Just how safe is the cervical cancer jab?
More and more families say their daughters suffered devastating side-effects from the HPV vaccine. And some experts are worried, too
WHEN Katie Green was 15, like thousands of schoolgirls she was given a jab against the h u man papilloma virus (HPV). this has been linked to cervical cancer and, under an NHS scheme introduced in 2008, all girls aged 12 to 15 are offered the vaccine against it.
In November 2009, Katie brought home a school note about having the jab. Her mother Carol, 50, a teacher in the family’s home town of Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, was happy to agree.
‘Katie had all the other vaccinations and was fine,’ she says. ‘Apart from asthma and allergies to pets, her health had always been robust.’
But shortly after her first shot of Cervarix (one of the two brands of the vaccine), Katie’s arm swelled. ‘It stayed swollen for days and she felt groggy,’ says Carol.
these side-effects are not uncommon and are warned of in literature given with the vaccine.
A month later, Katie had the second of the three-course jab and her ordeal truly began. ‘Next morning, she was uncharacteristically late rising for school,’ says Carol. ‘When I woke her, she didn’t seem with it. She had wet the bed, which was completely unusual. Now I wonder if she had suffered a fit in the night.’
When Katie did get up, her balance was affected — the jab’s list of short-term sideeffects said recipients could f eel dizzy, nauseous and generally unwell, so she was kept off school for three days.
But more worrying signs appeared, particularly a lump the size of half an egg on the arm where she’d had the injection.
‘It was still there when we went to see the GP a few days later to check if all was well,’ says Carol. ‘the GP was reassuring and the following week Katie returned to school and tried to play rugby, but she went into a total relapse, feeling dizzy, exhausted and unwell.
‘Later that month we tried to hold a 16th birthday for her, but it was a disaster. She was so dizzy she looked as if she was on a ship.
‘We took her back to the GP who gave us a “to whom it may concern” letter, saying his strong feeling is that the vaccine contributed to Katie’s illness.
‘But when we have taken Katie for hospital checks and tests, she has been given no treatment and has been labelled as having postviral syndrome [where sufferers have long-term disabling tiredness after fighting a virus].’
At 15, Katie had been flying high academically, played cricket for Worcestershire and joined trials for the England women’s j unior rugby squad. today, aged 20, it’s a different story.
She can’t run more than a few steps and is on incapacity benefits due to a ‘brain fog’ so severe she finds work or study impossible.
During a particularly grim sixmonth period after she first became ill, Carol had to puree all her food because she was unable to eat properly due to a lack of co-ordination.
the family have no doubt what is to blame for this catastrophic change — the HPV jab.
And the Mail has been contacted by a growing number of families with similar stories of fit, healthy daughters disabled by mysterious neurological disorders shortly after HPV jabs.
Some have been so serious that their families believe it has driven the girls to attempt suicide.
the Greens are among 65 families in one online network who believe their daughters have been afflicted. that is a tiny proportion of girls given the jab, but the families passionately believe they deserve investigation and that others may not recognise their sickness as related to the HPV vaccine.
Now it seems their suspicion might have scientific foundation. An article published last week in the journal Clinical Rheumatology warned that chronic pain conditions are ‘more frequent after HPV vaccination’.
Researcher Dr Manuel Martinez-Lavin warned that fibromyalgia — which causes widespread pain — and a condition called postural tachycardia syndrome (PotS), seem to be linked to the jabs. PotS is a disorder of the nervous system thought to becaused by disturbances to the immune system. Symptoms include fainting, dizziness, inability to concentrate and fatigue. the condition can be long-term or even permanent.
Last week’s report is not the only one to question the vaccination’s safety. In January, a study of 53 girls and young women in the Danish Medical Journal concluded they were all suffering from various types of neurological damage consistent with ‘suspected side-effects to the HPV vaccine’.
Another study, in the European Journal of Neurology examined the cases of six young women who had developed Pots within weeks of receiving HPV jabs. It, too, suggested there may be a link.
In the U.S., France, Spain and Denmark, more than 250 court cases are being mounted over HPV vaccinations. Damages have been won in the U.S. and France.
Last year, Japan withdrew its recommendation for the HPV vaccine because of reported sideeffects and l eading British scientists are beginning to question the vaccine’s value.
Last September, public health analysts at Queen Mary University of London questioned the scientific basis used by the World Health Organisation in 2009 to justify HPV mass vaccination. ‘It is based on weak evidence and data on longterm efficacy are lacking,’ they warned in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Beyond feared side-effects, there is also concern that the vaccinations used in Britain don’t offer adequate protection against HPV. Evidence gathered by the NHS in Scotland and Wales indicates the jabs may actually expose young women to a greater risk of cervical cancer.
the reason? there are more than 100 strains of HPV. two, HPV16 and HPV18, are blamed by proponents of the vaccine for 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases. Cervarix targets only these two strains, while the other vaccine, Gardasil, also protects against two more.
By knocking out only these strains, vaccination opens up the opportunity for other strains to thrive in their place, say critics. these strains are also sexually transmitted, but vaccinated girls may believe they are protected against HPV (and thus against cervical cancer) being transmitted by unprotected sex.
Nevertheless, MPs are pushing for the HPV programme’s coverage to be doubled by giving it to schoolboys as well as girls as a way of reducing penile cancer.
the UK medicines watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency ( MHRA), operates the Yellow Card Scheme, where doctors and the public can report side-effects of drugs.
In 2009, an MHRA paper revealed more than 300 schoolgirls a year are reporting side- effects from HPV jabs, which include severe pain and nervous disorders such as facial palsy. the agency received 3,972 Yellow Cards between 2010 and 2013. More than 940 were categorised as serious.
Yet the MHRA is not worried. In January last year, Dr Ian Hudson, the MHRA chief executive, wrote to Richard Benyon, the Conservative MP for Newbury, saying: ‘the fact that we have received more reports for HPV vaccine than other vaccines does not in itself raise any particular concerns.’
THIS is typical of official responses to concern about the vaccine, says British epidemiologist Dr tom Jefferson, a global authority on vaccine trial evidence, who works for the scientific body, the Cochrane Collaboration.
‘the HPV vaccine’s benefits have been hyped and the harms hardly investigated,’ he says. He is highly critical of the drug company funded clinical trial data that is used to justify the use of mass vaccination.
He adds that pharmaceutical companies may hide negative results deep in their trial data and hugely inflate the benefits.
‘the reason for introducing vaccination against HPV was to prevent cancer,’ he says. ‘But there is no clinical evidence to prove it will do that. We have to tread a very careful line, weighing the potential benefits and harms that a vaccine may cause. With HPV, the harms have not been properly studied.
‘It is extremely difficult to publish anything against HPV vaccination. Vaccines have become like a religion. they are not something you question. If you do, you are seen as being an anti-vaccine
extremist. The authorities do not want to hear “side-effect”.
‘Some in the Department of Health believe any mention of unexpected harm from a vaccine must be stamped out in case it lowers uptake.’
Last June, Carol Green was among 12 families who met Luciana Berger, then shadow minister for public health, lobbying for help for daughters thought damaged by HPV jabs.
Ms Berger was ‘ wary of commenting because vaccine stories in the media can be dangerous’, said her spokeswoman. ‘She attended the meeting in a listening capacity. She hasn’t asked any official questions as a result.’
This is disappointing for Katie’s family who simply want recognition she has been vaccine-damaged. ‘We still hope she will get better,’ says Carol. ‘But if we are to mount a legal claim, we have to do it before her 21st birthday to beat the deadline. We can’t get a solicitor to represent us. They say in English law we have to prove in court that the vaccine caused the damage.
‘For that we need evidence from a big scientific study of vaccinated girls. But no one is doing that. Who knows how many other worried parents may exist?’
A spokesperson for GSK, manufacturers of Cervarix, told Good Health: ‘Patient safety is always GSK’s first priority. A vaccine is only ever approved for the public if clinical trials show the benefits of vaccination outweigh any risks associated with its use.
‘Governments globally scrutinise clinical trial data through independent medicines review agencies before vaccines can be approved for use. We remain confident in the favourable benefit-risk profile of Cervarix to help prevent cervical cancer.’
Katie’s energy and balance have improved a little, but she can’t play sport. ‘I think she may have suffered an acute immune response that has damaged her nervous system,’ says Carol.
Some scientific sources say privately that a major reassessment of the evidence behind the vaccine may be in the pipeline.
For this to happen, all clinical trial data collected by the pharmaceutical companies must be analysed independently.
The mysterious illnesses in girls such as Katie just after HPV vaccinations might be rare. And they may, indeed, be nothing to do with the jabs. But before the Government doubles the HPV programme by including boys, it must properly examine the disturbing evidence so far.
If girls have been damaged, they must surely have their cases acknowledged, treated and justly compensated.