UK: Revealed: The serious health concerns about the cervical cancer jab

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Revealed: The serious health concerns about the cervical cancer jab

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Whitcroft

Last updated at 10:04 AM on 02nd September 2008

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The pink leaflets are ready, the posters are

poised to go up and the advertising slots have

been booked both on kids and primetime TV and radio.

Tomorrow marks the start of a new academic year.

It is also the launch date of a campaign which

heralds the introduction of the biggest mass

vaccination programme for more than a decade.

By the end of September, there will hardly be a

Year Eight girl (aged 12-13) in the country who

doesn't know that, barring an opt-out, she is

shortly to receive three injections of the drug

Cervarix, which will offer her 70 per cent protection against cervical cancer.

Vernon, 50 and her daughter Sophie, 12

think that the cervical cancer injection is a positive thing

More...

*

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1051256/Schools-dont-nurses-cervical-\

cancer-jabs.html>Schoolgirls

line up for first jabs of the cervical cancer vaccine

*

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1051309/Jades-darkest-day--Boyfrie\

nd-jailed-reveals-extent-cancer-heartache.html>Jade's

darkest day... Boyfriend jailed as she reveals full extent of cancer heartache

Later in the year, another 300,000 girls aged 17

and 18 will be vaccinated before they leave

school. By 2012, most girls over the age of 12

should have received the vaccine.

Made by pharmaceutical giant Glaxo-Kline,

Cervarix works by creating an immunity against

the two strains of the human papillomavirus

(HPV), numbers 16 and 18, responsible for 70 per cent of all cervical cancers.

For the Government, the programme - reputed to

have cost tens of millions of pounds - has been

seen as little short of a community medicine triumph.

'This vaccine could save the lives of 400 women a

year,' pronounced public health minister Dawn

Primarolo earlier this year, shortly after it was

announced that GlaxoKline had won the

contract to supply the drug over its rival Merck,

who make the more expensive vaccine, Gardasil.

'It is an exciting opportunity to immunise young

girls against the future risk of cancer, the

impact of which will be felt by women and their

families for generations to come,' she said.

And, on the face of it, who could argue? Cervical

cancer is a dreadful disease.

The HPV (said to be carried by one in ten girls

under 16) is sexually transmitted and once it

enters the cervix causes cell mutation which, if

undetected, will lead to cancer.

Once the cells are past the pre-cancerous stage,

treatment is notoriously drastic. 'Women who are

caught early and end up having just a

hysterectomy are the lucky ones,' says consultant

gynaecologist Ind from the Royal Marsden Hospital and St '.

'It is not uncommon to see a woman in her early

30s who has lost her bowel, vagina, bladder and colon to the disease.'

Quickly introduced

In that context, perhaps it is laudable that the

vaccine programme has been introduced in the UK

so quickly (the drug was approved by the European

Union only in September 2007 and has yet to

receive full approval by the American FDA).

Indeed, there has been some criticism that the

Government had not acted as quickly as European

countries such as France, Italy and Germany who

began their programmes a year earlier.

But look more closely and it is not hard to see

why many British experts are uneasy about the

rush to vaccinate all our young girls.

Cervical cancer may be a nasty disease, but it is

also, thanks to our world-class screening

programme - where all women from 25 to 64 are

eligible for a free cervical screening test every

three to five years - very rare in the UK.

Around 3,000 cases are diagnosed each year and

about 940 women die. While this is 940 too many,

it equates to less than three deaths per 100,000

of population and does not even begin to compare

with the carnage caused by breast or lung cancer.

We have one of the highest rates of teenage

sexual activity in the developed world. We should

be experiencing an epidemic of cervical cancer,' says Ind.

'The fact that we are not is down to our

screening programme. I fear that introducing

another preventative method will dilute both

money and attention away from this.'

Indeed, one of the main worries about the mass

vaccination is that girls will then feel 'safe'

against cervical cancer and ignore the screening programme.

That would be nothing short of disastrous,

because the jab gives protection only against HPV

16 and 18 which are implicated in around 70 per cent of cervical cancers.

Smear tests still needed

There is still a 30 per cent chance that another

strain could cause cancer, making it vital that women go for regular smears.

Cervarix is also very new - large-scale trials go

back only six years - and there is no way of

knowing just how long protection will last.

The worst case scenario is that the Government

could be paying a fortune for a vaccination that

may protect young girls for only the next six or

so years. So just as they hit the peak years for

sexual activity they are totally unprotected.

Furthermore, with the possibility that women will

stop going for smears because they think they're

protected, the vaccination programme could end up

being counter-productive and costing more lives than it saves.

But according to Dr Elliman, a consultant

community paediatrician who works for Haringey

NHS Trust and Great Ormond Street Hospital and

sits on the cervical cancer screening board, this is an unlikely scenario.

'The girls receiving the jab are many years away

from the age of screening,' he explains. 'In

addition, in all the literature it is made

extremely clear that the vaccination is not a substitute.

'For all its merits, our screening process

doesn't prevent cancer, it simply picks it up at

an early stage. The vaccination is the only thing

that actually prevents HPV 16 and 18 from causing cancer.'

However, some people feel the programme is a case

of taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. 'Six

million women carry the HPV virus at any one

time,' says Woollams, founder of the

charity CancerActive and a former biochemist.

Protection

'In the majority of cases the immune system

renders it harmless. Only 3,000 women get

cervical cancer each year and less than 1,000 actually die.

'Looking at those figures, you have to ask

whether the most sensible response is to put a

drug that has little long-term safety and

efficacy data behind it into the immune system of

all our young girls and women?

'The best protection against contracting HPV and

therefore cervical cancer is to use a condom. It

gives you 100 per cent protection. For a fraction

of the money you could run a very effective sex education campaign.'

The Government refuses to release the cost of the

vaccination programme, claiming commercial

confidentiality. But given that, privately,

Gardasil costs around £160 per injection, it will not be cheap.

In July, the British Medical Journal calculated

that by using Cervarix - cheaper than Gardasil

because it protects only against strains 16 and

18 and not 6 and 11, the strains responsible for

genital warts - the Government will save up to

£18million in the first year alone.

Either way, huge sums are involved and there has

been criticism that drug companies funded

charities and doctors to lobby the Government in

the battle to ensure the programme went ahead.

In America, where the vaccination programme using

Gardasil has been in place since June 2006, some

experts are now expressing unease about the scheme.

Twenty seemingly healthy girls died within a few

days of being injected with the vaccine which has

a similar generic make-up to Cervarix.

These deaths have been dismissed as coincidence

by Merck who make the American jab, although both

Cervarix and Gardasil list fainting, dizzying and sore arms as side-effects.

Here in the UK, the awareness group JABS is

reporting an upsurge in calls from parents who

are worried about possible side-effects.

Last month, an article in the New England Journal

Of Medicine claimed that serious questions

regarding the overall effectiveness of the vaccine remained unanswered.

It pointed out that studies into the vaccine were

carried out on girls aged 15 to 24 so there is no

way of knowing how the drug will affect

pre-pubescent girls, how long it will last and

whether there was the potential for interference

with the body's natural defence against other HPV strains.

So parents are being faced with an agonising

decision. Do they say no to the vaccine and risk

their child contracting a dreadful disease.

Or do they put their trust in a drug for which

evidence of safety and efficacy is probably

insufficient and at worst may do harm?

YES

Vernon, 50, is an office manager from

Northampton. She has three children , 26,

, 23, and Sophie, 12, who will be having the jab.

She says... I WAS diagnosed with pre-cancerous

cells at 33, after a routine smear.

I had always been very careful to keep up with my

smear tests and there had never been a problem

before. So when the doctor told me I needed

investigating it was quite a shock.

I knew people who had had breast cancer but I was

the only person I knew who had been in this situation, so I felt very alone.

Between 1990 and 1995, I had four operations to

have abnormal cells lasered away, but they kept

returning. My children were very young and it was a worrying time.

But I was relatively lucky because although the

abnormal cells kept coming back they were only graded as a low risk.

Even so, the laser treatment had unpleasant

side-effects - painful, heavy periods and

abnormal bleeding for several months afterwards

which badly affected my quality of life.

The last treatment was done under local anaesthetic and was extremely painful.

I had also become aware of just how awful

cervical cancer can be if it becomes aggressive

and how the treatment can involve extensive surgery.

Each time I went back for my test results I was

in a panic about what the doctor would say.

I am delighted that Sophie has the opportunity to

have the jab. She is aware of my medical history,

so, naturally, she is keen to be protected. I

just wish it had been available for my older

daughter, , because I wouldn't want either

of my daughters to go through what I did.

Cervical cancer tends to affect young women with

young families and if just one life can be saved

by the vaccine it will have been worthwhile.

I definitely don't subscribe to the argument that

the vaccination will give young girls the green

light to behave in a sexually irresponsible way.

Girls who act like that are going to do it

anyway, irrespective of an injection.

NO

lin , 55, a shop assistant from Harrow,

Middlesex, has two children , 15, and Gaby,

11. Gaby is due for the jab in September 2009 but will opt out.

She says: Since Gaby suffered a bad reaction to a

tetanus jab as a baby I have become much more

questioning about the idea of vaccination.

I am not against it, but if I am going to agree

to something being injected into my daughter I

want to make sure it is safe, effective and has no side-effects.

Cervarix answers none of my questions

satisfactorily. So until there is more long-term

data I feel there are better ways of protecting

my daughter against cervical cancer.

lin , 55, is determined not to expose

her daughter Gaby, 11, to the cervical cancer vaccine

We already have a good open relationship and I

will be rigorous in educating her about the

perils of unsafe sex - not just in regard to

cervical cancer but also about genital warts,

other sexually transmitted diseases and, of course, unwanted pregnancy.

Using a condom gives 100 per cent protection

against cervical cancer, the vaccination can only offer 70 per cent at best.

I am not particularly impressed by the fact that

this vaccine will be given at school by an anonymous medical team.

It should be a matter between the parent, the

child and their GP, who knows the child and is

aware of her medical history and can watch and

record any adverse side-effects.

I am fully expecting that both Gaby and I will be

put under considerable pressure for her to have

the jab and I know in America those who opted out

have been made to feel as if they were bad parents, which is outrageous.

I don't think the vaccine will encourage

promiscuity, there will always be girls who sleep

around, but I do think it will make girls more

blase about their sexual health, less likely to

use a condom and less likely to go for screening.

But my main concern is that we have no idea of

the long-term effects of this vaccine - whether

it works, for how long and whether it can harm the immune system.

I am not going to expose my daughter to that

level of risk and she doesn't want it either.

What you need to know

What causes cervical cancer?

Most cervical cancer is caused by the human

papillomavirus (HPV). HPVs are sexually

transmitted and invade the cervix, although 90per

cent of infections are cleared by the immune system within two years.

If it remains, the virus begins to cause cell

mutation which will lead, if untreated, to

cancerous lesions and eventually cancer. Most

cases occur in women aged 25 to 34.

How does the vaccination work?

Both Gardasil and Cervarix work by mimicking the

structure of the live HPV strains 16 and 18 and

stimulating an immune reaction in the body which

will enable it to fight the real infection at a later date.

The vaccine does not contain live strains of HPV

and tests so far show it cannot cause the

disease. There is no significant data on how long

the vaccination will be effective.

Who will receive the vaccination?

This year, all girls aged 12 to 13 will be

offered the injection at school. Any 17 to

18-year-olds will receive the injection as a

'catch-up' before they leave school.

Why are we vaccinating so early?

For the vaccination to work, it has to be

administered before the girl has been infected by

HPV. Given that around one in ten girls under the

age of 16 already have the virus, it was thought

best to vaccinate girls before they were likely to have had sexual activity.

Can my daughter opt out?

Every parent will be asked to sign a consent form

before the jab is given. If your daughter wishes

to have the jab and you don't, the final decision

is legally yours for a Year Eight girl, but not for a girl over 16.

• HELPLINES: www.nhs.uk/hpv or 0845 602 3303; www.jabs.org.uk

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

Vaccines - http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm

Vaccine Dangers & Homeopathy Online/email courses - next classes Sept 08