The National Vaccine Information Center, a non-profit agency dedicated to advocating vaccine safety, announced Tuesday it has raised more than $100,000 to launch a fundraising campaign directed at studying how vaccines influence children.

Although the initial research would be aimed at studying health outcomes for infants and children up to six years of age, Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the NVIC, said they hoped to expand their research into vaccinations given to adolescents, including the controversial cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil.

“We want to have a wide variety of scientific disciplines look at the issue of health outcomes after vaccinations,” Fisher told Kansas Liberty

Fisher said the funds were spontaneously raised in less than 24 hours, during the Fourth Annual International Public Conference on Vaccination, which took place Oct. 2-4 and was sponsored by the NVIC.

Shannon Schrag speaking at the event

Shannon Schrag, a Wichita mother who says her teen now suffers from a terminal illness due to receiving the Gardasil vaccination, spoke at the conference, which was held in Washington, D.C.

Schrag’s daughter, Gabi Swank, 16, was diagnosed with central nervous system vasculitis and central nervous system lupus after receiving the third Gardasil injection. Gabi’s neurologist, Dr. Dwight Lindholm, has publicly stated that he believes Gabi’s illness is the direct result of receiving the Gardasil injections.

Gabi’s serious symptoms and emergency room visits started at about two and a half months following her third injection, though she started experiencing illness and injury immediately following her first shot.

Gardasil is a vaccination administered to prevent four strains of the human papillomavirus virus, or HPV. Two of the strains of HPV have the potential to cause genital warts and two of the strains have the potential to cause cervical cancer. The vaccine is administered in a three-shot series.

The conference had requested that Gabi personally share her story, but Shannon said Gabi was too ill to travel.

Shannon said the response she received to her message in Washington, D.C., was “phenomenal.”

“We didn’t expect the little girl from Kansas to have such a strong voice,” Shannon said. “And it wasn’t just her voice; it was the voice of all the girls who have died from the vaccinations and for those who continue to suffer.”

Shannon said Gabi went from being a straight-A student and a cheerleader to being diagnosed with a terminal illness, experiencing small strokes and seizures, within a period of months. Gabi tried to go back to school in a wheelchair, but is now mostly homebound.

Shannon said Gabi has accepted her fate of having a terminal illness, but refuses to accept the fact that other girls are continuing to be vaccinated.

“She said that for whatever reason she felt that God had placed on her heart the task of informing others of what this vaccine could do,” Shannon said.

Shannon said she received a standing ovation at the conference after telling Gabi’s story.

Schrag receives standing ovation

Shannon said she and Gabi’s mission is to have Gardasil completely pulled from the market until additional testing can be conducted. Shannon and Gabi would also like to see some type of campaign launched to increased awareness of the effectiveness of having regular Pap smears.

Shannon, a cervical cancer survivor, said that she regretted having Gabi vaccinated even though Gabi has a family history of the cancer.

“We chose to vaccinate her to protect her, but knowing what I know now, I would have much rather my daughter have cervical cancer any day,” Shannon said. “At least there is treatment for cervical cancer and we wouldn’t have to watch her die slowly like we are doing now.”

Gabi's best friend made a video about Gabi's experience with Gardasil, and to date it has more than 107,000 views on YouTube (link below).

Some state governments have attempted to extend their reach into personal decisions by making Gardasil a mandatory vaccination for adolescents. Wichita Republican Rep. Brenda Landwehr, chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, has been opposed to Kansas creating a mandatory vaccination law for Gardasil and helped defeat legislation introduced by Rep. Delia Garcia, D-Wichita, in 2007, which sought to make Gardasil vaccinations mandatory for girls in Kansas.

“I think this should be something that the parents and the girl decide, not the government,” Landwehr told Kansas Liberty.

Last year, Rep. Dale Swenson, a Democrat from Wichita, introduced a resolution in committee that asked the FDA to reevaluate the drug. The resolution failed to gain support and died in committee, but Swenson said he was planning to reintroduce the resolution in the 2010 session.

“I think they may have rushed Gardasil onto the market before it was ready,” Swenson told Kansas Liberty. “I want to put the state of Kansas on the record as saying it doubts the safety of Gardasil.”

Gardasil is made by the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. and was approved for usage in 2006 by the Federal Drug Administration to be used on girls aged 9 to 26. Another HPV vaccination, Ceravix, was created by GlaxoSmithKline and is expected to gain approval in the United States within the year.

The Centers for Disease Control issued a response following concerns about the vaccination on Sept. 1, 2009. As of that date, the CDC reported that more than 26 million doses of Gardasil had been distributed in the United States.

Of the doses administered as of Sept. 1, the CDC has received 15,037 reports of adverse reactions, with 93 percent of the cases determined to be non-serious, and the remaining 7 percent considered to be serious.

“Based on all of the information we have today, CDC continues to recommend Gardasil vaccination for the prevention of four types of HPV,” the report said. “As with all approved vaccines, CDC and FDA will continue to closely monitor the safety of Gardasil.”

The CDC noted that the reports did not prove that that the health problems were caused by the vaccine, but that they occurred within a certain timeline of receiving the vaccine. Results labeled as serious by the CDC included Guillian-Barre Syndrome, blood clots and death.

As of Sept. 1, there were 44 reported deaths in the United States in girls who had received the vaccination.

The FDA and CDC notes that “given the large number of doses distributed, it is expected that, by chance alone, serious adverse events and some deaths will be reported in this large population during the time period following vaccinations” and also determined that “based on the review of available information by FDA and CDC, Gardasil continues to be safe and effective, and its benefits continue to outweigh its risks. “

Approximately 7 out of 100,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually, with the rates being slightly higher for Hispanic and African-American women. The CDC suggested that the higher incident of cervical cancer for these ethnicities might be the result of a lack of regular Pap smears.

The CDC said that by the age of 50, the vast majority or four out of every five women would have contracted HPV. However, in 90 percent of these cases, HPV is defeated by the body’s immune system, with just 10 percent of these women developing serious HPV diseases that could result in cervical cancer if it is not detected early by regular Pap smear screening. Approximately 4,000 women die from cervical cancer annually in the U.S.

The FDA says that Gardasil “is an important cervical cancer prevention tool that will potentially benefit the health of millions of women."

Dr. Diane Harper, who was hired by Merck to work as a researcher in Gardasil trials, said she believed Gardasil was adequately studied prior to being approved by the FDA, though she said the ad campaigns launched to promote Gardasil — though legally correct — are misleading.

Television ads started appearing after the drug was approved, urging girls to get the vaccination so there would be “one less” girl to battle and possibly die from cervical cancer.

Harper, who also works as a professor of Family Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, told Kansas Liberty the claims in the ad "were significantly blown out of proportion.”

Harper said that there are risks involved with receiving the vaccination, as well as benefits, and thought these benefits and risks should be made known to the parents and girls prior to the vaccinations so they can weigh their options. Harper pointed out that cervical cancer is not a quick-acting disease, and that there is adequate time to detect the pre-cancerous cells before it develops into cancer.

“We need to clearly develop informed consent of what the benefits and the risks of Pap smears are and what the benefits and risks of the vaccines are and let everyone decide if they want to continue with the Pap smears,” she said. “This is an entirely personal decision. This is not my decision to make or the CDC’s decision to make for them and not Merck’s decision.”

Harper said that the HPV vaccine would not affect the rate of cervical cancer in the United States and said it was possible it could actually increase the rate. Harper said she was concerned girls who receive the vaccination may be misinformed or believe that they don’t have to continue regular Pap screening, and because Gardasil does not protect against all cervical cancers, this misinformation could lead to more vaccinated girls to have cervical cancer.

“If everyone gets Gardasil and doesn’t get screened, there will be an actual increase in the cancer rate,” she said. 

Resources

National Vaccine Information Center
www.nvic.org

CDC Gardasil safety report
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaers/gardasil.htm

FDA August 2009 report on Gardasil
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/ucm179549.htm

Gabi's friend does a YouTube video for Gabi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2z6RK2uTWc

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