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The morning after Emily Cunningham got
a shot of Gardasil, the new vaccine that protects against
four strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV) that
can cause cervical cancer and genital warts, she woke
up with a headache, and neck and back pain. By 9 p.m.
that evening in April, she had a fever so high "you
could feel the heat rising from her a foot away,"
according to her mother, Laurie. She was delirious during
the night, and the following day couldn't walk without
assistance. Bedridden for nearly a week, the 18-year-old
from Wyoming missed school, and took Tylenol every four
hours. "If Emily had been the only one to get sick
we would have said she must have had something else
[like the flu]," explained Laurie, "but we
know of three other students to have reactions, that
is why we are concerned."
Emily's story is only one of 1,637 complaints
involving Gardasil, filed as of May to the Vaccine Adverse
Event Reporting System (VAERS), a national surveillance
database sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) in the United States. One could discount what
happened to Emily because she had a flu shot that same
day, but other really bad reactions have been reported,
including seizures, paralysis - and worst of all, three
deaths, including one girl who "died of a blood
clot three hours after getting the Gardasil vaccine,"
reads one complaint. Elsewhere in the world there have
been reports of similar reactions. In Melbourne, Australia,
where a national HPV vaccination program started in
April, 26 girls reportedly fainted and were mildly paralyzed
after getting one shot each.
In almost every instance, the response
of medical authorities and government officials is the
same: bad reactions are rare. When they do occur, there's
no evidence that Gardasil was the cause. Arguably, both
points could be true. Some say the problem, however,
is that no one really knows, medically speaking, just
how dangerous this vaccine could be. "Usually at
this stage in the life span of a vaccine we would not
have this kind of action," Maclean's has heard
from Abby Lippman, an epidemiologist at McGill University
who recently aired her concerns about the speed with
which Gardasil has been adopted in the Canadian Medical
Association Journal. "We're making guesses that
it's going to last long, that [we're immunizing] the
right age [of girls], and that it's effective. We don't
have a solid basis for this thought."
And yet, nearly every province in Canada
has, in recent weeks, put forth some plan to implement
an HPV vaccination program that will see the mass inoculation
of an entire generation of girls - some as soon as this
September - with no serious acknowledgement of the potential
health risks they might face. While everyone debates
the moral and political consequences of endorsing Gardasil,
the fundamental, essential medical and scientific debate
remains untouched. So, in a few weeks, when thousands
of girls concerned about Facebook and who will be in
their class this year - not HPV - go back to school,
many will become part of the biggest Canadian science
experiment in decades. They will be the guinea pigs.
For the full story, pick up the latest
issue of Maclean's, now on newsstands.
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