HPV vaccine (Gardasil) - Seizures, Fainting, Paralyis, ....(Updated Chart)

Posted by K Krasnow Waterman on Sat, Jun 28, 2008 @ 01:10 AM

...dizziness, weakness, and menstrual changes are just a few of the problems people believe are adverse reactions (side effects) of the hpv vaccine.   A few hundred people have written in to this website about their experience, suffering, questions, and beliefs.  They've also written about their frustrations with medical professionals who are not responsive to considering a possible correlation between the vaccine and these problems. 

I've been building and posting a table of these comments.  Tonight, I'm posting an updated table of items received through the end of May.  I continue to hope that the information will be helpful to a researcher somehwere.  

Since the last version was very small type, I'm posting this one as a pdf file.  Please feel free to comment about whether this version is easier to read!

HPV.vacc.3.pdf

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Women's clothing sizes - Why do pants gap in the back?

Posted by K Krasnow Waterman on Sun, May 11, 2008 @ 08:50 PM

It's one of life's little mysteries. Why do all women's pants gap in the back? I've been thin and not thin, hourglass and not hourglass, but always, the pants gap in the back. I thought it was just me, but then I went shopping a slender size 0 woman the other day; she put on the snuggest pair of jeans -- snug leg, snug hips, snug zipper -- yet still, there was a gap in the back.

Google provides 150 items in response to a search for "gap in the back" and women's pants. A few are manufacturers who've claimed to solve the problem. Wrangler says the answer is to have a curved waistband. Lands End says the answer is "a trimmer waist."

Most of the items are consumer comments -- reviews, bulletin boards, and blogs. The consumer comments reveal that there might not be a single answer. Two of four comments about Cabela's Jeanos say they don't gap in the back, but the other two say they do. One person who had a poor fit said the problem applied to the long-waisted. But other blogs say it's caused by being an hourglass. It sounds like the problem is created when a particular pair of pants doesn't match a particular body shape.

I've written before about the fact that women's clothes aren't consistently sized, making online shopping particularly challenging. And, I've written about two services (MyShape and SizeMeUp) that try to help women address the problem. While researching the gap-in-the-back problem I fell upon another service -- zafu.

I hadn't heard of it before, but zafu looks like a great website that helps women find jeans, pants, and bras that fit. zafu takes an interesting and different approach from it's two competitors. Like its competitors, zafu  asks questions about measurements, but different from them, it also asks about your age, your style, and your shape.  It's suggestions should offer something that fits, is age appropriate and is consistent with your taste. The site is powered by the algorithms of a sister company, Archetype Solutions (which is designed to let people buy customized clothes).

Both the zafu and Archetype websites looked a little old ... blogs ending last fall; so I did a little more checking. zafu raised another round of funding last fall. And, Archetype is now powering a company called DNA Wear. There seems to be some activity going on behind the scenes (job postings, etc), so I think there will be some exciting enhancements coming soon.  Definitely keep an eye on this company.  They might yet solve the gap in the back problem!

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HPV Vaccine - fainting, seizures, and other side effects

Posted by K Krasnow Waterman on Mon, Apr 07, 2008 @ 07:53 AM

April 2008

Apologies. This is a post from July 2007 that I have updated. Unfortunately, today, I made a wrong choice with the software and it is treating it as a new post. I'm hoping it doesn't break the links and subscriptions for everyone.

I have posted a new chart of all the comments received through the end of March. Click here to see it. If you want to see all the posts on HPV vaccine look at the bottom half of the far right column (it has the topics for all the blogs in this Personal Blog) and click on HPV vaccine.

I'm also adding a new request for folks who write in. I've started getting comments posted by girls and women who say they haven't had a problem or only had a little soreness from the vaccine. To those people I ask, how did you find this site? I'm really curious to find out how the word is beginning to reach people who haven't had a problem. Please share where/how did you hear that there's an issue?

Last, my condolences to Crista Valdez who wrote in a few days ago; her daughter died in her sleep last August. Our hearts go out to you.

 

 

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January 2008

See my new blogs about side effects reported in Australia

and

the Associated Press story that says the problem is just sore arms.

 

NEW - December 21, 2007

I've been contacted by a reporter who would like to talk to those of you who've had or observed these side effects. His name is Tom Grant and his is editor of MetroSpirit, the alternative paper in Augusta, GA. Please contact him directly at tom.grant@metrospirit.com.

Also, he's sent me some information about reporting on these problems from Australia. I'll post them soon.

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NEW - Sept. 16, 2007 - Let's help solve the mystery of HPV Vaccine side effects!

I've been surprised by how many of you have submitted comments and distressed by how many have suffered serious reactions. I'm not a medical scientist, but I think maybe we can use this blog to help researchers figure out what's going wrong. Based upon suggestions in the comments, I'm asking - from now on - if you're willing, when you write a comment, include the following:
your age,
your weight category (thin, medium, heavy),
anything you're allergic to (like eggs, dogs, dust, or medicines),
whether the reaction came with the 1st, 2nd or 3rd shot,
what other vaccines you had at the same time, and
the reaction you had
Most of you already include most of these things.
I promise to post another blog here with a chart that I'll keep updated and maybe we'll see a possible correlation. It should be up in about two days.

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UPDATE - Sept. 30th - I've posted a separate blog entry with a chart.

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Original post:


Today, I received a horrifying response to an earlier blog asking if we shouldn't know more about the long-term risks of the HPV vaccine before mandating that it be given to all young girls:

posted @ Tuesday, July 03, 2007 11:27 AM by kim kimes".

I immediately ran some Web searches and it turns out that Kim's daughter is not alone; there are over 1,600 adverse reaction reports. Considering the chronology I'm about to describe, it seems the word is not getting out fast enough or far enough about the risks of extremely serious side effects, including possibly death (see below). Please, if you know anyone with a daughter, make sure they're informed before they commit to having their daughter given the HPV vaccine.

1990's - first references to research and studies for an HPV vaccine.

6/27/06 - National Vaccine Information Center, a private advocacy group, recommended that the FDA not approve Gardasil as proposed. The NVIC's recommendation was largely focused on their belief that Merck's use of placebos with aluminum had caused more reactions to the placebos, thus making reactions to Gardasil less statistically notable. They also reported that during the clinical trials there were 102 serious events reported, including 17 deaths, but investigators made determinations that most were unrelated to Gardasil.

6/28/06 - FDA announced approval of Gardasil

7/14/06 - First report of an adverse reaction filed with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a program of the Department of Health & Human Services in which the CDC and FDA work together. On 7/11, a 14 year old girl in DC fainted and fell off the examining table after receiving the vaccine; at the emergency room, she had a headache and speech problems.

7/20/06 - Seven days after being vaccinated, a 16 year old girl developed symptoms of Guillian-Barre Syndrome, an immune disorder with weakness, tingling, and other neurological abnormalities.

Year end 2006 - After six months, there were 84 adverse reaction events related to Gardasil on VAERS The Associated Press reported that Merck had earned $235 Million on Gardasil sales in 2006.

2/21/07 - Merck was reported to have suspended its campaign to convince legislatures to mandate the vaccine.

Based upon the number of Gardasil tv commercials I've seen since then (the "One Less" advertisements), it seems that Merck continued advertising heavily to the general public.

May 2007 - Judicial Watch excerpted the VAERS database entries for Gardasil and posted them as .pdf file on the web; there were 1,637 adverse reports that seem to run through the first couple of days in May. I haven't had a chance to read it in detail but here are the incidence of some scary terms:

149 - Hospitalized
53 - Permanent Disability
239 - Syncope (loss of consciousness)
99 - Neuro (includes references to neurologist, neurological, neuro exam)
7 - Guillian-Barre

Please note that in some of the above word counts, the word is used more than once in the same report (the word death appears 5 times in total but there are 3 reported deaths). And, the issues are complex. There are unanswered questions, including those about whether it matters what other drugs the person takes regularly; whether there's a family history of drug allergies; what other vaccinations were administered at the same time; etc. I can't find the citation at the moment but did see at least one recommendation that the vaccine only be administered to people laying down because of the number of reported incidents of patients losing consciousness ("syncope"), falling, and suffering injuries.

From my perspective, the most important thing is for parents to know that these side effects have been reported and that critical questions are unanswered.

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HPV Vaccine/Gardasil - seizure, fainting, paralysis, ...

Posted by K Krasnow Waterman on Thu, Mar 27, 2008 @ 02:55 PM

...pain, acid reflux, menstrual changes, cystic acne and
other side effects reported here.

The question of HPV vaccine / Gardasil side effects has
continued to draw more comments
than anything else I've posted to this website. It's taken months, but finally
I've put together a new table of all the comments posted to all the different blogs.
Many of the stories are really heart-rending and I recommend that you take the time to
go to the other related blogs on this site to read them. I think the most common
items on the list are seizure, fainted (loss of consciousness), faint (feeling faint
rather than actually fainting), dizzy, nausea, weakness, fatigue, severe acne, yeast
allergy, pain, muscle twitching/spasms, limited or lost use of limbs.

Please bear in mind that I am not a medical professional. Also, it is unknown
whether all of these experiences are reactions to the vaccine. Each of the
people submitting information believes they are or is asking if they are.
I've begun collecting the information so that medical researchers can have a starting
place to make a scientific finding. And, so people considering getting the
vaccine can know about the outstanding questions. Last, the blog has helped a
number of people discover that they are not alone.

Because many people have written long, detailed information, I can't get that all
into a table. I've tried to include every symptom they've mentioned, with
which of the three shots in the series they believe the problem is associated, and
the elapsed time from the shot until the first symptom. I've tried to include
when they've been to a hospital or ER, because a researcher will know how to reach
that data. On reflection, this version doesn't state whether the reaction was
a minute or a year; some have been quite prolonged and I'll need to capture that
next round.

 

(Sorry the text is so small. You can read it by pressing
"view" on your browser's menu bar and then choosing "zoom" or "text size"
(increase)).

	Reaction	Age	Size	Known Allergies or Other	Shot	Administer With	Elapsed Time After Shot	Commenter	Re:	Date of Posting
1
2	Fainted	17		low blood pressure?	1st	Meningitis, Hep A, TB test	10 min.	snail	self	7/27/2007
3	Collapsed, fainted, became rigid	13			1st	Gardasil	2 to 3 min.	Patricia Doughty RN	daughter	8/2/2007
4	Seizure, slurred speech, left-side weakness (hospitalized)					"several other vaccines"	within 5 min.	Carol	daughter	8/10/2007
5	Fainted 24 time since shot, black eyes, concussions, broken wrist, pacemaker (hospitalized)	21		I was healthy and athletic up until the vaccine	1st or 2nd		continuing over 8 months	Blondie	self	8/17/2007 & 8/20/07 & 1/18/08
6	Seizure, rigid	14 &			1st	None	1 month	Maria	two daughters	8/18/2007
7	Fainted at home	12			1st		7 days	Monica Della-Quercia	daughter	8/20/2007
8	Seizure, fainted	13			1st	Meningitis / Hep A	within minutes	Anonymous	daughters	8/22/2007
9		& 16			1st	Meningitis / Hep A	within minutes	Anonymous	daughters
10	Seizure, fainted (ER)	21		no medical problems, no allergies, active & healthy	3rd		2 hours	JV	daughter	8/24/2007
11	Dizzy, collapsed (no loss of conciousness)			often dizzy after shots	1st	Meningitis	within 5 minutes	Ashley	self	8/25/2007 & 11/18/07
12	Severe itching, rash, developed yeast allergy			often dizzy after shots	2nd		3 days?	Ashley	self
13	Fever, nausea, daily vomiting	18			1st	Chicken pox		Erin	friend	8/27/2007
14	Menstrual abnormalities	16			2nd		"a month or two"	Robin	self	8/27/2007
15	Swelling, red and itchy	11				4 others		Michele	daughter	8/29/2007
16	Muscle cramps, itchy, developed yeast allergy	23			2nd			Ashley	self	8/30/2007
17	Fainted	17	Small, 5'6", 90 lbs		1st & 2nd			Victoria	self	8/30/2007 & 9/4/07
18	Fainted	20s	Small, under 100 lbs					Victoria	friend	8/30/2007
19	Burning, dizzy, headaches	15, 13 & 13	Petite & thin		3rd		Immediate	Jeanie	daughters	9/8/2007
20	Seizure (hospital)	13					5 days	Jeanie	daughter
21	Seizure?							Jessica	daughter	9/10/2007
22	Episode: muffled hearing, high pitched ringing, diminished vision, hot and pale	25			3rd		Immediate	Melody	self	9/15/2007
23	Fainted (fell off examining table)	23	Med.	never had an adverse reaction to an injection, giving blood, etc.	1st		"about a minute"	"age 23"	self	9/23/2007
24	Seizure	21	Med.	"no medical problems and no allergies"	3rd		1 hour	Joanne	daughter	9/23/2007
25	Seizure, lost consciousness (fell on cement - bad concussion)			"very healthy athlete who has never had any medical issues previously"	3rd		about 1.25 hours	Sara	daughter	9/27/2007
26	Seizures (2 - shaking, ...drooling, and loss of orientation ...clouded vision and muffled hearing), fainted, hurt neck	24	med	"work out 4-5 days a week", no prior seizures, no known allergies or medical conditions	2nd		10 min.	Kim K	self	9/30/2007
27	Faint, nausea, cold sweat, could barely walk.	16		none	1st			Marina	self	9/30/2007
28	Severe stomach pains, vomiting, nausea, painful menstruation, menstrual abnormalities, sore arm	25	med	"asthma... allergic to cats"	1st and 2nd			Bernadette	self	10/3/2007
29	Seizure (lost bladder control, eyes rolled back, body rigid, arms moving)	16					10 sec.	Beth	daughter	10/4/2007
30	Shaking hand (interimittent, involuntary), sore arm	18			2nd		1 day	Sharon	daughter	10/7/2007
31	Fainted, pain	31	above avg.	no allergies	1st	none	10 min.	Tania Lopez	self	10/10/2007
32	Seizures, fainted, dizzy, hallucinating (more than 10 times - banned from school)	12			1st			Latoya	niece	10/12/2007
33	Fainted	16			1st			Emily	self	10/12/2007
34	Collapsed, severe abdominal pain	17	Small, 5'7", 105			menengitis, tetanus	minutes	Ed	daughter	10/16/2007
35	"Mini-seizures" (many), body jolts and unsteady movements	26	5'8", 128		1st & 2nd	(taking Topamax for mood)		Amber	self	10/19/2007
36	"Twitch and jolt," dizzy	13					immed.	Michelle	daughter	10/21/2007
37	Fainted, feels run down	13				MMR,Meningitis shot and chicken pox & blood draw		Sherry	daughter	10/21/2007
38	Severe fatigue; severe nausea, weakness, headaches, and abominal pain (now home schooled by district)	13			All 3			Aggie	daughter	10/22/2007
39	Extreme arm soreness, pain with lifting				3rd			Jrehal	self	10/24/2007
40	Fainted, vomited, severe weakness, sore joints, itchy	18	athletic	none	1st & 2nd	1st w/ Meningitis; 2nd w/TB test		Ali	self	10/2/2007
41	Fainted and slept for 48 hours							Lara Ward	daughter	10/7/2007
42	Siezure, fainted	14		very healthy, athletic, no prior reactions to any shot	1st	Meningitis	Immed.	Kristie	daughter	10/18/2007
43	Blood pressure increase	25		healthy, no meds, and no known allergy	3rd			Sara	self	11/3/2007
44	Faint, fever, chills, nausea, convulsions, headaches, difficulty breathing, stomach pain, menstrual abnormalities, severe cramps, depression (hospitalized)	14			1st	meningitis & tetanus	(for 4 months to date?)	Jessica	self	11/5/2007
45	Fainted				1st			Kristen	self	11/6/2007
46	Seizure, lost consciousness, dizziness, tachycardia, numbness and tingling	24		running every day, extremely healthy			less than 1 month	Julia	self	11/7/07 & 11/9/2007
47	Appendicitis like symptoms, nausea (bed-ridden)						3 to 4 weeks after	Betsy Luck	daughter	11/9/2007
48	Dizziness, weakness, ear pain, tingling	20			1st & 2nd			Jane	daughter (1 of 2)	11/10/2007
49	Seizure (turned bluee), fainted	13		athletic, soccer player, no medical issues	3rd			Tammy	daughter	11/13/2007
50	Seizure (convulsions, rigid, eyes rolled, lost bladder control, face turned pale white and lips turned a purple color, stopped breathing)	18					right after shot	L	self	11/14/2007