Some others were clear-cut, classic GB, showing up a week or so after a mild viral illness.

I read all of the “severe” and “death” event reports. It’s about what you would expect to see in a group of females of that age, vaccinated or not.

I rely on the Natl Transportation Safety Administration to collect my complaint and those of other car users, determine if a problem is occuring in a particular car model at a rate not typical of cars as a whole, and issue a recall. If my car problem is not due to a glaringly bad design defect, I must rely on the judgement or the computer diagnostics of the mechanic to identify the problem and fix it. I don’t have a detailed knowledge of car transmissions, engines, etc. I don’t have an issue with consulting with people who do have expertise in car repair. The “sounds funny” symptom above turned out to be a bad bearing – but I couldn’t make that diagnosis on my own.

Individual patients know their symptoms. They may not identify the actual cause of their symptoms, and they may not have the experience or technical knowledge to know how to treat it.

I DO claim that a properly designed and tested HPV vaccine is an effective strategy for significant risk reduction for development of invasive cervical cancer in the sexually active population. (It would be useless for the 1 % of the population who expect to be lifelong virgins).

In our university oncology practice, about half of the women with high-stage or lymph node-positive cervical carcinoma are WOC, although our practice catchment area has 20% WOC. The major reason for the disparity is reduced health care access, lack of health knowledge, lack of practical support and time to pursue preventative care, and increased rate of HIV positivity in the WOC population as compared with the white population. If a good quality vaccine can reduce the incidence of high-risk type HPV infection, it represents a simple and more readily achievable intervention in the short term. Yes, it would be great to get ideal health care access, education, convenience, and effective HIV prevention to every woman, but it will take time to achieve political will among the voters and the politicians – and even with the best implemented universal health care system, some will fall through the cracks and be lost to screening until too late (eg, in British Columbia CA, with one of the best screening rates in the world). I’ll take every safe and effective tool available to reduce the incidence of invasive cervical cancer.

I admit, I probably wouldn’t be supporting the HPV vaccine concept as strongly as if I had no direct knowledge of the effects of cervical cancer on specific individuals. In the same way, liver doctors look forward to a possible vaccine for HCV viral hepatitis, and all family members of people with dementia look forward to possible ameliorative drugs to slow progress of the disease.

BEcause I’d be seriously happy to never see another woman unnecessarily hysterectomied, scarred or generally destroyed internally ” for her own good”

I’d be super happy if women of color were you know BELIEVED when they said hi I wasn’t having seizures/ massic internal problems before x and now after x I am what teh hell is going on?

and in a feminist space not essentially be told their degrees arent good enough to talk about teh amazing cramps and bleeding they got ( HEY NORPLANT)

You know what would be even better for me is that if WOC weren’t deemed acceptable risk collaterral so youd be seriously happy some women weren’t getting cervcical cancer

because if another women never gets cervical cancer ( which any person with basic medical reading training knows is not happening has HPV is a multifaceted disease and this vaccine covers five of those strians)

and ONCE AGAIN too many WOC end up sterile , bleeding and dying

YEah for me not with the happy making.

And please in your rush to listen to how bad the media is versus how disturbed WOC are by little things like non pre occuring SEIZURES and DEATH

do ignore the research captain of teh drug herself

going pump the brakes

cause them uneducated WOC cant’s be trusted

If you’ve never witnessed your previously healthy child suffer an unprecedented tonic-clonic seizure, believe me, it is horrifying. There wasn’t much I could do except call 911 and feel powerless.

While she was subsequently hospitalized for testing and observation, I googled +Gardasil +seizure at a friend’s suggestion, and began an awakening to this whole issue. My daughter is not out of the woods yet – she’s still undergoing evaluation by pediatric neurologists, and still possibly suffering simple partial seizures centered in her motor cortex.

If anything, the CNN article is too watered down. It tamely mentions Gardasil being blamed for “ailments” and making girls “sick”, without exposing or elaborating the serious neurological effects, such as seizures and Guillain-Barre Syndrome (which causes paralysis), suffered by some recipients of the vaccine. I’m disappointed that “Habladora”, the author of the Feminste blog entry (there titled “CNN Spreads HPV Vaccination Doubts”, reproduced on Alternet with title “CNN Spreading Inaccurate Info on Cervical Cancer Vaccine”, chooses to suggest that the CNN article might be “fear-mongering” on CNN’s part. From my perspective as a progressive-minded parent of a victim of this vaccine’s side-effects, I applaud any exposure given to this issue by the mainstream media.

Why does Alternet assert, through its chosen title for the reproduced blog entry, that the information CNN has reported is “inaccurate”? The fact of the matter is that the reported information is not inaccurate. Gardasil *is* to blame for “ailments”, and it *is* making girls “sick”. My daughter is a prime example. And if you want more examples, all you have to do is peruse the websites of a couple of watchdog organizations monitoring the issue by making Freedom of Information Act requests against the national Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database. Here are the links:

http://www.judicialwatch.org/story/2008/may/judicial-watch-investigates-side-effects-hpv-vaccine
http://www.nvic.org/Diseases/HPV/HPVrpt.htm

Further, I take issue with Habladora’s supposition that “there is no solid evidence that Gardasil is dangerous”, which she makes by citing a CDC webpage that attempts to explain away the deaths and paralyses reported to VAERS in connection with Gardasil, and which fails to even mention seizures and other reported effects. So what constitutes “solid evidence that Gardasil is dangerous”? Absent some formal technical argument, understandable only to medical professionals, that conclusively links cause and effect at a molecular biology level or something, all we have is statistical correlation. I’m a believer in statistical correlation. When people who have received a vaccine soon die, become paralyzed, have seizures, and suffer other effects, more prevalently than in the general population, then that constitutes evidence of danger, in my estimation.

Habladora also inexplicably characterizes the CNN report as a “sensationalist rumor”. That adverse events associated with Gardasil vaccinations have occurred is not a rumor – it is a fact, supported by 7802 reports to VAERS between June 8, 2006 and April 30, 2008. Nor is CNN’s reporting of it “sensationalist”. Again I view it as appreciable journalism, and it is surprising that Habladora, an apparent feminist and therefore progressive, would cast aspersions on such reporting (perhaps she suspects CNN of raising fears about HPV vaccine on behalf of the religious right, who oppose it for the same reason they oppose contraception – they view it as encouraging teen sex). After all, we’re talking about Big Pharma pushing a vaccine through the FDA’s approval process and lobbying state and local governments to make it mandatory for public school attendance by teenage girls. What is Merck’s motive – altruism, or profit?

Even Dr. Diane Harper, the leading scientist for the clinical trials of Merck’s and GlaxoSmithKline’s HPV vaccines, has doubts about the adequacy of their clinical trials, their efficacy, and the sensibility of mandating them for school girls – you can watch an investigative reporting team’s interview with her here.

To me this whole saga has the appearance of Merck strong-arming compliant governments in the pursuit of profit, while simultaneously performing a drug safety experiment on the population at large. I’m wary of Gardasil not for religious reasons, but because of concerns about its safety, and about the integrity of Merck and the current governments’ processes for approving and mandating drugs. In general I’m a freethinker and a believer in science, and not opposed to vaccination. But this whole experience has awakened me to the need to think about the vaccines I give my children, and their necessity, instead of just “going with the flow” of the CDC’s recommendations (the latest one of which, added only two years ago, is Gardasil). In the particular case of HPV, cervical cancer, and Gardasil, I found this analysis, of the prevalence and treatability of HPV-related disease in American women, to be pretty clarifying and thought-provoking.

The bottom line for me is that, in my family’s experience, Gardasil is dangerous, and we won’t be having any more of it.