I am no medical specialist. But something about the rush with which some people are intent on giving Gardasil to every young girl bothers me. I’m all for trying to prevent cervical cancer, but not at any price. Stories like this one should, I think, warrant more than a casual shrug and mild assurances that trying to avoid cervical cancer outweighs adverse reactions.

THE new cervical cancer jab is believed to be behind a huge jump in the number of women and girls suffering bad reactions to vaccinations .

The first annual vaccination statistics for New South Wales to include Gardasil reveal a 1600 per cent surge in reported adverse side-effects among young females who were immunised last year.

These include allergic reactions, collapsing, dizziness, nausea and unexplained illnesses.

New female cases pushed the total adverse reactions to immunisations last year to the highest on record. NSW Health says it is monitoring the situation closely, but said the results did not outweigh the benefits of the vaccination program.

[…]

Most of the adverse reactions were recorded by nurses during school-based immunisations and none were life-threatening, he said. NSW Public Health data reveals that there were 224 official reports of adverse events linked to immunisation last year — 133 of which were in females aged between five and 24.

In comparison, there were only 70 in total the previous year, with just eight recorded in young females. This is a 1662.5 per cent rise in reactions among young women. The statistics do not break down which vaccinations cause the side-effects. But nationally, there have been 1013 reports of adverse side-effects from Gardasil from doctors, parents and patients to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

But the real number of reactions may be significantly higher, according to Women’s Forum Australia director and health researcher Melinda Tankard Reist. She said: “I am not surprised that there has been an increase in reported reactions.

“Most adverse reactions are never reported so you have to multiply it by many times (to get the real figure).

As I say, I’m no medical specialist. And while I do on the whole resist unncessary medical procedures, I am not an anti-vaccine crank. But I don’t like these stories, and I sure wouldn’t like to be one of the girls testing this vaccine, or have a daughter of that age and seeing her experience adverse reactions after receiving that shot.