Shamrock/Thinking Moms’ Revolution: Is This the Beginning of the End for Gardasil?

Ireland, a small country on the westernmost edge of Europe, has been the focus in the last few months of an unprecedented international media storm around the subject of Gardasil and the staggering number of side effects which have been reported. We have been covering the story since last June when I wrote about the then newly formed group R.E.G.R.E.T. which had 25 members at the time. It has now sadly grown to over 150 as more and more girls are coming forward as a direct result of these brave parents sharing their girls’ stories. This is something we at TMR believe in strongly, sharing the truth so that others may be helped.

And their stories are truly heartbreaking. So much so that one of Ireland’s national TV stations, TV3, approached R.E.G.R.E.T. a few months ago seeking to do a documentary with some of Ireland’s most prestigious documentary filmmakers and producers. Once the filming wrapped, the group was inundated with TV, newspaper and radio requests before and after this groundbreaking show was aired. One such radio interview brought me to tears. This kind of uninhibited press coverage is unheard of in the U.S., where the topic of vaccines continues to be a radioactive one.

The documentary aired on December 14^th, and the reaction worldwide has been staggering. I don’t know how you could watch it and not be moved to tears by what you were witnessing. Could this be the end of Gardasil? It may not happen overnight, but I think we can all agree that this is no longer a fringe issue; it has been catapulted into the international arena of mainstream scrutiny.

I wrote about the growing Irish political reaction to this situation in October of this year, asking when the government was going to respond to the girls’ plight. The pressure began to mount on the Health Products Regulatory Agency and the Heath and Safety Executive to respond to Paschcal Mooney’s (Fianna Fáil) request for a debate and an investigation. The health committee finally heard the families, and they were invited to give testimony on December 3rd.  The parents’ opening statements are truly impressive, leaving the rational viewer in no two minds as to the urgency of this issue.

To date, the Minister for Health, Mr. Leo Varadkar, has refused to meet with the affected families, instead hiding behind the corporate rhetoric given by Merck that the vaccine is safe. He also claims that the almost 1,000 reported adverse reactions are within the expected range and are of no concern.

Added to this was the publication on November 30^th of a report by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) that “confirmed” that there was no causal link between the vaccine and the development of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), a stance being used by the Irish government to strengthen its resolve on this position to take no action. The EMA committee set up to look into the adverse events of the HPV vaccine is fraught with conflicts of interest, and their ties to the pharmaceutical industry were not properly disclosed to the public. However, we can see their backgrounds in this translated news article here, which was released by a Danish publication seeking to expose the truth on this issue.

Since POTS and CRPS do not have internationally standardized diagnostic criteria, there are many questions unanswered as to the way in which the EMA committee drew its conclusions. We also do not have a clear indication of the prevalence of such disorders in the population before 2007 when the vaccine was approved. In fact, of the 150 sick girls in Ireland, only a handful have any diagnosis at all, despite the devastating nature of their illnesses, as Irish doctors have yet to understand and recognize their illnesses (to the point that many of the girls have had their appendixes removed, hoping to resolve undetermined abdominal pain). Many members of R.E.G.R.E.T. were among those who submitted testimony to the EMA. Was their testimony taken seriously or simply ignored as there was no associated diagnosis? The findings of the EMA will be sent to the European Commission for a “legally binding” decision next year. I guess that will settle that, and another vaccine door will be closed to further scientific inquiry (how very unscientific!) . . . Or will it?

What the vaccine industry and its advisors fail to understand is that these are real issues for real people. Vaccine injury is a growing international concern, which Gardasil is highlighting in neon yellow. Why Gardasil? There have been hundreds of thousands of reported vaccine injuries for the last 26 years, and little has been done to address parents’ fears except to repeat ad nauseam that “vaccines are safe.” This mantra is drilled into our minds despite of the fact that the government has paid out $3.5 billion to compensate victims and their families since 1989. So why should Merck be worried now since they have legal immunity in most countries where they do vaccine business? Well the simple answer is that these teenagers and their mothers are pro-vaccine. They were the industry’s best customers. They vaccinated their kids all the way up the line and thought nothing of vaccinating their healthy, athletic teenagers with the new vaccine. They were sold a vaccine against cancer (not a virus), and who wouldn’t want to protect their kids, no matter how remote the risk that they would develop the specific cancer the vaccine is intended to prevent? But unlike infants who suffer horrible reactions, these girls can articulate their pain, describe their symptoms, and are on social media. In addition, they, their parents, and their communities know that these girls were robustly healthy prior to the shot, and no one can say that they or their parents “just didn’t notice” an “underlying” debilitating condition. That’s a truly scary scenario for the makers of this multi-billion-dollar product.

Please continue reading this highly informative article at Thinking Moms Revolution.

Source, with thanks: Thinking Moms Revolution