Merck & Co suspends lobbying to make Gardasil compulsory ahead of report on its side effects

A press statement from US pressure group the National Vaccine Information Center says that a number of health problems have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following administration of drug major Merck & Co's cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil (quadrivalent human papilloma virus [types 6, 11, 16, 18] recombinant vaccine) during the second half of 2006. The report was released the day after Merck said it would stop an unpopular lobbying campaign to make vaccination compulsory for school attendance among 11 and 12 year-old girls.

Out of the 385 individual Gardasil adverse event reports made to the VAERS, two-thirds required additional medical care and about one-third were for children 16-years-old and under, with nearly 25% of those children having received simultaneously one or more of the 18 vaccines that Merck did not study in combination with Gardasil.

The NVIC is calling on the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to warn parents and doctors that Gardasil should not be combined with other vaccines and that young girls should be monitored for at least 24 hours for fainting that can be accompanied by seizure activity, as well as symptoms of tingling, numbness and loss of sensation in the fingers and limbs, which should all be reported to the VAERS.