Gardasil

Here's something I got via email. I'm not saying it's 100% true (it did come from the Internet, after all), but I have heard grumblings from various sources on how this drug isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Dear Friend,

There's so many conflicting reports floating around about Gardasil that it can be tough for parents to know what to believe. And a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association only clouds the issue even further.

The study claims that Gardasil's side effects are rare and continue to occur at the same rate they did in the clinical trials.

But what they don't tell you is that those trials were a sham.

Instead of giving the control group a true placebo, they gave them one that was aluminum-based. To the untrained eye, this can make the results look convincing--and that's what the drug company is banking on.

But the truth is, the aluminum-based placebo pills alone can cause side effects like nerve damage, the deck was stacked. So it's no wonder the drug wasn't that bad compared to the placebo--they were both equally dangerous!

But the cat's already out of the bag, and a growing number of doctors, researchers and parents aren't being fooled by these clinical shenanigans. You won't be fooled, either when you see the damage it's doing.

Dozens of little girls have died after getting this vaccine. Others have experienced disabling nerve damage, and some have even gotten ALS -- Lou Gehrig's disease.

That may be why the editors of JAMA decided to run an editorial alongside this new study questioning whether this vaccine offers any benefit over a pap smear.

Allow me to answer: It doesn't.

Even one of the top researchers behind the vaccine's clinical trials, who has been paid by Merck to speak about its supposed wonders, is now publicly questioning it.

No, I didn't just make that up. Dr. Diane Harper told CBS News in August that some of the side effects could make the vaccine riskier than the cervical cancer it's supposed to stop.

Remember, this is the same company that rushed Vioxx through the system, and we know how that turned out. Some folks even say Merck's HPV vaccine really stands for "Help Pay for Vioxx."

Here's the answer we should all give them: Not at the expense of our daughters' health.

Emphasis above supplied by me because it illustrates exactly what is wrong with the whole "new drug" thing.

One, how can a private company rush something through the system? Doesn't the government agency responsible do its due diligence? [quit laughing]

Two - Vioxx. That drug was a heart attack in pill form. It not only made it through the company's strict quality control, [again with the jokes! yer killin' me!] but the FDA didn't find anything wrong with it either.

Here's what I think - I think the FDA should be disbanded and a private not-for-profit organization be established for the testing of new drugs. That way, the government employees won't be playing nice so they can get that cushy Pharma job once they leave .gov service.

I wonder who's making the swine flu vaccine....

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