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.
Billions and billions are at stake for Merck, which funds leftwing most environmentalist causes by the way, so they want to use the power of government to mandate that every little boy and girl get the shot that costs something like $150 each.
The answer is to make it optional for adults and not force this experimental drug into children because politicians and Merck want to make billions.
“Acceptable kill ratio”?
Unfortunately ALL vaccines can and do cause adverse reactions in some. My question was reasonable and your BS was not.
So, once again, how do the adverse reaction numbers compare to other vaccines?
I was comparing a yearly death rate (from cancer), because the cancer statistics were given as a yearly death rate, to the “death rate” reported from the vaccine, which an individual would receive only once.
After you vaccinated 100% of the people, the “rate” of vaccination would be the rate at which girls turned 11 and got the vaccine, which would be the birth rate of the females in the population.
That makes the death count “one-time” as opposed to “yearly”. My point is that vaccinating 150 million women would kill (according to VAERS) 382 women. But those vaccinations would save 1900 lives EACH YEAR, over the lifetime of those women.
I could have instead adjusted the cancer rates to be a rate per person over their lifetime, but that is a harder calculation. If you assume women are sexually active from age 15 through 45, that’s 30 years in which they are susceptible to infection, and therefore could get cancer from the infection. If 1900 die each year, that means about 57000 would die over that 30 year period, so if the 150 million women we vaccinated were all 15, after 30 years 57,000 more of them would be alive than otherwise.
Except that entire paragraph is full of assumptions that are not accurate, and you can’t really find the statistics to make them accurate. What I would need is the probability of a particular woman getting cervical cancer from HPV in her lifetime.
So rather than bother, I just compared the 1900 deaths “per year” from cancer with the 382 deaths “one time” from vaccinating the entire population.
This is all moot, as the CDC has found no causal relationship between the Gardasil vaccines and deaths. In other words, there is no scientific data to support the idea that if you gave 80 million vaccinations, we’d kill twice as many people. They have administered 40 million vaccinations, and the deaths per thousand in the population receiving the vaccines has not increased. The same people are dying, with or without the vaccine.
To receive the treatment is and has always been a choice in Texas.
I think MD Anderson still recommends the shots.
You seem to argue that a woman should not vaccinate themselves for this. But if they anticipate having sex with partners who may or may not be infected, and the vaccine lowers their risk of getting cervical cancer by 70%, and of getting genital warts by 90%, why wouldn’t that be a good thing for them?
Your argument may apply against requiring mandatory vaccination, but it doesn’t support your conclusion that we “should not vaccinate against it”.
We do treatments for lots of things that have no “herd immunity” effects. We vaccinate people each year for the flu, not because it will stop an outbreak, but in order to protect those who are most susceptible to the flu and most likely to have serious consequences if they get sick. Why would the HPV vaccine not fall into that same category?
You know, you can 100% protect against the flu — lock yourself in the house, get filters, and avoid contact. More seriously, you can protect yourself to SOME degree, by washing your hands often, not shaking hands with people, and wearing masks. That’s what some people do, and in some countries it’s a prevalent thing.
To suggest that because we can’t protect against something 100%, there’s no point in doing anything at all, seems short-sighted. Seat belts don’t save you from all accidents, but we wear them even though they don’t prevent accidents because they do keep us from dying as often. Why isn’t the HPV vaccination in that same category as seat belts?
Again, I think you are arguing against mandatory vaccination, but you keep saying things like “we should not vaccinate against it” which suggests you want to ban the vaccine.
I have seen absolutely NO movement to add Gardasil to the mandatory vaccination lists anywhere since the initial push back in 2007. Only one state has added it to the list — Virginia.
Is that really what we are arguing here? The article was a scare-mongering article using inaccurate information improperly interpreted to suggest a danger that does not really exist, in what appears to be an attempt to discourage people from choosing on their own to get the vaccination.
BTW, I oppose mandatory vaccination for HPV, wrote articles about it here in Virginia urging our legislature to remove the requirement, and even opposed Perry’s push to do so in Texas. I just don’t think the vaccine has a bad record relative to other vaccinations.
One baby died using enfamil and its being pulled from the shelves. Reportedly, at least 26 have died from this shot and everything is hunky dory. strange
“The answer is to make it optional for adults and not force this experimental drug into children because politicians and Merck want to make billions”.
I totally agree with you. This particular vaccine is available if an adult who has all the information about potential side effects on hand and decide they want the vaccine, to get the vaccine.
Forcing people to get it is just wrong. It is always easy to look at stats and decide “well, not enough become ill or die from it, so, it is okay”.
It isn’t so easy for people when it is their own family member that becomes ill or dies.
Nobody really knows the long term effects yet.
What is totally idiotic is that we now have tons of people walking over the border spreading many communicable diseases. The government and American citizens don’t seem to worry about that. So why force this?
“You seem to argue that a woman should not vaccinate themselves for this.”
Not what I’m saying at all. All I am saying is that it should not be a required vaccination, and certainly not for children. And even more certainly not for young boys.
If an adult woman wants to go in and get vaccinated for it and pay for it herself, then by all means. Otherwise, it’s a bad deal.
“should not vaccinate against it”.
Given that states like California are making it mandatory for children, than yes, they should not be vaccinating against it.
“We vaccinate people each year for the flu, not because it will stop an outbreak, but in order to protect those who are most susceptible to the flu and most likely to have serious consequences if they get sick. Why would the HPV vaccine not fall into that same category?”
If that’s your argument, then I have absolutely no beef with it.
“You know, you can 100% protect against the flu — lock yourself in the house, get filters, and avoid contact.”
You can contract the flu by standing too close to someone who is infected with it, by shaking their hand, etc. Not true for HPV. That’s a big difference.
“To suggest that because we can’t protect against something 100%, there’s no point in doing anything at all, seems short-sighted.”
It’s the policy that has been followed wrt vaccinations. If it’s non-communicable, then it is voluntary and reserved for adults.
They are totally different circumstances. Walmart is pulling enfamil because they have no idea why a baby died from it, and fear there is some contaminent introduced in the production, or that the product is somehow flawed. It’s a normal reaction, like there is a bad batch or something. And enfamil is just one of a class of products, which is simply something to consume, not some drug that provides particular benefit.
Again, there is no indication that any person has actually died because of Gardasil. But as Gardasil prevents a significant number of deaths, it is accepted that it’s use might actually cause deaths. People do die from vaccines, and we treat that as an acceptable risk for the reward. Each vaccine must include a risk/reward determination.
People die from life-saving medical treatment all the time. Every surgery for example includes the risk of death, but people will have surgery to correct non-life-threatening problems. For example, people will do hip replacement surgery in order to be able to walk. But “in less than 1%” of the patients, the surgery results in nerve damage, and a little less than 1 out of 1000 die after surgery. Is it worth death to be able to walk? That is a determination each person makes, but by and large nobody skips the surgery because they are afraid they might die.
But tell people they can drink their brand of milk, but by the way it will kill one out of 10,000 people, and you will be laughed at. Almost nobody will risk a known possibility of death simply to partake of a certain product, unless it is some great delicacy. I say that because people DO risk death to eat some foods. Eating Sushi increases the risk of sickness or death, but people do it.
Don’t hold your breath. Some Texans on the forum can’t seem to wait to pull their own version of McCain 2010, by supporting Perry against better Conservative candidates.
This man’s judgment is highly suspect IMO.
I hear you. :)
I’m glad you can read minds. Must be nice.
Also, where did I ever say this vaccine should be mandatory? I’m perfectly fine with it being optional and don’t think it should be pulled off the market. I’ve recommended to my daughter that she consider it herself.
Now, where are the studies that show this vaccine is responsible for any deaths? Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Here's some interesting data taken directly from their website...
“Government health officials received 7,802 reports of adverse events from June 2006, when Gardasil was licensed, through April 2011.”
“The CDC received 7,802 reports of adverse events, including 15 deaths, after girls received the vaccine.”
“The agency [CDC] said definitive links between Gardasil and the deaths had not been established, but neither was such an association ruled out.”
Clearly, the data assembled by the CDC is much less alarming than the data that comes from VAERS.
Establishing causality - if the vaccine caused these adverse events - is not an easy task. Many have existing medical conditions that are counted in these adverse event reports yet there is no qualification of these in the numbers. So before reaching for the pitchforks and torches its good to pause and reflect on the fact that the FDA is a Sword of Damocles of all medical product manufacturers and they love nothing more than threaten a product recall if the data support it. So far Gardasil adverse event reports have yet to approach such measures.
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