WorldNetDaily has been fearmongering about vaccines such as Gardasil approved to combat the human papilloma virus, which can cause cervical cancer in women for quite some time now — and it looks like the dishonesty won’t be stopping anytime soon.
A March 12 WND article by Alyssa Farah (daughter of WND editor Joseph Farah and now apparently a “special Washington correspondent for WND”) begins this way:
A widely popular HPV vaccine the federal government has recommended for girls and boys as young as 11 has caused thousands of adverse reactions, including seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short-term memory loss, Guillain-Barré syndrome and even death.
As we’ve detailed, proclaiming “thousands of adverse reactions” for a drug is meaningless without also reporting how many doses of the vaccine were administered. As even WND concedes, the rate of adverse reactions of the more than 35 million doses of Gardasil administered is a paltry 0.05 percent.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that there is “no statistically significant increased risk” for such specific severe adverse events such as Guillain–Barré Syndrome (GBS), stroke, VTE, appendicitis, seizures, syncope, allergic reactions, and anaphylaxis resulting from a Gardasil vaccination. The most common adverse events, according to the CDC, are pain and redness at the site of immunization, dizziness, nausea, fainting and headache.
Farah went onto fearmonger, “There are serious side effects including, occasionally, sudden death.” Actually, “occasionally” is overstating the case; try “extremely rare.” Forbes’ Matthew Herper has debunked the idea that Gardasil has killed more than 100 people, pointing that many of those who died had other risk factors and “only a handful could possibly be linked to Gardasil. And based on the data available, it is unlikely (though not impossible) that even those deaths were caused by the vaccine.”
Farah also wrote: “There are more than 100 strains of HPV; Gardasil and Cervarix, the most commonly prescribed vaccines, offer protection against two of them.” In fact, Gardasil protects against four HPV strains — two of which cause 90 percent of genital warts cases and two that cause 75 percent of all cervical cancers.
Farah concludes by repeating more Gardasil fearmongering from one Dr. Joseph Mercola. But as we’ve noted, Mercola is a seller of health supplements who opposes immunization, fluoridation of water, and mammography; claims that amalgam fillings are toxic; and makes many unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements. Mercola has been twice ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to stop making claims about his supplements that go beyond their intended uses.
Farah’s dishonesty and one-sided reporting seem to demonstrate that she has learned way too much from her father.