Could HPV Vaccine Be Dangerous to Girls?

VIENNA, Va. (WUSA) -- Two years ago it was hailed as a potential life-saver. Tonight there are new questions about the safety of an HPV vaccine that millions women and girls have already been innoculated with. Some of those girls are as young as 9 years old.

"My doctor told me it was a good idea, friends told me it was a good idea," says Brigitte Alexander, a 23 year old woman who says she had been thinking about getting the HPV vaccine. She and others say they were encouraged by the medical community and television commercials and ads, promoting Gardasil as the most effective way to prevent cervical cancer. "They make you feel like young kids should get it as well as a good mom would do that to protect her child," says Ruth Ghobadi, mother of a 15 year old girl. She questions the safety of vaccinations and has chosen not to vaccinate her daughter.

Others have and are now regretting it. Christina Bell says 2 weeks after her 12 year old daughter Brittany was injected with the HPV vaccine, "she was walking through my house and collapsed. She told me, she couldn't feel her leg." Today, this once athletic girl has a hard time getting around and often loses her balance. Jessica Vega of Nevada got the shot at school and became temporarily paralyzed. Jamie Venice of Florida passed out and had a seizure after her Gardasil shot.

"I don't think this should have been fast-tracked by the FDA," says Barbara Fisher with the National Vaccine Information Center. She says Merck, the manufacturer of the drug managed to get Gardasil approved and to market, after studying the side-effects in just 12-hundred girls. What was their incentive? "It certainly is money because the bottom line for their stock holders is a profit," she says. She claims Merck has taken in an estimated 1.5 billion dollars world-wide from Gardasil sales, all for a vaccine she says may do more harm than good. She says doctors share in the blame. "I think pediatricians need to pay more attention to the patient that's sitting in front of them, rather than thinking they need to implement government policy or promote a new vaccine that a drug company rep has come in and promoted to them."

The debate over the HPV vaccine rages on in Virginia after it became the first state in the country to mandate the vaccine for sixth grade girls, albeit with an opt-out provision. Those requirements have been delayed for at least one year to allow more time to study the vaccine's effects on young girls.

Despite the FDA's own documents that show more than 78 hundred people have experienced problems with Gardasil, Merck and the CDC maintain that Gardasil is safe and effective. They say there is no link to deaths and that illnesses reported after the vaccination may not be the result of the shot.

For more information on Gardasil and potential dangers, click here.