David Henry Gorski is an American surgical oncologist, professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine,[1] and a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, specializing in breast cancer surgery.[2] He is an outspoken skeptic, and a critic of alternative medicine and the anti-vaccination movement. He is the author of a blog, Respectful Insolence, and the managing editor of the website Science-Based Medicine. (Wiki)
A sad, premature death cynically exploited by antivaccinationists by David Gorski
Excerpt:
It's a story out of New Zealand about an 18-year-old woman named Jasmine Renata, who tragically died nearly three years ago of unclear causes, although what happened sounds consistent with the sort of idiopathic heart conditions that sometimes (and, fortunately, very uncommonly) cut short the lives of young people in their teens and early 20s. Now, Jasmine Renata might never have been known outside of her grieving family and friends, except for one thing. Her mother is convinced she knows the reason why Jasmine died. In brief, she has an explanation for her daughter's death that is simple, emotionally resonant, and almost certainly wrong, and that explanation is that Gardasil was the cause of her daughter's untimely death:
The mother of a teenager found dead in her bed has told an inquest that her daughter's physical and mental health deteriorated sharply when she was given the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccination.Jasmine Renata, 18, died in September 2009 in a sleepout at her home in Upper Hutt, north of Wellington.She had received the last of three injections of Gardasil six months earlier.
Once again, whenever I encounter a story like this, I am saddened, first of all because the life of someone so young ended so unexpectedly. It's quite understandable that a parent, faced with such a tragic loss and consumed with shock and grief, would look for an explanation and grasp at any seemingly plausible explanation she can find. In this case, Rhonda Renata has latched on to Gardasil, even though the timing doesn't even argue particularly persuasively for causation by Gardasil. In other words, while humans frequently confuse correlation with causation, in this case there doesn't even appear, on the surface at least, much evidence of correlation. Six months after the last booster shot of Gardasil is a long time. Now, nearly three years after her death, there is a coroner's inquest into Jasmine's death, and two familiar figures have entered the picture. More on that later.
By way of background, various reports suggest that Jasmine had suffered symptoms that could indicate that she had a cardiac anomaly. Sudden death among young people is rare, but when it happens, it's often due to cardiac causes, most commonly hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, coronary artery abnormalities, or the long QT syndrome (LQTS), the latter of which can cause a rapid, chaotic heartbeat and sometimes ventricular fibrillation and cardiac arrest. Since her daughter's death, Ms. Renata has steadfastly refused to have herself, her husband, or any of her family tested for gene mutations associated with sudden cardiac or tested for idiopathic heart disease because she knows of no history of heart disease in her family if you don't count the death of her daughter. While on the surface this sounds like a reasonable argument, it is not a good reason to conclude that Jasmine couldn't possibly have had an idiopathic heart condition. For example, some of the gene mutations that are associated with sudden cardiac death increase the risk of such an outcome; they don't guarantee it, and carriers might not be symptomatic or might be so mildly symptomatic that they are never worked up for a cardiac condition. More likely, Ms. Renata doesn't want to look for evidence that might disconfirm her now fixed belief that Gardasil killed her daughter, or, as she wrote two years ago:
Even though we have not yet received a final autopsy report and the pathologist has only recently begun doing tests based on my belief that the vaccine sent Jasmine's health on a downhill spiral to death. During the autopsy the pathologist did not find any health problem that could have contributed to Jasmine's death and I know in my every being that the vaccine was the cause.
In the same piece, Rhonda Renata describes a history of vague symptoms suffered by Jasmine:
During a routine visit, Jasmine's doctor persuaded her to get the Gardisil vaccine because it would help keep her safe from developing cervical cancer in the future. Jasmine received her first Gardisil vaccine in September 2008. Jasmine was always concerned about her appearance and she was quite distressed that shortly after the vaccine she noticed dry skin and warts appearing on her hands. She complained that she thought she was losing more hair than usual and that her pimples were getting worse. On the 20th of October Jasmine visited the doctor to treat her warts and dry skin. Jasmine had 4 or 5 warts frozen off. The doctor also said that her immunity was compromised so he prescribed a multivitamin as well as Locoid cream for the dry skin. The Locoid cream didn't help the dry skin.
What this means is unclear. For one thing, there appears to be no record, at least none mentioned in the press accounts that I've been able to find, of these complaints. Indeed, several press reports state that the nurse testified that she asked Jasmine whether she had had any problems after her Gardasil doses and whether she was feeling well. Jasmine reported no side effects. What we do know is that Ms. Renata somehow hooked up with an antivaccinationist named Hilary Butler, who blogs for the antivaccine crank organization the International Medical Council on Vaccination and blogs on her own at Beyond Conformity. Indeed, she has written several posts about Jasmine Renata, including Did Gardasil Kill Jasmine? It's full of conspiracy mongering, insinuations that some sort of coverup was occurring. It includes a link to the autopsy report, which showed no structural abnormalities in the heart or evidence of an inflammatory process. The report does note, however, that heart tissue had been taken and submitted to the Inherited Diseases Group in Auckland so that the "decendent's genetic structure and family can be investigated in case there is a molecular abnormality of the cardiac electrical conduction system that might result in sudden unexpected death." It was also noted that "this process usually takes many months and requires the cooperation of family members."
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