The Vexing Vaccine

The peanut butter recall that’s plagued the country for months now has left over 600 people sick in 44 different states. Not surprisingly, the “PB Plague” – as I like to call it – has brought thousands of peanut butter products off their pantry perches and left the peanut butter industry reeling as to how they can revive their consumer-friendly image.

Now, obviously, action needed to be taken. It’s painful to see the peanut industry take this kind of an economic hit, but we can’t have people doubled over in pain after biting into a Little Debbie sandwich cracker (come to think of it, people are actually better off now that their not eating such things, but you get what I mean).

That said, isn’t it amazing that the peanut butter industry has been brought to its knees with this salmonella outbreak, yet other industries rife with health risks are operating unscathed?

Case in point: Gardasil and other makers of the cervical cancer vaccine.

This is not to say that this story hasn’t received media attention; anyone who follows the news even a little bit knows the risks associated with taking the vaccine meant to block girls from getting the Human Papilloma Virus. Side effects can be as small as feeling nauseated to as large as being victim to paralysis or death. In fact, 15 deaths were reported to the Food and Drug Administration since mid-2008 due to the vaccine, at least 10 of the deaths confirmed as being tied to the vaccine.

If that wasn’t enough, since 2008, over 7,800 “adverse reactions” have been linked to Gardasil since the Food and Drug Administration put its stamp of approval on its use in 2006.

Doesn’t say much for the FDA’s “stamp of approval,” does it?

Now comes word out of Madrid, Spain, that two young women have been rendered severely ill – to the point where both girls were brought into intensive care for treatment almost immediately after taking the vaccine – leading to the seizure of 76,000 doses of the vaccine.

Despite the sordid history of the vaccine and this most recent troublesome trend, newspapers like the LA Times are reporting “widespread acceptance” for the vaccine, and regulatory bodies for the European Union are already casting off the girls’ illnesses as something unrelated to the vaccine. In other words, they’re giving the go-ahead to continue using the vaccine…less than one week after the Spanish girls fell ill!

Why don’t I think the same slick-fingered manner of investigation would happen with the peanut butter recall?

In the face of all this, the vaccine continues to be used by young women in and around the country. It’s use is so prevalent, in fact, that an estimated one in four adolescents girls have already had it administered to them in California (with a plurality wanting to have it administered some time in the near future), according to a recent UCLA survey.

So much can be said to object to the vaccine’s use, whether its from a moral perspective (that giving young girls the vaccine gives them the tacit “go ahead” to have sex) or a gratuitous perspective (a routine pap smear alerts young women and parents to cervical cancer, so there’s no need for the vaccine in the first place). In the interest of time (and space), I’ll keep my objection straightforward: vaccines like Gardisil’s offers the same amount of protection from cervical cancer as a flu vaccine offers: i.e. none. The toxic amount of chemicals packed into each and every cc of a vaccine is the reason for the laundry list of side effects you hear every time a Gardisil commercial is played.

We wouldn’t accept these kinds of side effects if they were in peanuts. Why the “widespread acceptance” for vaccines?

Sources
AFP
San Bernardino County Sun
CNN Health