According to Reuters América Latina, Spain’s Agencia Española del Medicamento y Productos Sanitarios (AEMPS) and Europe’s Agencia Europea de Medicamentos (EMEA) have cleared Gardasil for take-off.
The two organizations have shrugged off any possibility that the continuing convulsions suffered by two young girls in Valencia, and by a third girl in the Balearic Islands, could be related to Gardasil. All the girls started convulsing and lost consciousness within hours of being injected with the anti-HPV vaccine. A few days later the entire batch of Gardasil was withdrawn, and although Spain’s vaccination program resumed shortly, its Ministry of Health convened a panel of experts to look into the matter.
The two girls in Valencia, at least, have suffered repeated and debilitating bouts of convulsions and have been rushed to Intensive Care several times. Experts are at a loss to explain or cure the problem and the families are, understandably, distraught and angry. Little is known about the third girl, whose case was far less widely publicized.
The two panels found no biological link between the girls’ convulsions and the shot, largely because they could find no similar cases in Spain despite the large number of vaccines given. They did, however, note that administration of the vaccine could well have “precipitated” the illness—in other words, it acted as a trigger.
That confuses me. Isn’t that a link?
According to VAERS (the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) 359 cases of convulsions and 13 cases of epilepsy post-Gardasil have been reported in the U.S. to date—always bearing in mind that VAERS is a purely voluntary system and suffers acutely from both over-reporting and under-reporting.
If it were me investigating the relationship between Gardasil and convulsions, I’d certainly want to look into possible trigger mechanisms. It is distressing to see that the people entrusted with public health are willing to say that, statistically-speaking, of course there is no connection— “just” a potential trigger.
But heck, I’m just the parent of a potential statistic.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
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