Recently in Cancer Vaccine Category

Some time ago at Matewan I expressed doubts about Gardasil, the vaccination that was being forced on teenage girls supposedly because it acted to prevent cervical cancer. I suggested then that there was something fishy about all the political wheeling and dealing behind the scenes that had resulted in various governors - Texas' Rick Perry for one - making Gardasil vaccinations mandatory.

It all sounded cooked. To begin with, Perry had very heavy connections with the pharmaceutical industry, including the companies that manufacture and distribute Gardasil. Secondly, studies show that some 94% of sexually active women have some form of HPV and in almost all those cases, it goes away by itself. Why, I wondered, would we be making the injections mandatory for a disease that cures itself without troubling the patient for the sake of maybe protecting the small slice of the population that might develop cervical cancer from HPV?

It sounded like another Bog Pharma scam but it may be far worse. Turns out that studies actually show that not only does HPV NOT cause cervical cancer, the Gardasil itself does.

This revelation should be quite shocking to anyone who has been following the debate over Gardasil and mandatory vaccinations of teenage girls. First, it reveals that Gardasil appears to increase disease by 44.6 percent in certain people -- namely, those who were already carriers of the same HPV strains used in the vaccine.

In other words, it appears that if the vaccine is given to a young woman who already carries HPV in a "harmless" state, it may "activate" the infection and directly cause precancerous lesions to appear. The vaccine, in other words, may accelerate the development of precancerous lesions in women.

TORONTO, September 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As Canada, in large part due to aggressive behind the scenes lobbying, rolls out the not-comprehensively-tested Merck HPV vaccine for girls as young as nine, a look at developments on the vaccine south of the border should cause Canadians serious concern.  In the United States a similar lobby campaign by the same company launched the mass HPV vaccination of girls beginning in June last year.  

In just little over a year, the HPV vaccine has been associated with at least five deaths, not to mention thousands of reports of adverse effects, hundreds deemed serious, and many that required hospitalization.

AUSTIN — The Senate Monday passed a bill overturning Gov. Rick Perry's order that middle-school girls be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer, with a requirement that the issue be reviewed in four years.

After a brief debate, the Senate voted 30-1, with Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, casting the lone "no" vote.

The bill would prevent the HPV vaccine from being required for school enrollment until 2011. The version passed by the House has no expiration date.

As the first FDA-approved cancer vaccine, designed to protect against human papillomavirus, has moved from scientific discussion to social debate, other vaccine studies are continuing to make progress. While HPV vaccine efforts had the "benefit" of a viral source for the disease, other researchers are developing vaccines for cancers that are not virally based, in an effort to coax the immune system into attacking cancerous cells.

At the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, presentations on ongoing HPV trials and other new approaches to stimulating the immune system are injecting momentum into cancer vaccine research.

A vaccine against the sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer went on sale Wednesday in Italy, the first European Union nation to offer the vaccine free for 12-year-old girls, the Italian Health Ministry said.

The ministry said a campaign will be launched soon to encourage the free vaccination of 12-year-olds but that the vaccine for the human papillomavirus, of HPV, will not be mandatory. Older girls and women who want the vaccination will have to pay for it.

Proponents of the vaccine say it will be most effective when given before girls become sexually active. Ministry officials said the vaccine is being supplied by Sanofi-Pasteur, the vaccine division of Sanofi-Aventis.

By Maggie Mahar, The Health Care Blog

February 22, 2007 - Yesterday, Merck announced that it is no longer going to try to persuade states to make its new $360 cervical cancer vaccine mandatory for all pre-teens. (At least, not publicly). The company wouldn’t divulge how much it has spent, to date, on its lobbying campaign.

Virtually everyone has heard about “Gardasil.” Planned Parenthood backs it. Women in Government extols its virtues. (Both organizations receive significant contributions from Merck). Not long ago, a glowing New York Times editorial congratulated Texas governor Rick Perry for mandating “A Vaccine To  Save Women’s Lives.”( So far as I know, Merck makes no contributions to The New York Times, but Perry’s former chief of staff is a Merck lobbyist.) At this point, twenty states have drafted plans to follow Perry’s example.

Genital warts. Cervical cancer. Vaginal disease. All these afflictions are caused by the human papillomavirus. Recently, women have had an opportunity to decrease their chances of contracting the virus as a result of the new three-dose vaccine from Merck & Co. Inc. called Gardasil.

In recent news, however, the adequacy of the warning label provided by the Center for Disease Control has been tested by the public, as numerous complaints of side effects have surfaced after patients received their HPV vaccinations.

As of now, a report has stated that over 500 people have complained of post-vaccination side effects such as fainting and dizziness, and there have been three recorded cases of the Guillain-Barré syndrome. According to health professionals, the syndrome is a rare disorder within the nervous system that sometimes causes complete paralysis.

Drug development company Advaxis, has created a family of vaccines, Lovaxin, which encourages the immune system to attack cancer in the same way it would a flu vaccine.

Dr. Vafa Shahabi, Advaxis' Director of Research and Development, reports that because the human immune system is not designed to fight cancer on its own, she and her colleagues are trying to harness its power through a new kind of life form: specifically a family of vaccines, which they call Lovaxin. The vaccines are comprised of new strains of bacteria created in Advaxis' laboratory that are programmed to kill off specific cancers.

Central to this startling discovery is the microbe Listeria monocytogenes, a common bacterium found in milk, cheese and other dairy products. This microorganism apparently aids in fighting cancer by activating the body's own killer (cytotoxic T) cells to elicit a stronger than normal immune response to the presence of cancer cells. The vaccines "teach" the immune system to mount a specialized, targeted response that is lethal to cancer.

Pediatricians, gynecologists and even health insurers all call Gardasil, the first vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, a big medical advance.

But medical groups, politicians and parents began rebelling after disclosure of a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign by Gardasil's maker, Merck & Co., to get state legislatures to require 11- and 12-year-old girls to get the three-dose vaccine as a requirement for school attendance.

Some parents' groups and doctors particularly objected because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted disease, human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer. Vaccines mandated for school attendance usually are for diseases easily spread through casual contact, such as measles and mumps.

Washington, D.C. - The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) today released a new analysis of the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports of serious health problems following HPV vaccination (Merck's GARDASIL) during the last six months of 2006. Out of the 385 individual GARDASIL adverse event reports made to VAERS, two-thirds required additional medical care and about one-third of all reports were for children 16-years-old and under, with nearly 25 percent of those children having received simultaneously one or more of the 18 vaccines that Merck did not study in combination with GARDASIL. NVIC is calling on the FDA and CDC to warn parents and doctors that GARDASIL should not be combined with other vaccines and that young girls should be monitored for at least 24 hours for syncopal (collapse/fainting) episodes that can be accompanied by seizure activity, as well as symptoms of tingling, numbness and loss of sensation in the fingers and limbs, all of which should be reported to VAERS immediately.