Gardasil and Lou Gehrig's Disease - Two Cases
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Researchers believe that two separate cases of Lou Gehrig’s Disease in young girls that progressed rapidly following the Gardasil injection may be related to the cervical cancer drug.
More than seven million young women and girls have been given Gardasil vaccine in a three-shot series to protect against two types of virus that cause cervical cancer and two that cause genital warts.
In both cases the young women died and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease progressed rapidly. Merck, the maker of Gardasil does not believe the events could have been caused by Gardasil.
Here’s what we do know. Jenny Tetlock was 14-years-old. Months after her third and final booster for Gardasil, she tripped in gym class. Soon both legs and her arms became weak. She began to limp and had trouble gripping objects and she felt pins and needles in her feet. Her muscled atrophied.
Her parents tell her story on their web site Jenny’s Journey hoping others may report similar cases to them so they can make sure the cases are registered with the federal government.
Within a year Jenny was paralyzed, a quadriplegic and used life support to help her breath. The degenerative disease did not harm her mind, which Web MD reports was as sharp as ever before she died.
Another girl, 20-years-old, saw her ALS progress the same way within four months of her first Gardasil shot. She died 28 months later.
The link between the symptoms and the shot is very suspicious to researcher Dr. Catherine Lomen-Hoerth at the ALS Center at University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
First the symptoms progressed very rapidly, more so than in a typical ALS patient. Both girls had an inflamed spinal cord she said to doctors at the American Neurological Association.
More work is to be done. Young ALS patients will be compared to these girls. The adverse events reports will be combed further to see if there are any young women who reported ALS symptoms following Gardasil. So far there are none reported.
Jenny’s parents, Phil and Barb, both college professors, are asking anyone who visits their Web site in their daughter’s honor to forward any cases of muscle paralysis following a Gardasil injection to their Web site so they can make sure that it is registered on the federal VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) Web site. They fear cases are underreported since VAERS is not generally known or easy to navigate.
And one doctor says he will now ask his young ALS patients if they received the Gardasil vaccine. He didn’t think to ask before, he says.
Our sympathies go out to the friends and families of these two young women.
Jenny was 15 when she lost her battle with the rapidly degenerative neurological disease on March 15, 2009. #