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IMAGE SOURCE: Rocky Mountain News Web page, Ashley Ryburn
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The Rocky Mountain News tells the story of 16-year-old Ashley Ryburn who was suddenly sick all the time. Ashley played four sports, danced and earned A and B’s. Now she is exhausted, nauseated, blacks out, throws up and has seizures. In a video on the Web page, Ashley tells her story.
Occasionally her legs give out and become numb. She’s had to curtail her outings. “You can see somebody touch your legs and you can’t feel it,” Ashley tells the paper. “That’s the scariest thing in the world.”
Ryburn has been hospitalized three times in the past year and had back spasms so painful that she would tell her mom “bye,” the paper reports. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. Her mother, Lisa Holtman blames the vaccine Gardasil recommended for adolescent girls to prevent cervical cancer. Ashley first got the shot with a meningitis vaccine in August 2007 and another Gardasil vaccine by itself in October 2007.
Gardasil was never clinically tested to be given with the meningitis vaccine. Both are inactivated vaccines, but research from the National Vaccine Information Center says that the reactions to Gardasil can increase when given along with the meningitis vaccine. A month or so after her second Gardasil vaccine, Ashley began to get sick.
So far the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has recorded more than 10,000 adverse reactions to Gardasil, which account for about 20 percent of vaccine reactions reported to VAERS.
Among those commonly seen is Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes muscle weakness and blood clots or death. The CDC reports there is no constant pattern of reactions to Gardasil. Merck, the drugmaker stands by its vaccine given to prevent four types of human papillomavirus, two of which can cause cervical cancer.
Barbara Loe Fisher, co- founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a watchdog group in Virginia, speaking to the Rocky Mountain News, calls the percentage “unusual”.
“This is a whitewash of this vaccine. To say that almost 10,000 reports of reactions, injuries, 30 deaths is all a coincidence is simply not scientifically responsible," Fisher said. "You have perfectly healthy girls go in and get this shot and then suffer a pattern, a very clear pattern of injury, and some of them are dying. This is not acceptable."
Ashley’s reactions are not unusual. Many girls report similar symptoms such as muscle weakness, seizures and memory loss, joint pain, tingling and numbness, severe headaches and immune system dysfunctions.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a common sexually transmitted disease. Estimates are anywhere from 50-80 percent of sexually active adults have been exposed at some point in their lives. Generally the immune system takes care of the virus and there are no symptoms.
So far two states, Washington D.C. and Virginia have mandated that girls entering sixth grade receive the vaccine by 2009 and 2010.
Merck, after an extensive lobbying campaign of Gardasil, has twice been denied FDA approval to expand Gardail use for women ages 27 to 45. It is currently approved for use in women and girls ages 9 to 26.
Comments below the Rocky Mountain story also tell stories of serious reactions by teenage girls following Gardasil. Another woman comments about surviving cervical cancer and she supports use of the vaccine. #