Two Women Die After Receiving Cervical Cancer Vaccine

FOX ^ | 01/2/508 | Unknown

[Froufrou]

The death of two young women who received the cervical cancer vaccination is causing some in the U.K. to question a strategy that calls for hundreds of thousands of schoolgirls to receive the shot next fall, the Daily Mail reports.

The young women who died received the vaccination, marketed under the name Gardasil, in Germany and Austria, respectively. The European Medicines Agency has not released their ages.

The two deaths follow the deaths of three U.S. females, ages 12, 19 and 22, who were reported to have died days after receiving Gardasil, which protects against the human papillomavirus — believed to be the leading cause of cervical cancer — was administered.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently reported that 28 women miscarried after receiving the vaccine.

Neither U.S. nor European health officials have directly linked the deaths or miscarriages to Gardasil. The FDA has said there is no reason to reexamine approval of the drug.

A spokesman for Merck, maker of Gardasil, told the Daily Mail there were no plans to change the company's recommendation on use of the vaccine.

[muawiyah]

"Alcohol related highway deaths" also include accidents where an empty beercan (even one holding bait worms and dirt) is found in the trunk.

The FDA standards for "vaccine related deaths" is just about as liberal. After all, the young lady could have driven off the cliff on the road up to Sequoia National Forest because, alas, of muscular irritation caused by a vaccination.

There's really no way out of the problem ~ however, you get enough correlation (like every tenth person dies) and causality may fairly be assumed ~ even if incorrect.

It's a statistics game involving relative risks for the group. In the end even if every concerned parent had his or her daughter exempted from the vaccination, those who had the vaccination would continue to face the same risks as before.

[riverdawg]

LOL! Well, I’ve met more OB/GYNs than hookers! Do you know any of the former who recommend quarterly exams? As valuable as these exams are, quadrupling their frequency wouldn’t pass even a back-of-the-envelope cost-benefit test. I could go to the dentist every month, instead of every six months, but the added benefit wouldn’t come close to matching the extra cost. My point is that an annual examination and pap smear are, from a public health standpoint, sufficient (not perfect)protection against the very small risks of cervical cancer. There is no such thing as perfect protection against cervical cancer for sexually active women, even by Gardacil, and the additional cost of vaccinating the entire at-risk female population far exceeds the additional benefit compared to current best-practice procedure. The money spent on Gardacil would be much more effectively spent on getting more women to undergo annual exams (which Medicaid and most insurance policies will cover) - not to mention on education, treatment, and research for other, more prevalent diseases.