Drug regulators have agreed to investigate the safety of the HPV vaccine-given to teenage girls to prevent cervical cancer-after it has been linked to nearly 60,000 adverse reactions, including 227 deaths, in the UK and the US alone.
But anti-vaccine lobbyists fear the exercise is merely damage limitation-and a statement from the European Medicines Agency, which is carrying out the review, seems to support the view.
It is restricting its review to two ‘rare’ reactions: complex regional pain syndrome, and dizziness and rapid heart rate. A recent WDDTY review of the vaccine (http://www.wddty.com/making-trouble.html) has revealed the vaccine triggers one of 80 auto-immune reactions in around 3.3 per cent of vaccinated girls-but these reactions will be ignored by the agency’s review.
These reactions have included sudden collapses, seizures, muscle pain, disabling fatigue, paralysis, brain inflammation, arthritis, lupus and multiple sclerosis.
The rate of adverse reactions has been so worrying that Japan’s health authorities no longer recommend it.
The EMA has said that product information will be altered if it discovers the two reactions are higher among vaccinated girls than the non-vaccinated.
