Posted on 12/22/2011 5:35:47 AM PST by markomalley
It was too late for 21-year-old Christina Tarsell and 17-year-old Jessica Ericzon. Both healthy, athletic young women suddenly dropped dead shortly after receiving their final injection of Gardasil, a vaccine developed by Merck to protect girls and young women from cervical cancer caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV).
But when Christina’s and Jessica’s shocked families tried to get the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate a vaccine it had inexplicably fast-tracked through the approval process even though only one percent of all cancer deaths are due to cervical cancer, they hit a brick wall.
The Tarsells and Ericzons have been vindicated by new documents just released by the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch.
In just one year - between Sept. 1, 2010 and Sept. 15, 2011 - 26 new deaths and many more severe adverse reactions – including seizures, paralysis, and blindness – were reported in patients receiving Gardasil injections.
The stories are heartbreakingly similar to the Tarsell and Ericzon tragedies: One healthy 14-year-old girl suffered more than 150 seizures – during which she stopped breathing for up to 40 seconds - following her third Gardasil shot. Another vaccinated 15-year-old suddenly became paralyzed from the waist down the day after receiving her second dose of Gardasil and had to be hospitalized for two months.
The grieving parents of Christina and Jessica told The Washington Examiner that the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) both ignored their repeated requests to investigate possible links between Gardasil and their daughters’ unexplained deaths. It never happened. Since then, dozens more people who were vaccinated with Gardasil have also mysteriously died, and many others experienced serious and debilitating reactions.
That alone should have triggered at least some interest in these two federal public health agencies as to whether there was a cause-effect relationship, but it never happened.
CDC still insists that ìthere was no unusual pattern or clustering to the deaths that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccineî - even though VAERS itself reports 18,727 reports of “adverse events” following Gardasil injections, including 68 deaths.
"These reports raise additional concerns about Gardasil’s questionable safety and provide ample reason to end the push to give it young girls and boys. And the CDC’s continued caginess on reported deaths is disturbing," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
I had a particularly bad case of systemic candida while nursing my son. I was put on some anti-fungals that did nothing for the problem, and when the docs wanted to give me a loaded dose they started talking about liver tests. I never got the perscription filled, went to see a natural health expert, was cured in two weeks, and haven’t gone back to a doctor since then.
that was the plan from the start. Rather than have the gals suffer, you do it to the guys. Who cares?
Not only that, but it doesn’t even inoculate. Even if you had 80 percent of the people getting the ‘vaccine’, it won’t bring out herd immunity.
HPV - doesn’t work that way, sadly. It’s not like MMR or DPT, where once you get above a certain percentage, you start seeing the effects of herd immunity.
“One healthy 14-year-old girl suffered more than 150 seizures – during which she stopped breathing for up to 40 seconds - following her third Gardasil shot. Another vaccinated 15-year-old suddenly became paralyzed from the waist down the day after receiving her second dose of Gardasil and had to be hospitalized for two months.”
So you are saying that these specific events are just coincidence? That these type of things happen all along in a small percentage of random people?
Surely you realize that’s ridiculous.
This is what you get when drug companies climb into bed with the government.
Obama had this stupid vaccine mandated in Obozocare. Nothing but a payoff.
I can rest assured the Obama daughters will never take this vaccine.
You know, who cares that the drug is ruining lives and killing kids? The Government and Merck made a deal and they are doing it all for you, because they care and you are stupid like sheep. /sarc
VAERS reports are a totality of bad things that are reported in proximity to taking a vaccine. Let's say you have a heart attack. If you happen to have a vaccine two days ago, it goes in VAERs. If you didn't have a vaccine, it doesn't go in VAERS. There is no checking to see if there is any causality when items are put in VAERS.
VAERS reports are public, and are on the web. The Gardasil VAERS report summary information is here: VAERS Gardasil Report, October 2011. The reports are updated regularly. You don't need a FOIA to get the information, it's not a secret.
Healthy people get sick and die ALL THE TIME. Last time this came up, I did some research on the number of deaths of people in the age group of the girl mentioned here. I then did a percentage of deaths number, and compared it to the percentage of vaccinated people of that age who were reported to have died. The numbers matched. In other words, the number of people who die 2 days after taking the vaccine is equal to the number of people who you would expect to die within two days of any random chosen date.
"Side effects" reports in VAERs are even less useful. Not only do people have minor health issues ALL THE TIME, but people are watching for minor health issues after getting a vaccine, especially if the vaccine is controversal. A person might have 20 headaches a year; but they'll only think about it after a vaccine, and they make an "adverse reaction" report.
Human nature is to find MORE causality when there are reports of causality. See for example the Audi "unexpected acceleration", or the Toyota "unable to stop the car" events. In both cases public reports suggested there was a problem, and suddenly there was a huge increase in reports. Gardasil suffers from this because of news articles like this one -- each article that claims the VAERs data shows a huge problem causes the VAERs data to grow exponentially.
People simply don't expect healthy individuals to die, even though it happens all the time. They want an explanation, and the search for some "reason" often leads to faulty beliefs, because most people are not trained to understand that "Correlation does not imply casuality".
The CDC uses VAERs for several purposes, one of which is to be an early warning system -- but Gardasil's reports are not out of the norm for a drug that has had multiple news stories about it. They have the statistics. The VAERs data is also used as a starting point for two other analyses that are done, one which is more of a regression analysis, and the other is specific clinical study.
In the regression analysis, they do what I did poorly with google -- they compare the reported information to what you would expect with random selection, and see if there is any mathematical indication that more bad things are happening after a vaccine than you would expect. In the case of Gardasil, those regression studies have shown NO increase in the adverse data above what would happen randomly.
In the clinical analysis, they might go back and actually collect medical data from cases of adverse reactions, to see if they can determine what actually caused the problem. They routinely do this for death reports, and sometimes for other severe reactions. Here is the CDC summary for their death report analysis:
As of September 15, 2011, there have been a total 71 VAERS reports of death among those who have received Gardasil®. There were 57 reports among females, 3 were among males, and 11 were reports of unknown gender. Thirty four of the total death reports have been confirmed and 37 remain unconfirmed due to no identifiable patient information in the report such as a name and contact information to confirm the report. A death report is confirmed (verified) after a medical doctor reviews the report and any associated records. In the 34 reports confirmed, there was no unusual pattern or clustering to the deaths that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccine and some reports indicated a cause of death unrelated to vaccination.In that paragraph, we first find that 37 VAERS death reports didn't contain enough information for CDC to find the patient. These are considered unreliable -- there are few protections in the VAERs system for keeping anonymous people from making false reports (I can't remember if it is considered a crime to falsely report something to VAERS).
Of the 34 that were confirmed, in some cases the direct cause of death was found and was unrelated to the vaccine, and in the other cases there was nothing in the reports to suggest unusual death occurances that could be associated with the vaccine.
There have been 40 million Gardasil vaccinations. There are 20,000 VAERS reports -- That is .5 per 1,000 population, or 0.05%. Of those 20,000 reports, 8% are considered non-minor. (something more than a temporay pain, swelling at the injection site, etc. -- things that are temporary and do not require hospitalization).
That leaves 1600 reported serious reactions in 40 million vaccines, or 4 per 100,000 population (0.004%). Remember, these are self-reported, not reactions that have been proven to be related to the vaccine).
FOr comparison, cervical cancer caused by HPV has a rate of 6.7 deaths per 100,000 population for black women, and 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population for white women. So the REPORTED rate of serious side effects for the vaccine are in the same range as the known deaths from the disease for which the vaccine is being used.
The CDC has done regression analysis and other scientific inquiry into the serious side effects being reported, and their online page has a summary of those studies, and found no indication that any of the serious side effects occur more frequently in vaccinated people above the general population.
As an example, they looked at reports of blood clots, and found that most people reporting blood clots after getting vaccinated were people who had other risk factors known to cause blood clots. The GBS rate for vaccinated girls was no higher than the rate in the general population.
It is certainly true that there is significant money involved in this vaccine, and it doesn't hurt to question government action because of this. We pretend we can use government to protect us from bad actors, but government regulation is always driven by the people regulated, because they have a specific monetary interest in making those regulations work for them, while the rest of the population has only a passing interest in being "protected" from any particular thing.
But don't confuse the fact that every regulation costs companies money, and ever government action changes the costs to business, and therefore business has a reason to spend money to get favorable rulings, with actual proof that a company MUST have bribed multiple science officials in the CDC to falsify studies in order to hide an epidemic of adverse reactions to a particular vaccine.
I urge the use of some critical thinking. We know that there is a core of conservative thought that finds the idea of vaccinating young girls for a sexually transmitted disease somehow distasteful, and is therefore looking for an excuse to find fault with the vaccine. That would explain why ordinary illness and death are seen as a sure sign the vaccine is evil.
Why Texas? They have no required Gardasil vaccination program now, so there is nothing unique about Texas vs any other state in the union.
I doubt you meant that since the reports are remarkably low given the number of vaccinations given, it might change the minds of some of those who opposed the Gardasil vaccine.
Oops, I think you addressed this to the wrong person (since I did not mention Tylenol). But thanks for the birth control advice! ;-)
*gasp*
That's awful. My best friend, a very hard-working lady who doesn't like to be down, has POTS. It's always present to some degree, compounds basic physical issues into extended, more debilitating illnesses, and affects her life DAILY. She has to ration her energy expenditures because she can overdue it and put herself out of commission for hours or days. I had already determined that none of my kids will ever get this nasty vaccine; now I have another good reason.
I am so sick of the federal government. It has become an evil, self-serving and often utterly ridiculous monster that destroys much of anything good in its path.
Gardasil (Merck & Co.), also known as Gardisil or Silgard,[1][2] is a vaccine for use in the prevention of certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV),[3] specifically HPV types 6, 11, 16 and 18.[4][5] HPV types 16 and 18 cause an estimated 70% of cervical cancers,[6][7] and are responsible for most HPV-induced anal,[8] vulvar, vaginal,[9] and penile cancer cases. HPV types 6 and 11 cause an estimated 90% of genital warts cases.
The OFFICIAL Gardasil Web Site:
GARDASIL may not fully protect everyone, nor will it protect against diseases caused by other HPV types or against diseases not caused by HPV. GARDASIL does not prevent all types of cervical cancer, so it’s important for women to continue routine cervical cancer screenings. GARDASIL does not treat cancer or genital warts. GARDASIL is given as 3 injections over 6 months.
When Wikipedia AND the official web site for the drug both clearly state that it doesn't prevent all strains of the HPV, I think it's pretty clear that it is "reported". IN fact, if you search on the question "Does Gardasil prevent all strains of HPV", you will get 38000 results, all telling you the answer is no.
I've never seen any pro-Gardasil argument that suggested otherwise.
Meanwhile, most of the HPV strains do not cause cancer, so it wouldn't matter that they would "fill the gap". Nor, since the different strains do not compete with each other, is there a "gap" to be filled when one strain is prevented.
for a "cure" to a disease that's wholly preventable.
That is the uninformed bias that leads to a lot of false claims against Gardasil -- the idea that women who get HPV do so because they engage in improper sexual activity, and they could easily prevent it simply by being moral.
Fact is, HPV is ubiquitous in the population. Even if you adhere to a strict monogamous post-marriage sex regime, you could get HPV from your spouse. You could also get it from rape. And like it or not, a lot of people do have more than one sex partner in their lives.
I completely agree that a woman should evaluate her own risk/reward. A woman who knows her husband is clean and doesn't expect to have an affair could well decide the risk is too great.
But a lot of women don't want to chance getting HPV, and they do seem to want to have sex, and not necessarily with men who they can first take to the doctor to have them checked for HPV. And since we aren't talking about forcing women to get the vaccine, the argument seems to be that you don't want the CDC to approve the drug since women should just refrain from sex, or something like that.
Frankly, I'm not sure exactly what your argument was.
That's a good point.
Like anything else, a vaccine is a risk. You need to sit down and do a cost benefit analysis for each one. If there were to be a new smallpox epidemic raging, and a vaccine is offered, yeah it's probably a good idea to take the risk.
But when you start talking about diseases where the risk is minimal (chicken pox) or easily prevented by behavior (HPV), or like you said where the vaccine doesn't cover a good number of strains, the risks of the vaccine itself start looking pretty high in comparison.
A dear friend of mine just took her daughter in for a visit with her regular pediatrician—just the routine check-up for an 11-year-old. The doctor pushed the vaccine, and my friend declined. The doctor became upset and started to berate her about her “unfounded” fears, and this was all in front of her daughter. She said that when she politely, yet firmly told him “we have discussed this and have decided this is not a vaccine we will get”, he acted as if this was some sort of personal affront to him. He was extremely defensive and patronizing, when in the past he had been very respectful and attentive.
She told the doctor that it was inappropriate to have this conversation at that time, but he would not stop. She said he grew increasingly hostile until she finally told him that the converstation was OVER, and she walked out. She is switching doctors, and she will NOT be getting that vaccine for ANY of her three daughters.
I just emailed her this article. Thank you.
IMHO, 26 deaths (assuming that the article is correct) is an awful lot, for a "cure" to a disease that's wholly preventable.
Actually, none of the other 100+ strains progress to cancer as quickly as HPV16 and 18. So, even though the vaccine might not prevent other HPV infections, since they take longer to progress, that means there is a higher chance they will be caught early enough that the treatment won't seriously damage a woman's organs and impair her fertility.
I don't know why you think that HPV is 100% preventable. Even if you were a virgin at the time of marriage, and you are completely faithful within marriage, you have no control over your spouse and no real knowledge of what your spouse did before you got married. So, yes, everyone is at risk. Babies can acquire HPV infection from their mothers at the time of birth. Thus, even innocent little babies are at risk.
So you are saying that these specific events are just coincidence? That these type of things happen all along in a small percentage of random people?
Surely you realize that’s ridiculous.
That is absolutely what I am saying. In a large population, adverse events happen at a low frequency all the time. There is no reason to think that these low frequency events are happening any more frequently in Gardasil vaccinated patients than in the general population.
I suggest reading the post #28 by CharlesWayneCT. He did an excellent job of explaining the statistical underpinnings of my position.
It protects against two strains of HPV that account for 70% of all cancer from HPV, and it protects against two strains of HPV that account for 90% of all genital warts.
So, if you vaccinated the entire population of women (150 million), and if you believe that the unverified VAERS reports accurately reflect REAL side effects specifically caused by the shots, you would expect 382 women to die, another 220,000 to have serious side effects.
Now, HPV causes 70% of all cervical cancer. Gardasil prevents 70% of those, or about 49% of all cervical cancer. 3800 women die in the U.S. from cervical cancer each year, so if we vaccinated every woman, we could expect to save 1,900 lives a year, at a cost of 382 one-time deaths from the vaccine.
HPV-caused Genital Warts infect about 1% of the sexually active population, let’s say 100 million of our 150 million women are sexually active. That would give us 1 million cases of genital warts, of which Gardasil would prevent 900,000, at a cost of 220,000 serious side effects.
As to “100% of the time” protection, yes, if you are a Nun in a monestery, and completely protected from any chance of a man ever raping you, then you are 100% protected. If you are married, your husband might cheat on you, get infected, and infect you. That might be a low risk. If you aren’t married yet, your future husband might get infected, although I guess you could get your husband tested before deciding to marry.
So yes, if you don’t want to risk the vaccine, you can refrain from sex, or be very careful about it. That is a choice for a woman to make, and it’s good that there is a vaccine to give them that choice. You aren’t arguing that this is a reason to take the vaccine off the market, are you?
HPV - doesn’t work that way, sadly. It’s not like MMR or DPT, where once you get above a certain percentage, you start seeing the effects of herd immunity.
Actually, herd immunity applies here, too. Herd immunity means that the chain of infection is broken, so that even if a person is exposed to the disease, they cannot transmit it to another person. This graphic illustrates the principle. The means of disease transmission does not affect the process; the pertinent factor is that the disease is passed from person to person. Herd immunity does not work, for example, with tetanus.
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