California just passed a health bill that aims to increase vaccination rates in schools and colleges against a sexually transmitted virus.
Lawmakers believe vaccination against HPV, or the human papillomavirus, will help reduce the risk of rare cancers five to 20 years down the line. But many parents are calling the bill deceptive. Testimonies during the hearing have questioned both the efficacy and safety of the HPV vaccines
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/hpv-vaccine-is-it-even-worth-it_5215185.html
“If 100,000 People are vaccinated with the HPV vaccine, at best, eight cases of cervical cancer might be prevented, but at the same time 2,300 people—2.3 percent—will experience serious adverse events,” Joshua Coleman, a father of a vaccine-injured child, testified during the bill’s hearing in front of California’s Committee on Health on April 18, 2023.
Coleman presented an insert from Merck’s Gardasil 9 vaccine, which is the only HPV vaccine available in the United States. The insert lists the risks associated with the vaccine and notes that 2.3 percent of the participants in its clinical studies experienced a serious adverse event (SAE). The FDA defines an SAE as an event that causes death, threatens life, results in hospitalization, or intensive treatment, or disrupts the ability to live a normal life.
In contrast, Dr. Jeffery Klausner, professor of medicine and infections disease at University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, stressed during the hearing that Gardasil 9 “has proven to be very safe, and highly effective.”
“Further studies have shown that HPV cancer vaccination clearly prevented cancer and 88% reduction at the population level in Sweden,” said Klausner.
The Epoch Times has reviewed some of these studies and we have found that several authors have been receiving HPV vaccine research grants from Merck, the manufacturer of the Gardasil 9 vaccine.
Assembly Bill 659, or the Cancer Prevention Act, started out as a mandate that would require all Californian girls and boys to get vaccinated against HPV before entering grade eight. The backlash against this version of the bill from parents was strong. In particular, parents with children who were injured by Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine or other childhood vaccines took to social media and other venues to raise awareness on the risks surrounding vaccination.
After hearing a round of feedback, Assembly Member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who is the author of the bill, changed the mandate part to only affect college students. The new version would require students aged 26 or younger, who were enrolling in a higher-education institution for the first time to be fully vaccinated against HPV.
But that was changed again after more pushback from parents. The version of AB 659 that eventually turned into law is not a mandate. But it declares that it is now “the public policy of the state” to expect students to be fully vaccinated against HPV before entering grade 8, as well as the college students that fall in the category mentioned above.
“This bill will help notify and educate Californians at these vital ages when receiving the vaccine is most effective. It will foster a private conversation between doctors, their patients and parents,” said Aguiar-Curry.
Parents and students will now be receiving letters, presumably from the department of public health or their schools, informing them that their children are “expected” to be vaccinated.
The nuance here is that while HPV vaccination is “expected,” it is still not required. But parents who oppose this bill believe this language will trick families into thinking that they have no right to decline the HPV vaccine.
And overall, because the topic of vaccine safety is heavily censored on social media and in legacy news outlets, these parents fear that more children and their families will unknowingly be coerced into taking a product without properly understanding the risks.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Dan Skorbach:
In the past 16 years, one law firm estimates that the federal health department has paid $70 million in compensation to young people that were injured by this vaccine.