FLICKR, PARTHA S. SAHANALast month (November 11), a Japanese team of researchers published a study in Scientific Reports describing the negative outcomes suffered by mice given the vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV). But researchers and doctors have criticized the study and are now calling for its retraction, Science reported.
The paper describes how vaccinated animals exhibited “neurological phenotypes,” including limited mobility, and suffered damage to the hypothalamus and other brain regions—effects the authors suggest may shed light on recent reports of the vaccine’s adverse effects in humans, similar to the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome. But “the mice received doses that were proportionally a thousand times greater than that given to people, along with a toxin that makes the blood-brain barrier leaky,” Science notes. “Basically, this is an utterly useless paper, a waste of precious animals,” David Gorski, a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, Michigan, wrote on his Orac blog.
The HPV vaccine, originally licensed in 2006, is now approved in more than 120 countries, and early surveillance ...
