The public forum was held in an Indianapolis community, sponsored by the Indiana Immunization Coalition. It featured among its panelists scientist Darron Brown, who is one of the creators of the HPV vaccine. He is a researcher at UI Health. He and other panelists were put on the spot when parents began peppering them with questions about the vaccine’s safety.

WISH TV8 reporter Deanna Dewberry, who attended the forum as part of her ongoing investigation about the HPV vaccine, said  the scene became more emotionally charged as some parents in the audience began to share stories about serious side effects suffered by their children, which they believed were directly related the Gardasil shots. Teenage girls cried as their parents shared information about the symptoms they reportedly suffer after receiving the vaccine.

Brown and other panelists, which included physicians and public health department representatives, argued such side effects have not been conclusively proven as resulting from the vaccine.

Since its approval by the FDA and introduction to the market in 2006, Gardasil has been linked to more than 20,000 reports of adverse side effects, including serious problems such as seizures, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Guilliane Barre syndrome. There have been nearly 100 deaths reported among girls who received the Gardsail vaccine. At the end of 2011, the vaccine’s reach was expanded when it was approved for use in boys and young men.

Dr. Virginia Caine, director of the Marion County Public Health Department, assured parents that her office would follow up on reports of side effects linked to Gardasil.

Watch the News Report:

HPV vaccine forum turns emotional: wishtv.com

Source: WISH TV8

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

The campaign is aimed at two senior scientists in the U.S. government – Dr. Mark Schiffman, who SaneVax identifies as a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the official medical monitor of the HPV vaccine clinical trial; and Dr. Lauri Markowitz, a senior scientific officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who is it says is responsible for instituting a post-licensure marketing program for HPV vaccines. Supporters of stronger regulations also are sending letters to their Congressional representatives.

According to the release, the letters demand the government “comply with the law and immediately implement a reliable post-licensure monitoring program to validate the benefits of the HPV vaccine, being marketed as a cancer vaccine, indeed outweigh its risks to consumers.”

Since Gardasil was approved for use in girls beginning as early as age 9, in 2006, there have been numerous reports of serious adverse events linked to the drug. Side effects reported following the vaccination include blood clots, immune deficiency disorders like Lupus, brain inflammation, seizures and even death. Because most side effects are reported through the voluntary Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), some advocates believe the incidence of serious side effects is higher than officially reported, as some victims would not think to link the drug to later health problems, and so these problems go unreported.

Manufacturer Merck maintains the drug is safe, and says that there is no conclusive link between the drug and later adverse health events. In fact, the drug recently received expanded approval by the FDA for use in boys and young men, for the prevention of HPV, and the reduction of incidence of penile, anal and oral cancers.

For more information, and sample letters, visit the website “Gardasil and Unexplained Deaths.” This site is operated by Emily Tarsel, whose daughter, Chris, who died days after receiving the Gardasil vaccine.

Visit SANEVax online.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

According to Kirsten’s video, featured on YouTube, Gabby was an active teenager, a cheerleader and gymnast with a 4.0 grade average. Until she received the Gardasil shots. Shortly after receiving the shots, which are given in a series of three, Gabby developed an inflammation of the central nervous system. This left her in constant pain, and she had to leave school. Her symptoms include seizures, headaches, swelling, dizziness, mini-strokes, vomiting and memory loss.

The drug’s manufacturer, Merck, says injuries like Gabby’s cannot be conclusively linked to the Gardasil vaccine, and that the thousands of serious illnesses and more than 80 deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) are “anecdotal.”

Watch the video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

Julie Smith was alarmed when her daughter brought home a flyer from her school, notifying parents that all girls in grade 8 would be addressed by the public health nurse about the vaccine. Smith was concerned that important information about the sexually transmitted HPV was being presented to 12-year-old girls, instead of their parents.

“It is a decision that should be made by adults,” she told The Timaru Herald. “At the very least, parents should have been invited to attend the meeting to hear what information is being given to their children.”

She says parents were asked to sign a permission slip only to notify the school if their daughter could NOT attend the presentation. It should have been the other way around, she says, with permission slips required in order to attend the meeting. She worried that some girls might forget to talk to their parents about the meeting to have the letter signed, and might then attend the meeting without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

The website founded by Ms. Smith is called “Off The Radar.” She lists the reason for founding the site as follows:

This site was born out of the frustration of a parent who wished to make an “informed” decision about Gardasil for their daughter, and the difficulty they incurred at not being told the complete story about the vaccine by “The Ministry of Health and medical establishment”. To have a “one stop shop” of information for parents concerning what is being put into their children, whether by vaccine or food, this site endeavours to tell “what they didn’t want you to hear.”

Visit this site at http://offtheradar.co.nz/.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that approximately 32 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed in the United States since about September 2010. They argue that the more than 17,000 reports of serious adverse events – including things like immune deficiencies, Lupus, seizures, and blood clots in addition to the reports of deaths following administration of the vaccine – make up a relatively small percentage of the total number of doses given.

But do parents really want to take a gamble on that kind of risk?

Until recently the vaccine has been given exclusively to girls, with no recommendations for its use in boys. Now that the market has been expanded to include children of both genders, it’s frightening to imagine the possible consequences.

According to information about HPV found at WebMD, the infection is very common, affecting about 20 million people in the U.S. HPV could cause genital warts or abnormal changes in the cervix and other genital areas that can lead to cancer. However, for most people, the body will clear HPV infection on its own. Women are encouraged to get a gynecological examination and Pap smear annually as the best way to detect and treat pre-cancerous cells, whether or not they have ever received the Gardasil vaccine.

Because the vaccine only prevents against a fraction of the types of HPV, and because the vaccine’s efficacy is only 5 years from the point of vaccination, receiving the shots does not guarantee a person will never develop HPV.

Parents who are considering whether to include Gardasil when choosing vaccinations for their child should ask themselves, “Is the relatively limited benefit of this vaccine really worth the risk?”

Source: Yahoo! News

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

Since its introduction in 2006, the Gardasil vaccine has been linked to a number of side effects, some serious, like lupus, seizures, paralysis, blood clots and others. There also have been more than 70 deaths reported following administration of the Gardasil vaccine, which is given in a series of three injections over a six month period.

However, the coroner in this recent case, Michel Ferland, is concerned because it appears the victim died as a result of drowning. She was found in the bathtub of her family home. According to a report in the Toronto Sun, the girl’s mother said she had a number of adverse reactions following her first dose of the Gardasil vaccine, including dizziness and memory loss. She was treated for those symptoms at a Montreal hospital. Two months later, she received the second in the series of vaccinations. Days later, she was dead.

Is it possible that a recurrence of side effects like dizziness struck the young teen, making her incapable of leaving the bath or calling for help, resulting in her drowning? Or might her death be more directly related to another serious side effect of the drug?

Ferland is concerned enough about a possible link between the Gardasil vaccine and the young girl’s death that he is calling for further studies of the drug to be conducted in Canada, and he is asking the Canadian health agency to provide better information to patients about possible side effects of the drug. Health Canada approved the drug in 2006.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

The approval expands the audience for the Merck & Col. manufactured drug to include all people – boys and girls – ages 9 through 26. Gardasil protects against four kinds of HPV – 6, 11, 16 and 18 – that cause up to 90 percent of anal cancer cases. Recently, Gardasil’s use was expanded to include prevention of vulvar and vaginal cancer in girls and young women, and for the prevention of genital warts in both males and females.

While the Gardasil vaccine is “recommended” by the FDA for the prevention of cervical cancer, it does not yet have that same approval for universal vaccination for males. The risk of anal cancer is higher for homosexual men who engage in sex with other men.

Approved in 2006 for the prevention of cervical cancer only, the Gardasil vaccine has since been linked to serious adverse events, including blood clots, autoimmune disorders and more than 30 reports of death following the injections. The vaccine is given in a series of three injections over a six-month period.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

It’s a rhetorical question, but it makes you wonder if it’s somehow more permissible to be killed or injured by a drug than it is by a defective automobile.

Merck has lobbied federal regulators hard to make Gardasil mandatory for all American schoolgirls. Fortunately, the drug giant’s vision of requiring every girl in the nation to receive its three-tiered shot fell short of becoming law. Although many states require sixth-grade girls to receive the shot, parents have the legal right to refuse it. But very few of them know about the drug’s risks and how it has harmed and occasionally killed perfectly healthy girls.

According to the Washington Examiner, 20-year-old Mary Katherine Davison of Frederick, Maryland, became dizzy and nauseated after receiving her second Gardasil shot in January 2008. Although her two younger sisters had no reactions, Mary Katherine suffered a massive stroke and spent 2 months in rehab re-learning how to walk. Her mother, Mary Davison, said that she made no connection between her daughter’s stroke and Gardasil until Mary Katherine’s doctor refused to schedule her for the final Gardasil shot.

Days later, 17-year-old Jessica Ericzon of Alexandria Bay, New York, collapsed and died on the bathroom floor just 40 hours after receiving her third Gardasil shot. Jessica had complained of pain and dizziness after her second shot, but sadly nobody connected her symptoms to Garsdasil.

21-year-old Christina Tarsell of Sparks, Maryland, received her third Gardasil shot and spent more then 2 weeks feeling dizzy, nauseated and fatigued before she died.

“We had no clue that these were all symptoms of something,” her mother told the Washington Examiner. In all these cases, autopsies and toxicology screenings failed to determine the cause of death.

Naturally, Merck defends its Gardasil vaccine. The pharmaceutical giant also has a powerful ally in the CDC, which officially reported in 2008 that Gardasil recipients didn’t experience negative reactions any more than non-recipients.

That claim, however, was countered by the National Vaccine Information Center, which used the same CDC data to show that Gardasil was linked to “at least four times as many death and cardiac arrest reports” as Cervarix and “seemed to be associated with an unusually high number of reports of atypical collapse.”

“CDC is still saying this is a safe vaccine. With Pap smears, there was no medical reason for fast-tracking FDA approval. They made it (cervical cancer) sound like it was some kind of pandemic,” Christina Tarsell’s mother, Emily, told the Washington Examiner, adding that nobody from the CDC will respond to her calls.

Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Time-for-the-truth-about-Gardasil-89466882.html

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

As head of Merck’s $5 billion global vaccine arm, Dr. Gerberding will likely be responsible for revitalizing Gardasil’s waning sales. Merck won FDA approval for the vaccine in 2007 and immediately launched an aggressive campaign to make Gardasil shots mandatory for school girls as young as 11. However, the ambitious plan ultimately failed, thanks to the outcry of consumer and health advocates who challenged the vaccine’s safety profile.

Other critics say that the Gardasil vaccine is useless and that its risks exceed its benefits.

Dr. Charlotte Haug, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association criticized Gardasil in an editorial published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

“Whether a risk is worth taking depends not only on the absolute risk, but on the relationship between the potential risk and the potential benefit. If the potential benefits are substantial, most individuals would be willing to accept the risks. But the net benefit of the HPV vaccine to a woman is uncertain. Even if persistently infected with HPV, a woman most likely will not develop cancer if she is regularly screened…”

Dr. Diane Harper, the lead researcher in HPV vaccine development, announced at a conference in October that she considered Gardasil a useless vaccine, and that Merck’s efforts in pushing the Gardasil vaccine amount to what she called “a great big public health experiment.”

Gardasil’s side effects include fainting, redness and inflammation at the vaccination site, dizziness, and fever. However, the most dangerous side effect reported so far has been an increase in the risk and rate of blood clots. According to JAMA, blood clots resulting from Gardasil may have caused 32 unconfirmed deaths so far.

Gardasil sales have been floundering recently, down 22 percent in the third quarter at $311 million.

Dr. Gerberding’s controversial tenure at the CDC was rife with allegations that she put party politics before science and public health, and that her strategic decisions crippled the agency’s ability to respond effectively to public health crises. In December 2005, five former CDC directors jointly wrote a letter to Dr. Gerberding, expressing alarm over the departure of key staff members and warning that her leadership jeopardized the agency’s ability to perform effectively.

If the concerns of the CDC’s former directors and leading scientists are valid, then Dr. Gerberding may be the right person to shore up Gardasil’s place in the drug market.

“As a preeminent authority in public health, infectious diseases and vaccines, Dr. Gerberding is the ideal choice to lead Merck’s engagement with organizations around the world that share our commitment to the use of vaccines to prevent disease and save lives,” Merck Chief Executive Officer Richard Clark said in a statement.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

The directive went into effect in July of last year, mandating Gardasil shots for immigrant females despite mounting evidence that the shots could cause serious injury and death. The shots were also required of females who posed no risk of contracting or spreading HPV to the wider population.

In determining which vaccines immigrants are required to have, the CDC’s rule of thumb is that the vaccine must target viruses that could potentially cause an outbreak and viruses that either have been eliminated from the United States or are in the process of elimination. HPV does not fit any of the criteria.

Immigrants are still required to undergo a series of 15 other vaccinations before gaining U.S. resident status and citizenship. Neither federal health officials nor the pharmaceutical companies have tested the safety of vaccinations in combination. No research has been conducted on the interaction of Gardasil vaccines with other vaccines and what adverse effects such cocktails could have on the recipient.

Soon after the CDC added Gardasil to the list of required vaccines for immigrants, more than 100 advocacy groups representing women, immigrants, and consumer health challenged the requirement, protesting that it was unfair to require HPV vaccines for immigrants but not all U.S. citizens.

Merck had been lobbying hard to make the vaccines mandatory for all school-age American girls, but their plans were strongly opposed by an unlikely band of abstinence-only conservatives, Big Pharma critics, individual parents and parent groups, a growing anti-vaccine movement, and a number of consumer advocacy and women’s rights groups.

The 3-shot series costs between $300 and $1,000, putting a financial strain on immigrants already burdened by thousands of dollars in application fees and mandatory medical exams. Mandatory Gardasil vaccinations would have provided Merck with a revenue stream of at least $4 billion annually.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site

Although the committee did not press for the use of Gardasil in men, it did advise U.S. doctors to use the vaccine at their discretion. It also recommended that the shot be included in the federally funded Vaccines for Children program for boys 9 to 18 years old.

The FDA approved Gardasil on October 16 for use in preventing genital warts in males age 9 to 26. Men may carry HPV and never know about it unless it develops into warts, and even then there are no long-term effects. On the other hand, women infected with genital warts are at risk of developing cervical cancers.

Gardasil only protects against 4 strains of HPV that cause cancer and 2 strains that cause warts.

Vaccinating boys and men with Gardasil would primarily be done to reduce the number of females exposed to HPV. However, the serious risks that the Gardasil shots carry, combined with their steep cost – about $500 for a complete regimen – leave many health professionals and patients questioning whether the vaccines are worth it.

Since 2006, when the FDA approved Gardasil for use in females, more than 15,000 girls have reported adverse side effects to the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Reactions that have been officially reported include brain inflammation, seizures, blood clots, paralysis, lupus, Guilliane Barre Syndrome, and several others. 44 deaths attributed to the vaccine have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Merck, which stands to earn billions from the shots, maintains that the vaccine is safe and that the benefits outweigh the risks. But for thousands of girls and women injured by Gardasil, the vaccines were anything but harmless – a fact made more frustratingly tragic by the lead developer’s own admission that Gardasil is ineffective and unnecessary.

SOURCE: the Truth about Gardasil">Beasley Allen Case Site