Gardasil, a vaccine administered to young girls to protect them from cervical cancer, has been implicated in a court case. The Academy of Medicine takes stock of the controversy surrounding this vaccine.
In November, a criminal complaint was filed against the laboratory, Sanofi Pasteur, which markets Gardasil and the National Medicines Safety Agency, for “unintentional attack on the integrity of the human person” by a young woman of 18 years. . According to her, the vaccine against cervical cancer, already prescribed to more than 2.3 million young French girls, is responsible for serious side effects on the central nervous system.
Cervical cancer vaccines are monitored
“Trying to prove a relationship between a gesture as frequent as vaccination and a rare pathological fact, such as a demyelinating disease, is extremely difficult. In this regard, it is important to emphasize that we must not confuse causality and simple temporal coincidence ”recalls the Academy of Medicine.
“International scientific studies” recalls the Academy of Medicine “have never demonstrated a relationship between this vaccine and a neurological demyelinating disease or any other autoimmune disease (AID)” and in France, surveillance of the vaccine has shown that ” There is no difference in the incidence rates of the autoimmune diseases studied between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups (2.14 per 10,000 person-years in the vaccinated, 2.06 per 10,000 person-years in unvaccinated). “
This vaccine should not be discredited
The National Academy of Medicine recommends for the prevention of this disease not to discredit this vaccine on unjustified claims.
She recalls that “the advantages of vaccinations are measured in terms of benefits for the populations” and that “an objective and quality evaluation should only be done in terms of benefit-risk analysis” and concludes that “like all vaccines, papillomavirus vaccines are in this lineage. They have demonstrated their interest in the prevention of lesions predisposing to cervical cancer. “
