Parents of girls and young women who had dangerous health crises--even sudden death--following Gardasil vaccinations, are feeling frustrated with doctors, the government and parent company Merck's response their concerns that the vaccination triggered the problems.
Did the vaccination cause incidents of Bell's Palsy, Epilepsy, ALS-like symptoms and similar issues? Did a pre-existing condition coincidentally rear its head after the vaccination--but unconnected to it--or could some combination be the case? Perhaps a pre-existing tendency towards a health problem was pushed into an actual condition by the drug?
Answers to these questions are critically important for their own sake of course. Perhaps these parents and their daughters are owed some compensation from Merck. Perhaps Merck needs to work out problems with the vaccine or add warnings and guidelines for doctors. But parents are complaining that they are too often put on indefinite hold, given forms to fill out that seem to go nowhere or simply dismissed by both Merck officials and the doctors administering the vaccines.
I worry that besides these possible dangerous side-effects of the vaccine, the most dangerous one yet is that a vaccine that is perfectly safe--and other vaccines by association--might develop a reputation as life-threatening, such that girls and women who might reap benefits--even life-saving ones--from this vaccine and others, won't get the shots.
Vaccines have a dark and murky reputation, more than anything because people who do have problems with them--however few--are treated with such disdain by the medical establishment.
I am of the opinion that vaccines are far and away a good thing. But that doesn't mean we should be uncritical of how they are developed or overlook serious complications that may arise from them. Quite the contrary, if we are to build public trust in them, serious scrutiny needs to be given to any claim that a serious side-effect has occurred.
image: merckfrosst.ca
