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.
It isn't bogus. Cigarette smoking is an independent risk factor for cervical cancer. Women who smoke have a 2-3X greater likelihood of developing cervical cancer compared to non-smokers. This is well documented and accepted.
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No vaccine, or other medication for that matter, has undergone 40 year long clinical trials. This is totally impractical.
i’m sorry, but this issue shows the degree to which the medical profession has bamboozled itself with the profligacy of the culture at large. Doctors have absolutely no compunction telling people to change their lifestyles to minimize their risks with certain things. Eat less. Exercise more. Stop smoking. Get rid of guns in your house.
Yet strangely, curiously, in the sexual area MDs all of a sudden have no simple lifestyle advice to impart.
“Oh, they’re going to do it anyway” Really? And my 80-year-old grandfather was going to smoke anyway. Didn’t stop his doctor from lecturing him on why he shouldn’t.
But no. Sexual “expression”—and how I loathe that term—is the golden calf of modern America around which everyone must dance. Everything has to be accommodated to it. The MDs prescribe Gardasil rather than tell kids to keep their pants on. The environmentalists would rather see fish populations plummet than have people stop flushing synthetic estrogen into the sewer system. The feminists look the other way as the pornography industry degrades and debases women.
This is a national sickness...a sign of a degenerate society.
We are talking about a teenage girl here. I imagine her mother and doctor encouraged her to get the vaccine, so I don’t think it’s fair to blame a teen girl. We, also, cannot be certain based on the limited information given her symptoms stem from the vaccine. If it is found the drug company/politicians acted improperly and this vaccine is a real danger, they should be held accountable.
I just did a Google search, and supposedly 75% of Americans have some form of HPV. Also, some forms of HPV are not from sexual activity. So odds are, even if a girl remains a virgin until marriage, she has good odds of getting HPV if her husband had even one other partner. I would never give my young daughter this vaccine as it is too new, but the premise behind the vaccine makes sense.
They are looking at it from a macro level with a great big bolus of hope. Just like the air bag, "sure a lot of people have been killed, but look at all the people we saved!"
The only one to blame for that is Merck itself who did all the high dollar lobbying to bring about the mandates. They were finally, and appropriately, shamed into halting their campaign which had nothing to do with the dangers of HPV, but rather their own financial bottom line.
I question the entire premise of this article. How do we know this girl is as sick as she says she is? I'm serious, patients notoriously misunderstand the severity and nature of their illnesses. Was her claim independently verified? Also, who are these anonymous "doctors" who claim her illness was due to the vaccine? How do they know? In the absence of this detail I just don't buy this story.
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Let's hope it stays that way.
or DES, especially DES
No question Merck was clumsy and heavy-handed in their initial marketing of this vaccine. A case study in how to do it wrong. But this doesn't show the vaccine is unsafe or ineffective, just that Merck has a lousy PR staff.
I think you are right. I would not want to push anything on a patient that they are uncomfortable with or even if they had some minor concerns about it. The problem is once these stories start popping up it becomes an avalanche and will be hard to stop.
If this vaccine prevents 80% of the cervical cancers, which is the 5th leading cause of death in women, then I am also going to be reluctant and possibly liable in the future not to offer it. Less than 10,000 complaints out of 16 million vacs which is just .0006% of those vaccinated is not alarming or raises no red flags to me when those receiving placebo are running the same numbers. Some of this anecdotal evidence is commensurate to taking the number of men who drank Coke today and had an infarction and presenting it as evidence that Coke may be causing infarction’s. All that said, I still think you do what you feel is right for you or your child, but I would caution against allowing media scare tactics using anecdotal evidence to frighten you into avoiding what I think to be good medicine.
What has that got to do with anything? As a pharmacy owner I wouldn't advise anyone to get something like this. It is between the patient (and family members) and their doctor, period. I don't even get a flu shot!
Squawk 8888 makes a very valid point, which you did not address. Squawk 8888 stated the ACS claims smoking is a CAUSE, you twisted that to be a risk factor.
While smoking may lead to an increased risk, it is not the same as being a cause, letting alone a leading cause, which is exactly what the anti-smoker industry, funded by the pharmaceutical industry, claim smoking to be.
HPV is the leading known cause of cervical cancer. The common claim is that since smokers are known to engage in risky behavior, ie smoking, they are also prone to engage in other risky behavior, such as unprotected sex, and ergo - smoking increases the risk of cervical cancer.
You are correct; however, there are also no other vaccines for something which is 100% preventable to start with.
Your agenda here is glaring, do you work for Merck?
Show me where the ACS says smoking “causes” cervical cancer. They don’t make this claim, it is well accepted that essentially 100% of cervical cancers are caused by HPV. However, we all know that most HPV infected women don’t get cervical cancer, therefore other factors influence the risk of getting that disease. One of these is cigarette smoking. Numerous, well-controlled, studies have shown that women who smoke have an incidence of cervical cancer that is 2-3X that of non-smokers once all other risk factors are controlled for. This is well accepted and non-controversial among physicians.
<Here it is “required” for entering 6th grade,
Whoa! Really? Can you get around it by going to Catholic school or homeschooling? No way would my child get that vaccine.
Nope, just a pathologist who's tired of diagnosing cervical cancer and it's precursors. I don't even own stock in Merck. Try a better argument next time, please.
My ob-gyn was telling me that I should have my daughters vaccinated with gardisil.
However, my daughter’s cardiologist said I should wait. I love my daughter’s cardiologist. She just said bluntly that they are not in a high risk group of catching HPV and we have several years to wait before we make a decision about it. My twin daughters are 12.
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