Topic: Media Research Center
Remember back in April, when the Media Research Center criticized the mainstreaming of anti-vaccine activists while ignoring its own attacks on Gardasil and other vaccines for HPV (human papilloma virus, which tends to cause cervical cancer)? Well, the hypocrisy contines.
A July 10 MRC Culture & Media Institute item by Katie Yoder complains that news reports were giving Gardasil credit for a dramatic drop on HPV infections among teenage girls while ignoring its supposed "dangerous side effects."
But as we documented when WorldNetDaily was attacking Gardasil, anti-HPV vaccines are considered safe -- no less than the Centers for Disease Control agrees -- and the serious side effects Yoder warns about are extremely rare.
Yoder cites the Washington Times to claim that "the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program recently lost almost $6 million in response to 49 victims’ complaints claims against HPV vaccines. Between 2010 and 2011, there were 26 deaths reported in correlation with Gardasil in addition to seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short term memory loss and Guillain-Barré Syndrome – all this according to the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System."
First, as even the most basic researcher knows, correlation does not equal causation, so the "26 deaths reported in correlation with Gardasil" Yoder cites does not mean they were caused by Gardasil.
Second, it was not an Washington Times article Yoder was quoting but, rather, an article by Dr. Peter Lind at a separate site, Washington Times Communities, where "individual contributors are responsible for their content, which is not edited by The Washington Times." Lind -- the kind of anti-vaccine activist the MRC otherwise criticizes -- is citing the right-wing Judicial Watch, which is opposed to Gardasil apparently because it opposes everything remotely linked to the Obama administration.
If Yoder is going to attack Gardasil's supposed severe side effects, she should also tell the truth about the agenda behind its critics.
