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August 07, 2007
Gardasil's safety
The CDC released the first year's safety data for Gardasil (recall that that was the first of the HPV vaccines). More than 5 million doses have been distributed (as of March), though it is not clear how many have been administered). The overall vaccine adverse event reporting rate is 33/100,000, with a serious adverse event rate of 1.8/100,000.
These are very reasonable numbers, if the vaccine were reasonable. Of the nearly 1800 events, most were mild (vomiting, passing out, fever, headache, dizziness). Only 13 were the very serious Guillain-Barre Syndrome. (13 cases of GBS would be enough to shut down any other vaccination program this early in the course.)
And only four people have died. Now, a link to the vaccine hasn't been proven. And women die all the time in this age group (9-26). Why is one in million deaths from the vaccine (ok the link isn't proven) acceptable but one in a million deaths from cervical cancer (preventable by obedient chastity) not acceptable? To prevent one in a million deaths, we cause one in a million?
| By Robert Maddox | 04:32 PM