from Mercola Website

 

A month after 13 year old Jenny Tetlock was vaccinated against the HPV virus (human papillomaviruses), she missed the lowest hurdle in gym class. It was the first sign of a degenerative muscle disease that 15 months later left her nearly completely paralyzed.

Her father, Philip Tetlock, a professor at UC-Berkeley, has embarked on an odyssey to find out whether the vaccine, Gardasil (Merck & Co.), is to blame.

Tetlock is not the only one concerned. The public watchdog group Judicial Watch has been periodically obtaining adverse event reports on Gardasil from the FDA. 10 deaths have been linked to Gardasil since September 2007, and there have been 140 reports so far this year of serious side effects such as miscarriage and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
 


Sources

 


Dr. Mercola's Comments


Once you educate yourself and know the facts about Gardasil, the truth about HPV, and the statistics of cervical cancer, it will become quite clear just how outrageously useless - and dangerous - this vaccine really is.

The FDA, in not-so-rare form, insists there's no medical reason to be worried about the side effects of Gardasil.

"We're monitoring the safety of the HPV vaccine very carefully, and the only adverse event that causes some concern is fainting after the vaccine," says Robert Ball, director of the FDA's office of biostatistics and division of epidemiology.

He continues to say,

“Higher rates of Guillain-Barré have been associated with the swine flu vaccine and possibly with the meningitis vaccine Menactra, but it is no more common in those who get Gardasil than in those who don't.”

Alright. Let’s say you agree with the idea that the cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome are pure coincidence, despite the fact that they occur within days or weeks of vaccination.
 


But what about the deaths?
Infant deaths following Merck’s rotavirus are routinely disguised under the label SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).

 

So what do we have when healthy teenagers drop dead for no reason? SAD -- Sudden Adolescent Death? Will that be the next big thing? Will there be SAD campaigns, with physicians educating the public about proper sleeping positions until you’re well into your 20’s?

Let’s get real.

I recently read a comment online from one mother who said she’d do anything in her power to make sure her children were protected, and she couldn’t understand “the narrow-minded opinions” and “fear mongering” of Gardasil nay-sayers.

“Would you rather your daughters died of cervical cancer?” she wrote.

Well, that’s just it, right there!

 

As I will show you, the chances of your daughter dying of cervical cancer are already VERY LOW, and the possibility of Gardasil sparing them from cervical cancer is so RIDICULOUSLY LOW that no reasonable person could argue for the use of this HPV vaccine if they knew all the facts.
 


How Likely are You to Develop and Die From Cervical Cancer?
According to the CDC, cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States. However, in the past 40 years, the number of cervical cancer cases and the number of deaths thereof have decreased significantly. It is believed that this decline is the result of many women getting regular Pap tests, which can find cervical pre-cancer before it turns into cancer.

According to the U.S. Cancer Statistics: 2004 Incidence and Mortality report, 11,892 women in the U.S. were told that they had cervical cancer in 2004, and 3,850 women died from the disease. The American Cancer Society mirrors these statistics, estimating that about 3,870 women will die from cervical cancer in the U.S. in 2008.

Well. We’ve already lost 18 girls, some as young as 12, in the effort to spare them from the mere possibility of cervical cancer later in life. Others have developed debilitating and potentially life-threatening ailments within weeks of being vaccinated, and others still have had spontaneous abortions or given birth to babies with birth defects.

Also consider this: Cervical cancer usually develops in your late 20s to mid 30s. The protection period of Gardasil is estimated to be 5 years. That means, if you receive your first set of shots when you’re 10 years old, you’d need at least 2 to 4 additional booster shots to make it through your 30s. And THAT means you’ll have to expose yourself to the potential side effects of Gardasil over and over and over again.

But now to the real clincher, and I want you to read the following section as many times as you need to let this truly sink in…

U.S. statistics show there are 30 to 40 cervical cancer cases per year per one million women between the ages of 9 and 26, which is the age bracket that Gardasil targets (and was tested on).

According to Merck, Gardasil was shown to reduce pre-cancers by 12.2% to 16.5% in the general population. So, instead of ending up with 30 to 40 cases of cancer per million, per year, in that age bracket, the HPV vaccine can potentially bring it down to 26 to 35 cases of cervical cancer.

What that means is that you would have to vaccinate one million girls to prevent cervical cancer in 4 to 5 girls.

Further, about 37 percent of women who develop cervical cancer actually die from the disease, so vaccinating ONE MILLION girls would prevent 1 to 2 DEATHS per year, at the bargain-basement price of $360 million per year, plus potentially lifelong suffering for an untold number of women, which has no price tag.
 

Is this REASONABLE?

 


Understanding the HPV – Cancer Connection
There are more than 100 types of human papillomaviruses (HPVs). Of them, about 40 types of HPV affect your genitals or sex organs, and can cause genital warts, for example. 10-30 strains can lead to cervical cancer. The remainder can cause to skin infections and common warts on your hands and feet.

The CDC web site states that certain types of HPV can infect your cervix and lead to cervical cancer over many years. (This may be one of the reasons why cancer rates keep dropping, because there’s sufficient amount of time to treat any abnormalities if you’re getting regular Pap smears.)

It also says that in 90 percent of women infected, HPV clears up on its own within two years, at which point your cervical cells go back to normal. It is only when the HPV virus lingers for many years that these abnormal cells could turn into cancer.

Additionally, it’s important to know that the vast majority of abnormal Pap tests do NOT equate to cancer. Even abnormal Pap tests showing pre-cancerous cells of the CIN II grade clear by themselves without treatment 40 percent of the time.

And, current treatment of pre-cancers has limited the progression to actual cancer to only 1 percent. So, just like the polio vaccine, Merck's HPV vaccine is coming out at a time when cervical cancer is already on a steady decline, and anyone who starts talking about how Gardasil has reduced cervical cancer rates in the next few years is likely talking absolute nonsense.
 


Informed Consent: Understand the Numerous Dangers of the HPV Vaccine
First of all, the Gardasil vaccine contains just four types of HPV out of the more than 100 strains. So if you contract one of the 96+ types that aren’t included, you’re out of luck. And, if you’ve already been exposed to one of the four types of virus in the vaccine, it doesn’t work against those either.

This means that even if you accept the risks and get vaccinated, your chances of getting some form of HPV are still very high. Whether or not the HPV virus will lead to genital warts or cervical cancer, however, depends in large part on the state of your immune system.

Gardasil, on the other hand, can damage your immune system, and can potentially lead to death. The main causes of death include blood clots, acute respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, and “sudden death” due to “unknown causes” shortly after receiving the vaccine. Again, 11 of the reported deaths occurred within 2 weeks of vaccination, and 7 within 2 days, so whatever the mechanism that induces death, it’s quick and efficient.

Other side effects include:

  • Miscarriages and spontaneous abortion

  • Genital wart outbreak, even in patients who had tested negative for HPV and genital warts prior to vaccination

  • Facial warts and warts on hands and feet

  • Anaphylactic shock

  • Loss of consciousness

  • Grand mal seizures

  • Coma

  • Paralysis

Says Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, “Given all the questions about Gardasil, the best public health policy would be to reevaluate its safety and to prohibit its distribution to minors. In the least, governments should rethink any efforts to mandate or promote this vaccine for children.”

It’s also important to know that Merck has NOT evaluated Gardasil’s potential carcinogenity or genotoxicity.

There is currently no way of knowing how the HPV vaccine affects fertility, birth defects, cancer, if it can pass through breast milk, or if it can alter your genes or the genes of your future children (genotoxicity).

However, five subjects who got the vaccine around the time of conception had babies with birth defects, whereas no birth defects occurred among the subjects who received a placebo. Likewise, earlier last year when there were “only” 1,637 adverse reports, 18 of 42 women who had received the vaccine while pregnant experienced side effects ranging from spontaneous abortion to fetal abnormalities.

Also remember that you cannot sue Merck if your child dies after receiving the vaccine.

Drug companies have cleverly manipulated the government so that they are immune from prosecution. Instead they’ve made the U.S. taxpayers foot the bill for the hundreds of millions of dollars that are paid out to families of children who are harmed or killed every year from vaccines.

And even though it is nearly impossible to get one of these payments, more than $1.5 billion has been paid out to affected families already. So ponder on these stats if you haven’t already taken a firm position on the vaccine issue.
 


Good Example of How to Fake a Safety Study
In yet another less-than-ethical twist, Merck was permitted to use an aluminum-containing placebo instead of a standard saline placebo. Since Gardasil contains 225 mcg of aluminum, using an aluminum-containing placebo may paint an entirely inaccurate picture of its level of safety, since you’re apt to get similar, detrimental side effects in the placebo group.

In fact, about 60 percent of those who received either Gardasil or the aluminum placebo had systemic adverse events including:

  • Headache

  • Fever

  • Nausea

  • Dizziness

  • Vomiting

  • Diarrhea

  • Myalgia (muscle pain)

Gardasil recipients had more serious adverse events such as gastroenteritis, appendicitis, pelvic inflammatory disease, asthma, bronchospasm and arthritis.

You should also know that aside from being injected with four types of HPV proteins, girls and women who receive this vaccine also receive the following adjuvants:

  1. Aluminum adjuvants, which have been linked to neurological damage including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease

  2. Polysorbate 80, which has been linked to infertility in mice

  3. Sodium borate, a main ingredient in roach killer

 

How To Reduce Your Risk of Cervical Cancer to Virtually Zero
The following have been shown to be associated with increased risk of cervical cancer:

  • Nutritional deficiencies, especially vitamin A and folate

  • Mineral deficiency (zinc, selenium, calcium and iron)

  • Smoking

  • Birth control use

  • Douching

It is believed that smoking has more to do with the progression of an HPV infection to cervical cancer than any other single factor, as smokers with HPV go on to develop cervical cancer much more frequently than infected non-smokers.

Cervical cancer is also well documented to be caused by an infection acquired through sexual contact. So in addition to avoiding smoking and eating a nutritious diet, it is behaviorally avoidable.

According to a New England Journal of Medicine study, the use of condoms reduces the incidence of HPV by 70 percent, offering FAR better protection than Gardasil’s protection rate of 12.2 to 16.5 percent.

As I’ve already mentioned, in 90 percent of all cases, your immune system is strong enough to clear up an HPV infection without ANY treatment. So maintaining a strong immune system is vital to beat HPV as well as any other infection or disease.