![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5905EN20091001
I've been holding off writing about this until the details came in. So by now, some of you may have already heard.
A 14 year old girl died shortly after receiving the HPV vaccine Cervarix in the UK. Naturally, everyone jumped on the coincidental timing and started accusing the vaccine. Article after article has gone up on the internet reiterating the same old, tired concerns about the vaccine that have been thoroughly debunked before.
Yes, there have been calls to the hotline about side effects and deaths that coincided with the vaccine. These "side effects" include "soreness at the injection site" and other things that are related to having a needle stuck in your arm, regardless of what's in the serum, or even if there is no serum at all. Dizzyness, nausea, etc., are all common side effects of having someone jam a needle into your arm or seeing or thinking about seeing your own blood. There are a few other legitimate side effects too, but every single complaint was well within the expected (and disclosed) side effects of the HPV vaccine.
Yes, there are some actual allergic reactions to the vaccine, that range from mild to moderate (I do not have the statistics on any severe cases off-hand). That is to be expected with any vaccine. It's sad, but the number of cases of allergic reactions, and the response to it, are far outweighed by the number of cases of deaths and sufferers/survivors of cervical, vaginal, anal, penile, and oral cancers each year, not to mention the much larger number of people who don't develop cancer, but do develop pre-cancerous lesions and have to undergo expensive and painful procedures and years of regular follow-up testing..
Yes, there have been a couple of hundred deaths reported after taking the vaccine. There have also been about a million or so deaths after not taking the vaccine. Neither of these reports are related to the vaccine. There are also several million deaths reported after taking a breath of air.
In every single case so far reported, not a single death has been confirmed to be related to the vaccine, and the VAST VAST VAST majority of them are outright proven to be not-related.
This case, however, is a case of such tragic irony. What killed this girl was not a cancer vaccine, but cancer.
It turns out that the poor girl had a severe, malignant tumor in her chest and she just happened to collapse a few hours after receiving the vaccine. The autopsy reports that the vaccine had nothing to do with it.
I'm irritated that the media jumped all over the fact that she just happened to have received the vaccine several hours before her collapse. Not a single newspaper reported that she collapsed right after eating her school lunch. I remember school lunches. I'd be more suspicious of them than the vaccine.
Naturally, though, Ceravix recalled the batch of vaccine that the girl had received, immediately as a precaution. But rest assured, the vaccine is still safe. Of course, their precautionary recall only fueled the fears that the vaccine had anything to do with it. The recall was a perfectly reasonable and responsible reaction, even given the outcome. But the lack of critical thinking skills of the general public and the media seemed to have prohibited them from understanding that, when you don't know what's wrong, you stop *everything* until you can find the actual problem, and you also aren't supposed to jump to conclusions - wait for the damn autopsy report!
I will say this again. There have been SEVEN MILLION DOSES of the vaccine given in the US (yes, Gardasil is not the same as Cervarix, but Cervarix apparently has an even higher safety rating than Gardasil does). Out of those 7 million doses, NOT A SINGLE DEATH has been attributed to the vaccine.
Frankly, I'm surprised. There should have been at least one severe, bizarre, totally anomalous allergic reaction resulting in death by now, just by random chance. But there hasn't been. Not one.
I've been holding off writing about this until the details came in. So by now, some of you may have already heard.
A 14 year old girl died shortly after receiving the HPV vaccine Cervarix in the UK. Naturally, everyone jumped on the coincidental timing and started accusing the vaccine. Article after article has gone up on the internet reiterating the same old, tired concerns about the vaccine that have been thoroughly debunked before.
Yes, there have been calls to the hotline about side effects and deaths that coincided with the vaccine. These "side effects" include "soreness at the injection site" and other things that are related to having a needle stuck in your arm, regardless of what's in the serum, or even if there is no serum at all. Dizzyness, nausea, etc., are all common side effects of having someone jam a needle into your arm or seeing or thinking about seeing your own blood. There are a few other legitimate side effects too, but every single complaint was well within the expected (and disclosed) side effects of the HPV vaccine.
Yes, there are some actual allergic reactions to the vaccine, that range from mild to moderate (I do not have the statistics on any severe cases off-hand). That is to be expected with any vaccine. It's sad, but the number of cases of allergic reactions, and the response to it, are far outweighed by the number of cases of deaths and sufferers/survivors of cervical, vaginal, anal, penile, and oral cancers each year, not to mention the much larger number of people who don't develop cancer, but do develop pre-cancerous lesions and have to undergo expensive and painful procedures and years of regular follow-up testing..
Yes, there have been a couple of hundred deaths reported after taking the vaccine. There have also been about a million or so deaths after not taking the vaccine. Neither of these reports are related to the vaccine. There are also several million deaths reported after taking a breath of air.
In every single case so far reported, not a single death has been confirmed to be related to the vaccine, and the VAST VAST VAST majority of them are outright proven to be not-related.
This case, however, is a case of such tragic irony. What killed this girl was not a cancer vaccine, but cancer.
It turns out that the poor girl had a severe, malignant tumor in her chest and she just happened to collapse a few hours after receiving the vaccine. The autopsy reports that the vaccine had nothing to do with it.
I'm irritated that the media jumped all over the fact that she just happened to have received the vaccine several hours before her collapse. Not a single newspaper reported that she collapsed right after eating her school lunch. I remember school lunches. I'd be more suspicious of them than the vaccine.
Naturally, though, Ceravix recalled the batch of vaccine that the girl had received, immediately as a precaution. But rest assured, the vaccine is still safe. Of course, their precautionary recall only fueled the fears that the vaccine had anything to do with it. The recall was a perfectly reasonable and responsible reaction, even given the outcome. But the lack of critical thinking skills of the general public and the media seemed to have prohibited them from understanding that, when you don't know what's wrong, you stop *everything* until you can find the actual problem, and you also aren't supposed to jump to conclusions - wait for the damn autopsy report!
I will say this again. There have been SEVEN MILLION DOSES of the vaccine given in the US (yes, Gardasil is not the same as Cervarix, but Cervarix apparently has an even higher safety rating than Gardasil does). Out of those 7 million doses, NOT A SINGLE DEATH has been attributed to the vaccine.
Frankly, I'm surprised. There should have been at least one severe, bizarre, totally anomalous allergic reaction resulting in death by now, just by random chance. But there hasn't been. Not one.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 10/2/09 05:28 pm (UTC)From:But I guess I shouldn't be as surprised as I am that people are really trying to pin it on the vaccine. -__-
no subject
Date: 10/2/09 09:01 pm (UTC)From: