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Parents of
brain-damaged teenager blame cervical cancer jab
A teenage girl
has been left brain-damaged after falling ill within days of being
given Cervarix, the controversial cervical cancer vaccine.
Stacey Jones,
17, suffered her first epileptic seizure days after having the Cervarix
injection, which is being offered to all schoolgirls under a Government
programme.
In the weeks
which followed, she had dozens more fits, which caused
such severe brain injury that she has been admitted to a rehabilitation
unit, which is helping her to relearn basic tasks like making a
sandwich.
The parents
of the teenager, from Bilston in the West Midlands, are convinced that
the vaccination, in March, triggered swelling in the brain, which has
been diagnosed as the cause of her neurological problems.
Julie and
Kerry Jones say that as a result, their "happy-go-lucky "
girl became paranoid and violent, leaving her family in despair.
Safety
watchdogs and drug manufacturers insist there is no evidence to
suggest the vaccine carries long term side-effects – meaning that in
cases such as Stacey's, the timing of the onset of illness after a jab
would be mere coincidence.
This week,
the post-mortem on Natalie Morton, a 14-year-old Coventry
schoolgirl who died hours after having the jab, found that she actually
died from a malignant tumour which had been growing, undetected, in her
chest.
But Stacey's
parents insist that more must be done to investigate
whether their daughter's symptoms could have been triggered by the
vaccination programme.
When the
teenager became increasingly emotional in the weeks following
her first two jabs, in November and January, her parents thought their
easy-going daughter was finally succumbing to adolescent moodswings.
But within four days of her third and final injection in March of this
year, Stacey suffered an epileptic seizure, followed by 17 more in the
following week.
The fits
continued for months, while the teenager became increasingly
disturbed and psychotic, hearing voices and making murderous threats.
Doctors said
the epilepsy was caused by swelling of the brain, but the
family has been given no explanation as to how the damage occurred.
A month ago,
Stacey was admitted to an NHS rehabilitation unit for
brain injury, where she is relearning simple tasks. Seizures are
minimised by five types of medication, but the teenager's memory has
been badly damaged.
Mrs Jones,
44, said: "She was such a lovely, happy go-lucky girl, now
she is just a shell. I really feel she has been used as a guinea pig. I
don't think there is enough evidence that the vaccination programme is
safe – this all happened days after Stacey was given the vaccine, and
we don't have any other explanation for what triggered her brain
injury."
The learning
support assistant and her husband, a tyre technician, have
just been told that her daughter is unlikely to leave the brain injury
unit before Christmas. Each day, they embark on a two-hour round trip
to see their daughter, who remains in a state of confusion.
Mrs Jones
said: "When we go to see her, she can't remember what she has
just eaten for tea. The impact on her and all of us has been absolutely
devastating. She has been so brave, but she is zombified from the
medication, and she is not the girl she was."
Wolverhampton
City primary care trust said the case had been reported
to the Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the
drug safety watchdog which collects information on suspected
side-effects of medicines and vaccines and investigates possible links.
A national
vaccination programme for all girls of 12 and 13 was
introduced last year, with a "catch up" programme for older teens so
that all under 18s will be covered by 2011. Ministers say the programme
will prevent 700 deaths from cervical cancer each year.
Since the jab
was introduced, more than a million girls have been
injected, of whom more than 2,000 have suffered one or more suspected
adverse reactions, according to the MHRA.
Most of the
suspected reactions were mild, with dozens of girls
recording rashes, pain in the arm, and allergies. There was no evidence
to suggest that "isolated cases of other medical conditions" were
actually caused by the vaccine, the regulator's report said.
A spokesman
for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Cervarix, said the drug
had to undergo rigorous testing, with over 70,000 doses used in trials
before a licence was granted.
He said: "The
UK medicines safety agency has reviewed all reported
adverse events relevant to Cervarix and there is no evidence to suggest
that the vaccine carries any long-term side effects.
"The
symptoms this girl has experienced are clearly upsetting and it is
understandable that the girl and her parents want to uncover the cause."
See also:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218030/Teenage-girl-left-brain-damaged-receiving-cervical-cancer-jab.html
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