Reward Offered to Family of Girl Supposedly Harmed by HPV Vaccine
Michelle Bachmann speaking in Iowa last year. Earlier this week, she tells unsubstantiated stories about the life-saving HPV vaccine.
Two university professors have ponied up an $11,000 reward for the family of a girl who Republican presidential hopeful U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann keeps bringing up as an example of how harmful the HPV vaccination is.
The profs doubt that such a girl exists and they’d like some proof in the form of released medical records.
At Monday night’s GOP debate, Michelle Bachmann again hammered Texas Gov. Rick Perry for proposing a mandate for all Texas girls to get the shot, which protects against most types of cervical cancer caused by HPV. She told Fox News that a woman came up to her after the debate, thanking her for standing up against the vaccine. Here’s what she said, according to the Minnesota Star-Tribune online:
“There’s a woman that came up crying to me tonight after the debate,” Bachman told Fox News. “She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She said her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine.”
Bachmann repeated the story Tuesday morning on the Today Show.
The two men offering the rewards, Steven Miles, a U of M bioethics professor, and Art Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, say that the message Bachmann is sending in telling and retelling this story is one that could do serious harm to the public health. “The woman, assuming she exists, put this claim into the public domain and it’s an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed,” Miles told the Star Tribune.
The vaccine has stirred up controversy since it came out a few years ago. Though it has proven to be effective in preventing the infections that cause most forms of cervical cancer, not everyone was in favor of it. Some religious groups came out against it saying it would promote promiscuous behavior in young children. Others claimed their daughters suffered severe reactions to the three shots, which has scared many parents from getting it for their daughters and sons.
There is no credible evidence that Gardasil or Cervarix cause brain damage of any kind and reports of serious adverse effects from the shots are few. Furthermore, none have been conclusively linked to death, blood clots or other serious reactions.
Bachmann claims lives are at risk in getting the vaccination, when exactly the opposite is true: lives become more at risk without it.
Here’s Bachmann telling the story for the first time:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPZn9mRQlq4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Photo: SOURCE
This part is total S: “reports of serious adverse effects from the shots are few.”
Even our usually pro vax doctor counseled us to forgo Gardasil, as she herself is doing with her own 12 yr old. There are enough adverse reactions to merit serious consideration-even from one of the vaccine’s creators/researchers, Dr. Harper. http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/208-the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-qsleep-at-nightq-gardasil-and-cervarix-dont-work-are-dangerous-and-werent-tested.html
Ummm… I thought that vaccine was given to teens. And someone is claiming their teen daughter suddenly became retarded because of it?
Highly unlikely.
Goddess,
That site you linked to is totally crack pot. It is neither reliable nor informative. It links to articles that don’t exist. Frankly, it seems filled with conspiracy theories.
Here is a list of related articles listed on the site you posted. They are totally crackpot.
The Amish Don’t Get Autism but They Do Get Bio-Terrorism
How To Cure Autism and The Time Bomb Of Mercury Poisoning
The 14 Studies Disputing A Mercury Link To Autism and Who Really Funded Them
The Health Wyze Report (Audio Edition #4)
Vaccine Secrets
If Vaccines Are Safe, Then Why Did Congress Give Manufacturers Special Legal Immunity? Why Are They Above the Law?
Children’s Programming On P.B.S. Is Admitted Propaganda For Vaccine Industry and Is Sponsored by Governmental Money
Chop Shop Hospitals
Unwilling Guinea Pigs: Using Foster Care Children For Forced Drug Experiments
Mandatory Vaccinations: Have A Taste Of Your Own Medicine, Doctor
The Hepatitis B Vaccine Scam
The Mail Bag #5: Colloidal Silver, Vaccines, Toothpaste, Sunlight, and Shark Cartilage
LF: Did you actually rad Dr. Harper’s thoughts- the par tI was actually referencing?
Like this:
“Dr. Diane Harper was the lead researcher in the development of the human papilloma virus vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix. She is the latest to come forward and question the safety and effectiveness of these vaccines. She made the surprising announcement at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination, which took place in Reston, Virginia on Oct. 2nd through 4th, 2009. Her speech was supposed to promote the Gardasil and Cervarix vaccines; but instead, she unexpectedly turned on her corporate bosses, in a very public way.
Dr. Harper explained in her presentation that the cervical cancer risk in this country is already extremely low, and that vaccinations are unlikely to have any affect upon the rate of cervical cancer in the United States. In fact, 70% of all H.P.V. infections resolve themselves without treatment in a year, and the number rises to well over 90% in two years.
Additionally, there was the safety angle. All trials of the vaccines were done on children aged 15 and above, despite them currently being recommended to, and marketed for 9-year-olds. So far, 15,037 girls have reported adverse side effects for Gardasil alone to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (V.A.E.R.S.), and that is just for the small percentage of people who went through the hassle of reporting them. So far, 44 girls are officially known to have died, needlessly, from these vaccines. The reported side effects include Guillian Barré Syndrome (paralysis lasting for years, or permanently — sometimes causing suffocation), lupus, seizures, blood clots, and brain inflammation. Parents are usually not made aware of these risks.
Dr. Harper claimed that she was speaking out, so that she might finally be able to sleep at night.
“About eight in every ten women who have been sexually active will have H.P.V. at some stage of their life. Normally there are no symptoms, and in 98 per cent of cases it clears itself. But in those cases where it doesn’t, and isn’t treated, it can lead to pre-cancerous cells which may develop into cervical cancer.”
– Dr. Diane Harper
I can read between lines too. Doesn’t invalidate what this doctor said.
Another link from a more “credible” site for you:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/cbsnews_investigates/main5253431.shtml
“Dr. Harper joins a number of consumer watchdogs, vaccine safety advocates, and parents who question the vaccine’s risk-versus-benefit profile. She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years; there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. ”
and
“This raises questions about the CDC’s recommendation that the series of shots be given to girls as young as 11-years old. “If we vaccinate 11 year olds and the protection doesn’t last… we’ve put them at harm from side effects, small but real, for no benefit,” says Dr. Harper. “The benefit to public health is nothing, there is no reduction in cervical cancers, they are just postponed, unless the protection lasts for at least 15 years, and over 70% of all sexually active females of all ages are vaccinated.” She also says that enough serious side effects have been reported after Gardasil use that the vaccine could prove riskier than the cervical cancer it purports to prevent. Cervical cancer is usually entirely curable when detected early through normal Pap screenings.”
and:
“Dr. Scott Ratner and his wife, who’s also a physician, expressed similar concerns as Dr. Harper in an interview with CBS News last year. One of their teenage daughters became severely ill after her first dose of Gardasil. Dr. Ratner says she’d have been better off getting cervical cancer than the vaccination. “My daughter went from a varsity lacrosse player at Choate to a chronically ill, steroid-dependent patient with autoimmune myofasciitis. I’ve had to ask myself why I let my eldest of three daughters get an unproven vaccine against a few strains of a nonlethal virus that can be dealt with in more effective ways.”"
and
“”The risks of serious adverse events including death reported after Gardasil use in (the JAMA article by CDC’s Dr. Barbara Slade) were 3.4/100,000 doses distributed. The rate of serious adverse events on par with the death rate of cervical cancer. Gardasil has been associated with at least as many serious adverse events as there are deaths from cervical cancer developing each year. Indeed, the risks of vaccination are underreported in Slade’s article, as they are based on a denominator of doses distributed from Merck’s warehouse. Up to a third of those doses may be in refrigerators waiting to be dispensed as the autumn onslaught of vaccine messages is sent home to parents the first day of school. Should the denominator in Dr. Slade’s work be adjusted to account for this, and then divided by three for the number of women who would receive all three doses, the incidence rate of serious adverse events increases up to five fold. How does a parent value that information,” said Harper.
Dr. Harper agrees with Merck and the CDC that Gardasil is safe for most girls and women. But she says the side effects reported so far call for more complete disclosure to patients. She says they should be told that protection from the vaccination might not last long enough to provide a cancer protection benefit, and that its risks – “small but real” – could occur more often than the cervical cancer itself would.
“Parents and women must know that deaths occurred. Not all deaths that have been reported were represented in Dr. Slade’s work, one-third of the death reports were unavailable to the CDC, leaving the parents of the deceased teenagers in despair that the CDC is ignoring the very rare but real occurrences that need not have happened if parents were given information stating that there are real, but small risks of death surrounding the administration of Gardasil.”"
Goddess,
Look at the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/hpv/gardasil.html).
According to one adverse reporting system, out of 32 million doses, there were 1,440 serious adverse effects reported. “Any VAERS report that indicated hospitalization, permanent disability, life-threatening illness, congenital anomaly or death is classified as serious. As with all VAERS reports, serious events may or may not have been caused by the vaccine.”
“In the 32 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.”
Uh huh. And they said the same thing about the adverse reaction my son had to DTP- until 2 years later when they admitted that the symptoms he presented were indeed the signs of the encephalitic reaction he had and that we and his doctors were correct that his brain damage resulted from those 3 vaccines. I really don’t trust implicitly, everything that the government says about drugs- especially when I see the debacles with drugs like Avandia, Fosamax and the others lately. Ah- and check out the recent news about Clomid and SSRIs affects on fetuses. But all of these were supposed to be safe by govt standards.
Gardasil may or may not turn out to be a valuable tool with which to protect oneself against a few strains of HPV, but until more testing is done, the government has no business mandating its use, nor pressuring people to use it.
Lest you consider me a rabid *anti-vaxer*- just had my flu shot and the kids are all up to date on everything- BUT Gardasil- and their pediatrician concurs.
And:
http://www.adrugrecall.com/news/potential-gardasil-recall-follows-discovery-of-hpv-contaminated-vaccine.html
“Six batches have tested positive for HPV DNA. Vaccine samples obtained from Australia, Spain, Poland, France and the U.S. have tested positive for the HPV virus as well. The Merck drug has previously been associated with bad reactions in patients, leading to hospitalization in many cases. Since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006, the FDAs vaccine events reporting site (VEARS) has reported over 12,000 cases of adverse or negative reactions to the vaccine. Of these, only one case has resulted in death.”
““This serious revelation has highlighted that the regulatory authorities rely too much on industry-based finidings and not independent science,” said Claire Bleakly, president of GE-Free NZ. “There are increasing reports of auto immune diseases such as juvenile arthritis and Gullian-Barre Syndrome occurring after the use of recombinant vaccines, raising questions about the impact of genetically engineered foreign proteins in food and vaccines.””
“they said the same thing about the adverse reaction my son had to DTP- until 2 years later when they admitted that the symptoms he presented were indeed the signs of the encephalitic reaction he had and that we and his doctors were correct that his brain damage resulted from those 3 vaccines.” And you were able to PROVE that claim and be compensated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program? I’ve never been clear on that part.
An interesting study showing epidemiological evidence based on tens of millions of doses administered in the US of vaccines with and without thimerosal. The results show a clear association with neurodevelopment disorders.
http://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/home/eng/PhysicianReference8.pdf
The specialists who treated him recorded and researched it were certain of it. They went on record with that and were willing to back it up in court. We have copies of those records. And nope- never used those to sue or go through the NVICP since I was pregnant wuth our second child, having pre-term contrax and life was full of physical therapy , occupational, speech and developmental. At that point, it was too painful to stay in an angry place, I needed all of my energy to moving forward with him, his brain damage was irreversible, and I’ve always hated the “sue” mentality. The one lawyer we approached wanted to go after the drug company, when the person we felt was guilty of malpractice was the pediatrician who blew off our concerns. in the first place with his reactions. I signed the papers accepting the risks- I did not feel I had any business at that point suing the drug company when the encephalitic reaction and death were rare, but recorded and verifiable adverse reactions. Had I known his one glaring *symptom*of that reaction was a red flag, he’d have never had the second or the third. But we always felt the doctor was too glib. When he died of sepsis we were again urged to sue- but did not. It wouldn’t have brought him back, nor would suing in the first place have cured his brain damage.
Clearer?
Well, thanks for clarifying. I’ve never understood the full story. It’s not that I don’t believe children have vaccine reactions. I just believe it’s exceedingly rare, and apparently so do you, since your other children are fully vaccinated.
Bottom line is that vaccinations of diseases that are not communicable by everyday sorts of interactions should NOT be forced/mandated by the government. I also question whether ANY vaccination should be mandated. I vaccinate, but hold this as my decision. The government should not be empowered to force these things on people.
Kids dying form vaccines= rare. Kids having adverse reactions= not nearly as rare. I agree with Anon, the original. No parent should be forced to inject vaccines with which they do not agree into their children.
Maybe someone here can answer this, because I get lost on the Gardasil conversation somehow. If Gardasil vaccinates against certain strains of HPV and HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, why are we only vaccinating girls? The vaccine is available for boys. Says so right on the Gardasil homepage. But only girls have to get the vaccine because HPV may make girls more suceptible to cervical cancer? If we’re trying to prevent the spread of HPV (what the vaccine prevents–it does not prevent cervical cancer), shouldn’t we be vaccinating everyone?
It is quite possible I am missing something here. I have never heard anyone else ask the question, so maybe I’m an idiot. If so, please advise…
Follow up to my previous post, from the CDC website (becuase now I’m curious):
“Why is Gardasil not on the immunization schedule for boys and men?
CDC did not add this vaccine to the recommended immunization schedules for males in these age groups because studies suggest that the best way to prevent the most disease due to HPV is to vaccinate as many girls and women as possible. Parents of boys can decide if Gardasil is right for their sons by talking with their sons’ health care providers. Young men can also discuss this vaccine with their doctors.”
Huh? We can prevent it for the males by vaccinating the females? Um, I think I may have an issue with this…
A couple of points. One, it doesn’t seem sensible to compare what you believe are the serious adverse events related to an HPV vaccine (in this case, Gardasil) to only the deaths caused by cervical cancer. There are many horrifying adverse events involved just in the treatment of both cancerous and pre-cancerous lesions with HPV. Sure, some women with cancer die, and I can see you have counted them. But some other women “just” get hysterectomies and can’t ever have children. Some women get chemo or radiation that leaves them permanently incontinent. And the women who don’t have cancer yet, but just the pre-cancerous lesions? They get the infected cells cut or burned from their cervix in all kinds of painful and costly ways. And after that, the scarred cervix can make them incapable of getting pregnant. Or it may make them miscarry, or deliver babies too early to live, or too early to live normally. It’s these women – the ones who got treatment – who were “protected” by PAP smears, but believe me, they’ve still experienced the serious adverse events connected to HPV. Needless to say, they would be much better off if a vaccine prevented the infection before a doctor ever got around to a PAP swab. So if we’re weighing the risks of getting HPV-caused disease versus getting the vaccine, lets add all that stuff in. You might also want to include the awful impacts of anal cancer – an NIH study just published in the Lancet shows the vaccine provides “strong protection” against HPV-caused anal cancer, and no one is lining up to be the next Farah Fawcett. And the vaccine is likely to protect against a large number of HPV-caused throat, tongue and tonsil cancers. No one is lining up to be the next Michael Douglas, either. Frankly, I’ve never really understood why Dr. Harper doesn’t include these “adverse events” in her discussion.
Do I think HPV vaccines are perfect? No. Mostly because they don’t protect against all the cancer-causing strains of HPV, and because they are so expensive and time consuming that only a small fraction of people actually get them.
And CK, regarding boys, the makers of Gardasil this year started marketing it to parents of boys, in the wake of more research showing that it could benefit boys’ health, not just that of their partners. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/health/19garda.html?_r=1&ref=health
Do I think they should get it even if it only helps their partners’ health? Yes. I don’t think men want to see their wives and future children injured and killed by this vicious sexually transmitted disease.
Please read this blog. It’s been republished as a book to promote understanding of the effect of HPV.
http://cellwarnotebooks.blogspot.com/
I honestly think the only reason this vaccine is even on the political radar is because HPV is sexually transmitted. Could you imagine a politician taking a negative stance on a vaccine that could lower the risk of cancer in women? No way. But shake it up with some good old abstinence only education and you’ve got yourself a debate.
I think that a post about whether or not Michelle Bachamann is a big, fat liar (I’d bet money that she is), should not be muddied up by another vaccine debate.
One final point, about this constant implication that HPV is mostly harmless and that most people’s bodies clear the infection easily. Until the U.S. instituted a comprehensive PAP screening program, cervical cancer was THE leading cause of cancer death for American women. It was not breast cancer. It was HPV-caused cervical cancer.
Here you go, CK: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/health/policy/26vaccine.html?_r=1&hp
The feds are now advising the shot for boys and young men.
Very large trial following 190,000 women: No serious health concerns linked to HPV vaccine. http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/02/gardasil-no-serious-health-concerns-linked-with-hpv-vaccine/