The e-mails and phone calls have finally stopped. Thank you everyone. If interpretations are true, the performance on TV last night, of teenage giggling and Nikki Turner's elation at the introduction of Gardasil in New Zealand was a very happy clappy occasion. Perhaps. However, I had already checked out the two new websites: one put together at Nikki Turner's request by non-questioning AUT students (nothing better than the blind leading the blind - makes for peer-group gullibility and have-the-jab pressure, no doubt!), and the site by the Ministry of Health. The AUT generated site is marked by it's mottly pink tinkly vacuousness, and the Ministry of Health one, by it's bland sweepingly boring and totally expected inaccuracies. Read Full Blog
Hilary's Desk
The Gardasil 'miracle' coming undone?
Gardasil - whiter than white
What happens when Merck is unhappy with Gardasil immunization rates in USA are sub-par? It would appear that strings are pulled so that the National Institute of Health hands over $2.08 million dollars to Florida based Moffit Research Institute, to study the problem. Read Full Blog
Gardasil - more thoughts
After finding pancreatitis was a listed in VAERS, I then went to the VAERS data base to study the more "common" side effects from Gardasil, such as fainting, dizziness and nausea. Using key words in the symptoms column, such as "pancreas" and "diabetes", "fainting" "Dizziness" etc, it was disconcerting, just how many girls had what outwardly might be classified as a faint, but had symptoms consistent with blood sugar dysregulation: Read Full Blog
Pancreatitis from Gardasil NOT coincidental
Recently a letter was printed in the Medical Journal of Australia reporting on three women vaccinated with Gardasil who got pancreatitis. Naturally, Merck came out with their usual "correlation does not causation make." I'd suggest that Merck pull back and do a bit more thinking before opening their mouth. Read Full Blog
Point of Difference
Funny how “debate” about the MENZB vaccine, becomes acceptable to the Herald, when it comes from the mouths of IMAC, rather than “anti-immunisation extremists”. But here’s the puzzle. The so-called “anti-immunisation extremists” sounding off in 2004 was primarily pro vaccine Ron Law, whose primary quibble was the hiding of just this sort of information. Funny too. He provided that information to journalists pointing to exactly that debate, but where did it get him? Jane O’Hallahan called him an “anti-immunisation menace”. We all rolled around laughing. Read Full Blog
"Democracy under attack"
Apparently, the inability of the Government, or Gardasil's manufacturer CSL to proceed with a full-on advertising campaign to promote Gardasil, is considered by the Herald to be an "attack on Democracy". Incredible. Mike Taylor of CSL biotherapies says “that there is a certain amount of risk" in the CSL planned advertising campaign. You bet there is, when huge sums money are involved. Most of CSL's planned propaganda, using newspapers, magazines, TV and radio advertisements has been deferred in case it is said to support the Government's pre-election campaign. That's what the Herald would like you to think. But there is another, more important story here. The failure of the Herald to discuss the real issues isn’t so much an attack on democracy, as an attack on readers and taxpayers. Read Full Blog
NZ 2008 schedule - Marketing Multiple vaccines
Have you noticed a subtle shift away from defining a vaccine by initials which stand for the number of vaccine components being given in the one needle? When you see GARDASIL, do you mentally realise that GARDASIL stands for Quadrivalent HPV vaccine, i.e. four different viruses in one needle? When you see the title PREVENAR, do you realise that that is seven vaccines in one? Read Full Blog
Medscape's replacement Gardasil magic wand
In a previous post, I brought you medscapes 28 July commentary on Gardasil side effects, which didn't meet their "editorial requirements". Now, we can bring you the replacement version, which popped up today. Read Full Blog
Gardasil's Fairy Godmothers
Everyone should listen to the August 1st 2008 Nine to Noon broadcast on Gardasil, misnamed, The Gardasil Debate . Kathryn Ryan interviewed Dr Diane Harper from Dartmouth University, who conducted Merck’s Gardasil trials, and then Dr Alison Roberts, who is in charge of defending anything remotely linked to the vaccine programme. Read Full Blog