Public Radio Programs Discuss New Gardasil Statistics

Main Category: Cervical Cancer / HPV Vaccine
Article Date: 21 Aug 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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Two public radio programs recently featured reports on a study released Wednesday examining federal vaccination statistics on Merck's Gardasil, a vaccine that protects against some strains of the human papillomavirus that can lead to cervical cancer and genital warts. The vaccine is approved for girls and young women ages nine to 26 and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study found that CDC has received reports of more than 12,000 adverse events, including 20 verified deaths, which could not be definitively linked with the vaccine. Summaries of the radio broadcasts appear below.

~ NPR's "All Things Considered": Wednesday's program included a report on the safety of the vaccine. The segment included comments from study author Barbara Slade, a medical officer in CDC's Immunization Safety Office, and Neal Halsey, a pediatrician and the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University. Slade said, "It still appears that the vaccine is safe and that the benefits outweigh the risks." She added that the "benefit is that it will prevent infection with the most common types of [HPV] that cause cervical cancer." Halsey said he is "certain" the vaccine is "by far the safest thing one can do with young children today." He added, "To the best of my knowledge, there's no evidence that any" of the deaths reported in the study "have been causally related to the vaccine" (Wilson, "All Things Considered," NPR, 8/19).

~ PRI's "The Takeaway": Thursday's program included a discussion with Sheila Rothman -- a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health who co-authored an analysis of Merck's marketing of Gardasil -- and Diane Harper, a physician and one of the leading researchers for the vaccine's clinical trials. According to "The Takeaway," Harper "has been speaking out in favor of more warnings" on adverse events associated with Gardasil. The segment also featured comments from a woman on whether she plans to have her daughter vaccinated (Hockenberry et al., "The Takeaway," PRI, 8/20).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

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