Gardasil and 1 out of 912

This has already been well debunked over at Internet Myths, Lies and Misinformation.  I am going to add my own two cents, but I want to give credit to one of the first things I read on this.  I used to write and link more about Gardasil when Bachmann was running for President.

9/15/11 HPV Vaccine does not cause retardation

9/17/11 12 year old girls might mistake a HPV vaccine for a HIV vaccine
10/19/11 Flashback to Gardasil

11/15/11 Bachmann: "Ravages of this Vaccine"

1/13/12 Many Teen Girls Mistakenly Think HPV Vaccines Cut Risk for All STDs 

Today, I came across this meme from Cancer Truth.  

The source cited is a blog written by Dave Hodges, September 17, 2013. Hodges wrote.

Merck and the CDC have determined that 1 out of every 912 who received Gardasil in a large study, (see page 8) died. Yet, the cervical cancer death rate is only 1 out of every 40,000 women per year. In other words, girls are better off not taking the shot because the Gardasil shot kills the girls in greater numbers than does the disease it purports to treat.

The study linked is a great study.  They analyzed seven clinical trials which used placebos as a control.

• 29,323 received injections.     
• 15,706 received Gardasil
• 13,023 received a placebo

With both the Gardasil and the placebo only 0.1% died: 21 in the Gardasil group and 19 in the placebo group. (In case you were wondering 1 out of 912 is 0.1%.)  Honestly if Gardasil was increasing mortality rates, you would expect to see more people dying with vaccines than injecting someone with a placebo.  However that is not what the data shows.  The meme could just as easily read:

Still you might say that 0.1% is still pretty bad right? Who cares about the 99.9% if you are the 0.1% right?  Well, lets look at the causes (plural) of death. 

The events reported were consistent with events expected in healthy adolescent and adult populations. The most common cause of death was motor vehicle accident (5 individuals who received GARDASIL and 4 individuals who received AAHS control), followed by drug overdose/suicide (2 individuals who received GARDASIL and 6 individuals who received AAHS control), gunshot wound (1 individual who received GARDASIL and 3 individuals who received AAHS control)

That's right the most common causes of death break down like this:

Hodges is such a honest guy *cough* that he is including 5 traffic accidents, 2 suicides, and for good measure, a gunshot, in his statistic, because in his own words "the Gardasil shot kills the girls"...with traffic accidents and causing girls to get shot.  He is literally arguing that "the Gardasil shot" gets you shot.  Again going back to the placebo, our control group, one could just as easily say that the "[placebo] shot kills the girls".  By injecting people with essentially nothing, they managed to get three times as many suicides and three times as many gunshot victims.  If Gardasil was really killing people, we would expect to see greater rates of death among Gardasil than placebo.

So what about these 13 and 6 deaths that are left? Well, both Gardasil and Placebo had a death attributed to pulmonary embolus/deep vein thrombosis. So that brings us to 12 and 5 deaths.

In addition, there were 2 cases of sepsis, 1 case of pancreatic cancer, 1 case of arrhythmia, 1 case of pulmonary tuberculosis, 1 case of hyperthyroidism, 1 case of post-operative pulmonary embolism and acute renal failure, 1 case of traumatic brain injury/cardiac arrest, 1 case of systemic lupus erythematosus, 1 case of cerebrovascular accident, 1 case of breast cancer, and 1 case of nasopharyngeal cancer in the group that received GARDASIL; 1 case of asphyxia, 1 case of acute lymphocytic leukemia, 1 case of chemical poisoning, and 1 case of myocardial ischemia in the AAHS control group; and 1 case of medulloblastoma in the saline placebo group.

Dying after taking a vaccine or a placebo does not demonstrate cause and effect.  In order for cause and effect to be demonstrated cause of death must occur more often in the vaccinated community than in the non-vaccinated community.  One or two cases is not enough to demonstrate that.  Remember what the paper blamed?

The events reported were consistent with events expected in healthy adolescent and adult populations.

Now it would be one thing if Hodges was arguing honestly. However:

• He excludes the placebo group which had the same mortality rate
• He includes traffic accidents, suicides, and gunshots in his statistic
• He rewords the paper to argue Gardasil kills when the paper actually attributes the causes to "events expected in healthy adolescent and adult populations."

Remember, this is Hodges' source.  He even gave the page number.  At best his "1 out of every 912" is actually 1 out of 1208 without any real evidence to imply cause and effect.  In case you were wondering, the death rate in the US is actually 807.3 out of 100,000 or about 1 out of every 125 (yes, I know there are reasons not to reduce it that much).  In the mean time cervical cancer killed 4,092 in 2011.

For further reading I found these on NPR.

HPV Vaccine Doesn't Raise Risk Of Blood Clots, Study Finds

Parents And Teens Aren't Up To Speed On HPV Risks, Doctors Say

Cervical Cancer Vaccine Also Helps Prevent Genital Warts

Girls Vaccinated For HPV Not More Likely To Be Sexually Active