Gardasil Researcher Speaks Out

"She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years; there
is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. "
"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."



Gardasil Researcher Speaks Out
"Public Should Receive More Complete Warnings"
a.. By Sharyl Attkisson
a..
http://www.cbsnews.com:80/stories/20...n5253431.shtml
(CBS) Amid questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine Gardasil one of
the lead researchers for the Merck drug is speaking out about its risks,
benefits and aggressive marketing.

Dr. Diane Harper says young girls and their parents should receive more
complete warnings before receiving the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.
Dr. Harper helped design and carry out the Phase II and Phase III safety and
effectiveness studies to get Gardasil approved, and authored many of the
published, scholarly papers about it. She has been a paid speaker and
consultant to Merck. It's highly unusual for a researcher to publicly
criticize a medicine or vaccine she helped get approved.

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.

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.

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."

Merck and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintain Gardasil
is safe and effective, and that adequate warnings are provided, cautioning
about soreness at the injection site and risk of fainting after vaccination.
A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found while
the overall risk of side effects appears to be comparable to other vaccines,
Gardasil has a higher incidence of blood clots reported. Merck says it
continues to have confidence in Gardasil's safety profile. Merck also says
it's looking into cases of ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease,
reported after vaccination. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease
that attacks motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Merck and the CDC
say there is currently no evidence that Gardasil caused ALS in the cases
reported. Merck is also monitoring the number of deaths reported after
Gardasil: at least 32. Merck and CDC says it's unclear whether the deaths
were related to the vaccine, and that just because patients died after the
shots doesn't mean the shots were necessarily to blame.

According to Dr. Harper, assessing the true adverse event risk of Gardasil,
and comparing it to the risk of cervical cancer can be tricky and complex.
"The number of women who die from cervical cancer in the US every year is
small but real. It is small because of the success of the Pap screening
program."

"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."

She also worries that Merck's aggressive marketing of the vaccine may have
given women a false sense of security. "The future expectations women hold
because they have received free doses of Gardasil purchased by philanthropic
foundations, by public health agencies or covered by insurance is the true
threat to cervical cancer in the future. Should women stop Pap screening
after vaccination, the cervical cancer rate will actually increase per year.
Should women believe this is preventive for all cancers - something never
stated, but often inferred by many in the population-- a reduction in all
health care will compound our current health crisis. Should Gardasil not be
effective for more than 15 years, the most costly public health experiment
in cancer control will have failed miserably."

CDC continues to recommend Gardasil for girls and young women. The agency
says the vaccine's benefits outweigh its risks and that it is an important
tool in fighting a serious cancer.

Dr. Harper says the risk-benefit analysis for Gardasil in other countries
may shape up differently than what she believes is true in the US. "Of
course, in developing countries where there is no safety Pap screening for
women repeatedly over their lifetimes, the risks of serious adverse events
may be acceptable as the incidence rate of cervical cancer is five to 12
times higher than in the US, dwarfing the risk of death reported after
Gardasil."

john wrote:
"She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years; there
is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. "

The vaccine has been out for less than five years. What do you expect?
Evidence that it lasts 200 years?


...

"Jeff" wrote in message
...
john wrote:
"She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years;
there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. "

The vaccine has been out for less than five years. What do you expect?
Evidence that it lasts 200 years?


but they keep telling us it last forever, which is why they inject kids

john wrote:
"Jeff" wrote in message
...
john wrote:
"She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years;
there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. "
The vaccine has been out for less than five years. What do you expect?
Evidence that it lasts 200 years?


but they keep telling us it last forever, which is why they inject kids


Who are "they?"

And where do they say it "Lasts forever?"

"Bob Officer" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:02:47 +0100, in misc.health.alternative,
"john" wrote:


"Jeff" wrote in message
...
john wrote:
"She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years;
there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. "

The vaccine has been out for less than five years. What do you expect?
Evidence that it lasts 200 years?


but they keep telling us it last forever, which is why they inject kids


Who is they?




--
Bob Officer
Posting the truth
http://www.skeptics.com.au
"They" are your Daddy fool.

"john" wrote:

Amid questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine Gardasil one of
the lead researchers for the Merck drug is speaking out about its risks,
benefits and aggressive marketing.

Dr. Diane Harper says young girls and their parents should receive more
complete warnings before receiving the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.
Dr. Harper helped design and carry out the Phase II and Phase III safety and
effectiveness studies to get Gardasil approved, and authored many of the
published, scholarly papers about it. She has been a paid speaker and
consultant to Merck. It's highly unusual for a researcher to publicly
criticize a medicine or vaccine she helped get approved.

Typical smoke-blowing and fear mongering by anti-vaccination liars.

Here is what Dr Harper actually had to say in August 2009. That's this
month, by the way.

1: Public Health Genomics. 2009;12(5-6):319-30. Epub 2009 Aug 11

Prevention of human papillomavirus infections and associated diseases
by vaccination: a new hope for global public health.Harper DM.
Department of Bioinformatics and Personalized Medicine, University of
Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, Kansas City, MO 64139, USA.

Cervarix and Gardasil, 2 human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, have
been approved and implemented globally in young adolescent women with
the hope of reducing the incidence of cervical cancer several decades
hence. This program is dependent on the concept of 'immunobridging':
antibody titers generated in young adolescents that are the same or
higher than generated in HPV-naive 16- to 26-year-old women, the
population in which efficacy is proven. Likewise, realizing a decline
in cervical cancer from young adolescent female vaccination depends on
the duration of vaccine efficacy, and the population coverage reached.
While we patiently wait for results from our young adolescent
vaccination programs, newly released data indicates that the
immunogenicity and efficacy of the vaccines for young adult women with
prior HPV exposure is equal or superior to that seen for young
adolescents. This same concept of immunobridging supported by limited
efficacy data offers the potential to reduce cervical cancer
precursors within just a few years in our young sexually active adult
women, a population secondary to our young adolescents. The HPV
vaccines are not therapeutic. Neither vaccine will inhibit an already
HPV-infected basal epithelial cell which continues to transform
differentiated epithelial layers into cervical dysplasias. There is a
clinical hope, though, already supported by early data, that the
vaccines are capable of neutralizing HPV virions in host tissues from
both auto-inoculated infections and infections in other organs than
the cervix, thereby making it possible for these vaccines to prevent
less common HPV-associated cancers of the penis, vagina, vulva, anus,
oral cavity and oro-pharynx. Both vaccines have been shown to be
generally safe in the phase II and phase III randomized controlled
trials over 3-6.4 years. Post-marketing surveillance of Cervarix and
Gardasil continues to show that they are safe for most women despite
rarely occurring serious events. Copyright 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel.

(And yes, I have included the copyright notice. You can read this
abstract for free at
http://content.karger.com/produktedb...214922&typ=pdf
or in PubMed at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...?dopt=Abstract)

--
Peter Bowditch aa #2243
The Millenium Project http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
Australian Council Against Health Fraud http://www.acahf.org.au
To email me use my first name only at ratbags.com

Jeff wrote:
john wrote:
"She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years;
there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. "

The vaccine has been out for less than five years. What do you expect?
Evidence that it lasts 200 years?


Exactly. The long term effectiveness and side effects are not known,
so everyone taking it makes herself a guinea pig.

And again Bobby blathers.

"Peter Bowditch" wrote in message

Typical smoke-blowing and fear mongering by anti-vaccination liars.


CBS news is hardly an anti-vax outlet

"john" wrote:


"Peter Bowditch" wrote in message

Typical smoke-blowing and fear mongering by anti-vaccination liars.


CBS news is hardly an anti-vax outlet


They just uncritically report what liars and fear mongers say. It's
sad, but that's the way some parts of the media operate.

--
Peter Bowditch aa #2243
The Millenium Project http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
Australian Council Against Health Fraud http://www.acahf.org.au
To email me use my first name only at ratbags.com