THE teenage girl who died shortly after being immunised against cervical cancer was killed by a malignant chest tumour and not by a reaction to the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, an inquest has heard. Natalie Morton, 14, fell ill on Monday after being vaccinated at her school under a national immunisation programme against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV). She died a few hours later after being admitted to hospital."The pathologist has confirmed today at the opening of the inquest into the death of Natalie Morton that she died from a large malignant tumour of unknown origin in the heart and lungs," said Dr Caron Grainger, joint director of public health for the Coventry area where Natalie died. "There is no indication that the HPV vaccine, which she had received shortly before her death, was a contributing factor to the death, which could have arisen at any point," Dr Grainger said.
Dr John Ray of the Food & Health Skeptic blog comments:
Temporal conjunction is not causation. Danger in a therapeutic product should be judged by the number who do NOT suffer ill effects. Drugs such as Vioxx that were taken safely by hundreds of thousands get taken off the market because of apparent adverse effects of the drug in a handful of cases. But it is just superstitious and implausible guesswork to assume that the rare ill-effects were due to the drug. The case [above] is instructive because the initial accusations against the vaccine could clearly be shown to be wrong.
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