French teenager Marie-Oceane Bourguignon (centre) reacts during a press conference with her parents Jean-Jacques Bourguignon (left) and Yveline in Bordeaux yesterday.
PARIS: One of France’s top medical experts appealed for calm yesterday as a scare over a widely administered vaccine that prevents cervical cancer gathered momentum.
Daniel Floret, the chair of the national committee that oversees vaccinations, said there was no evidence to link Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV), with serious auto-immune conditions such as multiple sclerosis.
Floret was responding to a criminal complaint filed by Marie-Oceane Bourguignon, 18, against Gardasil’s French distributor, Sanofi Pasteur MSD.
The case was being given prominent play by France’s media yesterday and Bourguignon herself gave a press conference in Bordeaux to describe how she believes taking the vaccine left her in a wheelchair, scarcely able to see or hear.
But Floret cautioned against reading too much into a single case.
“The fact that a complaint has been made does not mean there is a problem. We are putting all the focus on the potential side effects and forgetting what this vaccine brings,” said Floret.
“None of the international medical safety controls has showed up any link between this vaccine and any kind of auto-immune disease, and millions of doses have been administered.”
Licensed for use in 120 countries, Gardasil has been given to 2.3 million French adolescents. It is one of two blockbuster HPV vaccines used around the world on the basis of research showing a link between HPV and cervical, oral and anal cancer.
Bourguignon was vaccinated with Gardasil at the end of 2010 when she was 15. Within two months she had developed symptoms that included vertigo, vomiting, temporary loss of sight and the use of her legs, and facial paralysis.
AFP
