Little Rock -

 

 

Across the country different states including Arkansas have looked at mandating gardasil for school aged girls.

It's a vaccine that helps prevent certain strains of HPV, the Human Papillomavirus which is a sexually tranmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer.

But do the benefits outweigh the risks?

Jesalee Parsons was 13 when her mother signed off on her to get the Gardasil vaccine at school.

 

Now nearly two years later she says she is still in pain.

 

Jesalee says she was diagnosed with Acute Pancreatitis and since getting one only dose of Gardasi has spent close to 100 days in the hospital, and had two surgeries to remove Pseudocysts.

 While doctors cannot explain why she has had health problems she and her mother are conviced the vaccine is to blame.

 The Parsons have filed a petition for vaccine compensation seeking damages from the government.

 

 The FDA evaluated and approved the use of Gardasil in females ages nine to 26 in just six months. And since hitting the market in 2006 the government has received more than 10-thousand reports of adverse events follwing the vaccination including 27 deaths.

Barbara Loe Fisher--President of the National Vaccine information center--wants parents to be informed before they allow their daughters to get the three dose vaccine.

 

The vaccine manufactured by Merck was tested on thousands of females in clinical trials prior to being approved but fisher says it was not studied thoroughly enough in children.

 

 The CDC (web|news) says 94% of the adverse reports were considered to be non-serious while 6% were considered to be serious.

And of those experts have not found a common medical pattern in the serious events that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccine.

 

 Richard Hughes--a cancer survivor and member of the Arkansas State Board of Health proposed the state look at making the vaccine a school entry requirement for young girls.

 

 A subcommittee of the board of health decided this year (confirm) a school entry requirement is not appropriate at this time--but reserved the right to revisit the recommendation in the future.

 

 In the meantime it's up to parents to decide whether or not their daughters should be vaccinated. And many like joni rogers whose daughter got the first dose of Gardasil in october haven't reported any problems.

 

Dr. Tony Johnson with Arkansas Pediatric Clinic says he typically recommends the vaccines to his female patients when they are 11, 12 and 13-years-old.

 

According to the Journal of American Medicine it's estimated 24% of females between the ages of 14 and 19 in the US have at least one strain of HPV, and it jumps to 44% for females 20 to 24 years old.

 

 And while Jesalee's mother believes vaccines are important --she wants every parent to be aware of the possible risks.

 

Merck says that the Gardasil label was recently updated to include post-marketing events, including pancreatitis and death but the company points out the CDC has concluded that there was not a common pattern to the deaths that would suggest they were caused by the vaccine.

Merck says most of the serious adverse events were found to have occurred at the same rate as in the general population, even in people who were not vaccinated.

The CDC and fda both say Gardasil is safe and effective and the benefits outweigh the risks.

(Laura Parson) "I almost lost my child who isn't even sexually active. It's scary because I don't want any other family to go through what we've been through."

(Johnson) "So this is a virus that is out there and if it's one we have a safe way to protect them from it only makes sense to protect them."

(Johnson) "We've probably immunized somewhere around 5-600-700b girls and we've not had any complications."

(Dr. Tony Johnson, Arkansas Pediatric Clinic) "Cancer and all that runs in our family. Actually all kinds of cancer does and if I could prevent her from getting at least one kind of cancer then I am all for her getting the shot."

(Joni Rogers, mother) "I think that's a possibility eventually. I think if we want to achieve what we call in public health heard immunity which is widespread dissemination, complete coverage of the general population to prevent a disease that we will want to ultimately do that and I think 5 years down the road that is a possibilty."

(Hughes)"In Arkansas we have between 1-30-1-40 new cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in our state every year, we have about 50 deaths a year. Of cervical cancer it's twice as much in the minority population than general population so I felt like we needed a universal delivery mechanism to get this out to every person, every female in the state."

(Richard Hughes, Arkansas State Baord of Health) "There has been no causal relationship established between this vaccine and adverse events unless some of the minor adverse events and those are common with any vaccine. It's very common to have soreness at the injection site."

(Hughes) "A lot of times someone can leave a clinic after having the vaccine, die in a car accident on the way home and that gets reported as a death and it's wrong to assume that death was obviously associated with the vaccine."

( Fisher) "We are seeing girls who are collapsing and then having seizure activity when they come to consciousness, continuing seizure disorders. We are seeing arthritis, chronic fatigue, paralysis. Some of these who are going in are perfectly healthy girls going in to get this vaccine and walk out and are chronically ill. "

(Barbara Loe Fisher, National Vaccine Information Center) "If your read the reports you can see certainly a number of them are related to that shot. These are healthy girls, healthy women who are going in and then dying, sometimes within hours, sometimes within days of getting this injection and often the autopsy reports come back with no known cause."

(Laura Parson, Jasalee’s mother)"I filed an adverse report right after her second surgery when they had pretty much ruled out any doubt that I had that something else may have cause it because I was really looking for a reason other than that because I didn't want to feel like I had placed my child in danger."

(Jasalee Parson) "I always hurt 24-7. It doesn't end. Sometimes it doesn't hurt as bad. Sometimes it's almost unbearable."

(Jasalee Parson, 15-year-old) "My aunt had died of cervical cancer and me and my family were like yea it sounds great and so I got it and then next day right through here and my back it felt like somebody was stabbing me."

(Jasalee Parson) "I was in excruciating pain. It was so bad I could barely breathe."