan said giving the injection to 12-year-old girls to guard against the human papilloma virus could lead to promiscuity.
"It's not only a medical issue, it's a lifestyle issue," he said. "It affects the lifestyle of our young people."
The Bishop added: "We have to do better than to give our boys condoms and our girls injections at the age of 12."
Vaccinations against the HPV virus fell by half last year amid scares over side effects but the uptake has since stabilised.
The HSE has previously warned parents about conflicting and misleading information.
Since 2010 more than 230,000 girls have been vaccinated, with about 1,000 reporting adverse reactions.
Most commonly, people fainted when injected or showed gastrointestinal symptoms, malaise, headache, dizziness and injection site reactions.
Other allergic-type reactions have been reported, including skin rashes, hives and flushing and isolated reports of more severe hypersensitivity-type reactions and some reports of persisting or chronic fatigue.
Ireland has one of the highest cervical cancer rates in Europe with more than 90 women dying from the disease every year and more than 280 others needing surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy.
Bishop Cullinan initially went public on the issue earlier in the week with an email to the Munster Express newspaper.
Subsequently, in an interview with local radio WLR FM, he said he had rowed in as he was aware of "emotional and spiritual damage" of young people who felt peer pressure to have sexual relationships in their teens.
The Bishop said: "It's absolutely certain that the clearest and the best protection against getting sexually transmitted diseases is good old fashioned traditional abstinence."
He added: "Prevention, the number one and most effective protection is abstinence. A good old traditional value."
The cleric said the vaccine "changes a mentality" and "gets people to think they are fully protected".
"I think it could certainly lead to a false sense of security," the Bishop added.
The HSE's communications director Paul Connors said some of the remarks flew in the face of best available medical and scientific evidence.
"The women of Ireland might be better served if Bishop Cullinan left pronouncements on important clinical matters such as vaccination programmes to the experts in that field," Mr Connors said.
He described the Bishop's remarks as miscommunication of information which put the health and lives of women at risk.
Mr Connors said they may have had resonance 50 years ago but they were unacceptable now.
"In the context of a young, intelligent, vibrant and mobile population of Ireland of 2017 his comments are outdated, unhelpful and quite frankly ill-informed," he said.
The HPV vaccine used in Ireland is Gardasil. It is said to protect against two high risk types of the virus, one of the most common sexually transmitted infections.
It prevents HPV 16 and 18, which cause 90% of genital warts, and is used in more than 25 European countries, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Regret, one of the parents' groups opposed to the vaccine, claims information from the HSE is incomplete, downplays safety issues and exaggerates its effectiveness.
According to Ireland's Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA), there were 245 reported adverse reactions to Gardasil in the two years to April 2017.
A Catholic Bishop believes a cervical cancer vaccine for schoolgirls encourages them to engage in risky sexual behaviour.
Gardasil is offered to young teenagers to help stop them contracting HPV once they become sexually active.
Bishop Phonsie Cullinan of Waterford and Lismore has called for money spent on the vaccine, to instead be used to help young people abstain from sex.
He wondered if the vaccine would "lull our girls into a false sense of security" over their sexual behaviour.
He told the Irish Times: "More sexual activity means an increased risk of infection and therefore an increased risk of serious health problems."
Dr Ciara Kelly believes the health of young women is nothing to do with the Bishop.
She said: "This kind of thing where we should be punished for promiscuity, and it's some kind of throwback where the morality is being imposed on people rather than protecting their health, is like the 1950s all over again.
"Thiis something to be roundly condemned, the bishop needs to mind his own business, his business is not the health of young women."
The bishop also questioned the safety of the vaccine, saying it is "only 70% safe".
Dr Kelly said: "The vaccine is not 70% safe, the vaccine is safe full stop. It protects young women from cervical cancer and what I would say is 'give it to your kids, protect them'.
"Don't for a moment think that your children down the line will become sexually active, because that is probably not the case."
