Posted on 02/17/2009 7:14:40 AM PST by BGHater
A Wichita teen and her mother want a popular vaccine taken off the market. Doctors say Gardasil is killing the 16-year-old.
The drug is used to prevent the HPV virus which causes cervical cancer. The makers of Gardasil recommend girls and young women ages 9-26 get the vaccine to protect them from the virus that causes cervical cancer.
Twenty-eight women have reportedly died from Gardasil.
Sixteen-year-old Gabi Swank used to be a cheerleader, a gymnast and a 4.0 student at Wichita's South High, but after getting the Gardasil vaccination last year, her health deteriorated quickly.
She's had two mini strokes, seizures and swelling of all the tissues in her body. She even has paralysis on the right side of her face. After months of testing, doctors finally pointed to Gardasil as the cause.
"I want this drug off the market. I want it off the market," said Swank from her home.
The CDC and the FDA say they have received thousands of reports of adverse reactions to the vaccine, but the government adds, it continues to find that the benefits of Gardasil outweigh the risks.
Her doctor says she has Cerebral Vasculatis (I'm going to guess that's a typo and it should be Cerebral Vasculitis.) Since this story is just breaking, naturally all the facts aren't out yet. But I wouldn't expect to read all of the details anyway. There's only so much that will be released to the public.
we don’t know how the neurologist came to the conclusion he/she did
No, we don't. And unless s/he speaks up, or is interviewed, we will never know. How does any doctor reach their conclusion? Also, the girl had very serious reactions to the injections. Not uncommon with vaccine injections, yet still severe. On the 3rd injection, she collapsed.
I’m sure you have wonderful news. And they are certainly LESS at risk.
Just make sure they wash their hands very well BEFORE using the bathroom.
(Sex, alas, is not the only means of transmission. An unfortunate handshake, a dirty surface, an apartment washing machine with no bleach and bad timing, etc. can all be the vector.)
news= daughters.
What a strange typo. TV is on.
My point is the drug companies rush these vaccines and drugs onto the market before exhaustive studies are performed to make sure they are safe. The drug companies have the lobbyists and ergo the power to get things passed into law.
It’s about money more than it is about the safety of the vaccine / drug.
It would be one thing if these were drugs for patients suffering from stage III cancers, but many of these drugs— vioxx, varicella vaccine, gardisil are for conditions that are not life threatening.
As an aside, I completely agree with your tagline. A new Dark Age is looming.
I don’t mind getting these drugs out fast. There are women in high risk groups that certainly need this vaccine.
I just mind that they are pushing it on young girls that are not even sexually active and are not in high risk groups.
If I was choosing for myself, I would have gotten the vaccine before I became sexually active. I would have probably gotten it when I was 18.
I also see it is very negligent of the government to make this vaccine mandatory for young girls.
However, there is a risk vs benefits for this vaccine just do not exist for my daughters. The risks of complications from this vaccine is much higher for my daughter with a brain injury and seizures then the risk of catching HPV.
(Hand washing is always a good thing to do.)
Exactly. To be honest, I figured I would give her the decision making on it at 16. But considering your comments about your son, who knows, I may let her make the decision herself at 14 as well. At least when she is 16, or maybe even 14, she will have a better grasp on what this particular vaccine is about, than she does now at the age of 10, or will in the summer at 11.
She knows how kittens and puppies and calves and lambs come about, but she is still of an age where she only has a peripheral understanding about "mating" and babies.......if that makes any sense to you.
How can you be so confident with such a brand-new vaccine? There are other drugs that have been touted for one thing or another, and yet they eventually had to be pulled off the market. How do you know that this isn't going to turn out to be that type of drug? There have been 28 deaths attributed to gardasil so far. How many deaths have to occur for the drug to be pulled off the market? (I'm asking that literally, not in an angry way.)
I don’t know, I am a man and I don’t “find it worth the risk”. I would bet there are plenty of women who will say the same thing, in government and out. As long as they are not forced to take it, why should they care? Big government simply sucks.
I agree.
The cardiologist and I had a frank discussion about this vaccine in front of my 12 year old daughter.
I think my 12 year old with seizures will stay away from sex for a long time after I tell her about the complications she could have with getting pregnant. It’s very scary, and she doesn’t need to be scared at this point in her life. She’s still adjusting to just having seizures and being on medication.
My daughter knows that drinking caffiene and having artificial sweetners can lower her seizure threshold, and she reads the labels of food to avoid those things. She has refused sodas and coffee ice cream because of caffiene. I figure if she can refuse those things at 11 & 12, she’ll be good at refusing sex.
I've already acknowledged that. However, they still succeeded in getting the vaccine mandated in a number of states BEFORE the backlash --- thus they were successful until that time.
The backlash began because of folks like us on FR who did not like the tactics being taken by Merck and we told our elected officials just that.
There have been numerous published studies involving thousands of women and they show Gardasil to be both safe and effective. In the absence of contrary data published in the peer reviewed medical literature I stand by my statement. As for those deaths, the number of vaccinated women who subsequently died is the number that actuarially would be expected in this age group. These deaths have not been linked to the vaccine.
Ultimately Merck’s big push failed. If they had been more low-key and had not pushed for the mandate the vaccine would have been far less controversial and probably more accepted.
I know I wouldn't take that bet. I personally know a lot of folks who were pushing this, and every one of them is male.
They don’t plan to get the vaccine, so they don’t care what its effects are.
Living in the cancer capital of Canada really desensitizes me to all these so-called cause and effect relationships...
The leading cause of death is life. Live your life to the fullest you can, worrying about getting cancer isn’t worth the time.
They have. We're all going to die of something. And we (or our loved ones) will know the cause. And in these 28 cases, the girls died from Gardasil. So I ask again: How many deaths have to occur in order for the drug to be pulled off the market?
Remember Vioxx? It was pulled off the market after 5 years. From Wikipedia: FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market.
Gardasil has only been on the market a short time. (I can't find the exact date, but I'm still looking.) With all of these adverse reactions, I wouldn't be surprised if it is eventually pulled off the market.
Here's an interesting site:
I doubt they do, the way this vaccine is pushed on TV (the whole "I want to tell someone" campaign), the average person could easily assume that this is some sort of airborn virus.
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