From The New York Post:
On the advice of her family doctor, Jessie had taken a series of three Gardasil shots.
The vaccine, marketed for females ages 9 to 26, is the first found to ward off strains of the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer.
Jessie got the first injection in July 2007.
After her second shot in September, she complained of a pain in the back of her head, fatigue and soreness in some joints, said her mom, Lisa.
On Feb. 20, while on winter break from school, she got her third and final dose of the vaccine.
The next night, “she told me the spot on the back of her head was bothering her again,” her mom said.
The next morning, Feb. 22, Lisa, a hospital technician, left for work just after 5 a.m., leaving Jessie asleep.
Jessie never showed up for the class she was taking at Jefferson Community College.
When her mom got home at 3:20 p.m., she found Jessie sprawled on her back on the bathroom floor, with blood spots on her head where it had hit a flowerpot.
Jefferson County Medical Examiner Samuel Livingstone is stumped.
“She was essentially dead by the time she hit the floor. Whatever it was, it was instantaneous,” Livingstone said. His autopsy found no cause.
He speculates she suffered a cardiac arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, extremely rare in young people.
That is crazy. I am glad that Merck has backed off making it mandatory like other vaccines…while I agree it would be a great thing to keep girls from getting HPV and ultimately cancer, it isn’t like many other diseases we vaccinate against (like measles) that are a health hazard to the entire population.
I feel sorry for the girls’ families that died…it is a shame they have pushed for this vaccine to be available like this when it obviously needs further study…
I agree, Sandy. I feared this would happen, since the vaccine is fairly new and seemed to have been shoved down our throats. It should never be made mandatory anywhere because, like you said, it does not vaccinate against any disease which is a hazard to everyone, nor does it even protect against a disease which is readily transmitted. Also, it doesn’t protect against all forms of cervical cancer, nor does it take into account that many women carry HPV and never get cervical cancer.
In fact, that last part makes me wonder just how sure we really are that HPV even causes cervical cancer.
The FDA and the states need to stop letting drug companies tell them what to do. Clearly, more study is needed, and until it is studied further, it should be taken completely off the market. It’s outrageous that even one young, healthy person should die from a vaccine of that nature.
This story is awful. I saw it on the news. I know that the pharm lobbyists were trying to get Congress to make this a mandatory vaccine for girls…come on! Mandatory? With the crap FDA testing they do anymore? It all comes down to money, and at over $300 a pop, they were standing to make a whole lot of it.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!