Newspapers are annoying me this week.

First off, it’s the Sun pledging its electoral allegiance to The Tories.

That’s that, then.

Secondly it’s the reporting of the 14-year-old girl who died shortly after receiving the HPV cervical cancer vaccine this week.

Before any link could possibly be proven, this scare story was splashed across all the papers and discussed on radio programmes.

Have we learnt nothing from the MMR scare story?

These journalists only had to wait two days for the post mortem results, but decided to hype up a story based on total speculation and coincidence in the meantime. Now it emerges that this poor girl had other health conditions which caused her death, and the fact she had had her vaccine hours earlier was nothing but unfortunate timing. But the damage is done.

A vaccine which prevents people from getting cancer is an amazing thing indeed. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if all types of cancers had a vaccine…. hopefully they will one day. Cervical cancer is already extremely treatable, and is one of those cancers which is well screened for. However, we only have to remember Jade Goody to know that despite this, women still die, each and every day.

When this vaccine first came out, I was stunned to hear about parents who were refusing to let their daughters have it, on “moral” grounds. I cannot imagine anything that goes against a parent’s instinct to protect their children and keep them from harm than refusing them this potentially life saving vaccine, on the basis that if they have it they might be more likely to have sex?!?!?!

Anyway, I digress.

Our local radio station has a lunchtime phone in where local people debate topical news stories. I was really dismayed yesterday to hear a caller criticising the vaccine, calling for it to be halted and warning people against having it.

I really think once the dust has settled on this somebody needs to ask questions about why this story broke before there was any evidence to support it. And will the fact that the HPV vaccine did not contribute to this girl’s death get as much media attention as the possibility that it did?

I really hope parents and young girls aren’t persuaded to go without their protection against HPV because of this irresponsible reporting. And even more I hope that if they are, they don’t live to regret it.