Gardisil in the Crosshairs (Again)

From the Told Ya So Department:

"There are new concerns about Gardasil, the vaccine that prevents a virus that caused cervical cancer. It's approved for girls as young as nine ... The FDA and its maker insist it's safe. But CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has exclusive information on some very serious side effects."

Ooops.

Turns out, this questionable med - which costs $120 a pop - is not only unproven, but potentially quite unsafe:

"The National Vaccine Information Center [NVIC], a private vaccine-safety group, compared Gardasil adverse events to another vaccine, one also given to young people, but for meningitis. Gardasil had three times the number of Emergency Room visits ... Reports of side effects were up to 30 times higher with Gardasil."

Major oops.

In fact, the NVIC notes that "there are more reactions and deaths associated with Gardasil than with another vaccine given in the same age group."

And yet, proponents of the vaccine continue to promote its use; in fact, they're also pushing to have it administered to boys who, as I understand it, have a very low incidence of cervixes (cervixi?).

Oh frabjous day!

On The Other Hand: Turns out that the doc who connected the dots between the MMR vaccine and childhood autism may have significantly fudged his numbers:

"The doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found."

One of the hallmarks of good science is replicability; that is, that results can be replicated in subsequent studies. When one deliberately misreports the actual test results, and also refuses to divulge how they were obtained, it renders those results unuseable.

Or at least it should.

Shame on "Dr" Wakefield, and further shame on The Lancet for even accepting the report in the first place.