Reuters reported last week that Natalie Morton, the teenage girl who died shortly after receiving an HPV vaccination, was definitely not killed by the vaccine. Instead, Morton was the victim of a large, fast-growing and previously undetected tumor in her chest cavity.
These kinds of tumors are very rare, and we don't know much about Morton's case. However, the Daily Mail has a heart-wrenching (and medically fascinating) interview with the parents of another teen who suffered a similar fate...
Inside George's chest cavity was an aggressive and rapidly growing tumour the size of a small football. In the few hours after George had gone to bed, the tumour had grown around his windpipe, cutting off his oxygen and causing irreparable damage to his brain. The tumour, which had started in an organ called the thymus gland in the chest cavity, was also crushing his heart and lungs and constricting the vital arteries supplying his body with blood.
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Classic Daily Mail...
Tumours that can kill your children while they sleep!
Yeah, the fear-mongering sucks. But the actual story behind it was really interesting to me.
Something similar happened to a long-time friend of my parents'.
He hadn't gone to the doctor in years, but he kept getting chest pains. He put off going to the doctor, and when he finally did go, the doctors found a huge tumor in his chest and were going to rush him into surgery…but hours before they could cut him open, the tumor burst and he died from internal bleeding.
As a slightly macabre postscript, my parents ended up buying his car from the executor of his estate, and are holding it for me for when I get a job and can afford the insurance payments.
OMG!!!!! Zombies BWR I have a mutant DM Tumour.
Give me a break!
'twas the jabbie...
Thanks, I have the jibblies now.
I need unicorn and kitten picture now.
I hope you're joking HotPepperMan. Otherwise you're displaying a stunning lack of critical thinking skills.
Unicorn Chaser please.
I'd like to see a tumor grow faster than I think. But be warned, I think REALLY fast.
As a person with incredibly stupid anxiety that I am constatnly just on the verge of dying, this is not the kind of thing my brain needs to know about.
Ok - I'm not a doctor, but know a little bit about the thymus b/c I helped a family member deal with cancer and one of the alternative approaches to treating cancer (yes they did the regular routine as well) is to find ways to stimulate the thymus (which is part of how your body fight things like cancer) to start fighting the cancer. Vaccinations play havoc with the immune response. I'm just saying.
Besides, the vaccination in question here is done b/c they've determined that cervical cancer is (often) caused by a virus. What I don't know is if the virus is transmitted through unprotected sex. Wrap it up boys, and tell your friends to wrap it up. You could be saving someone's life.
In any case, I think we need to think beyond our 20th century medicine and be thinking more 21st. The resources and minds are there - just the money keeps being spent on various phony wars - from Iraq to drugs.
BUT!
BUT!!
Alex Jones said the HPV vaccine was concocted by the New World Order and those "British" banking elite to kill 80% of the world's population so they could....
I don't know! Profit, or something!
Why would he lie to us!?
ALEX JONES! WHY!?
Is it too tasteless to connect this to the series of D&D 3.5 spells in Libris Mortis? (and I know that the writers screwed up the Latin. Shut up.) There's a series of spells which create a small undead tumor in a foe and can then make it grow or take over their body or grow so fast it kills them. Quite nasty. Maybe these tumors aren't well understood because they are really being caused by evil necromancers?
So, anonymous, you're just piping in to say maybe it was the vaccination after all, because vaccinations are bad and have lots of undocumented, unproven side effects, like massive ultra-aggressive tumours, maybe. So we shouldn't vaccinate, we should just urge kids to use condoms, and let thousands of women die or be left infertile from a cancer which we do understand and can prevent?
That's what you're saying, right?
^ Excuse me, but didn't you see Anon's clause that they were "just saying"? I think you'll find that this phrase, when used properly, has the ability to absolve anyone from anything from a misunderstood compliment, right through to full on genocide. You should really try it sometime, it's miraculous. Just sayin'.
I'm a medical oncologist. Very, very rarely do we see or hear about cases like this. High grade lymphoma can present late in young people whose otherwise healthy bodies can carry a heavy burden of disease until a critical structure (major blood vessel, airway) is compromised. I have only seen one similar case myself, and it was scary enough for me, let alone the patient.
Conversely over the coming decades tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of women worldwide will be spared the horrific experience of cervical cancer because of the HPV vaccine. Get it. Please.
Ohhh, yeah right, gniobboing, I didn't notice that. My apologies for any misunderstanding caused.
Eees not a toomah
I dunno, I think pretty fast... I'd say under 1/10th a second for sure...
If tumors really are growing that fast, I guess I should be worried, though really, since the tumor would grow faster than I could worry, there's not much sense in that, is there?
no - I was saying if the cervical cancer is caused by a virus transmitted by sexual activity, that if men wore condoms, women wouldn't need the vaccinations.
And I was saying that vaccinations are a primitive form of medicine (even if vaccinations save lives) and that we should be upgrading our minds to come up with more sophisticated understanding of the immune response so that we could find ways other than vaccinations - which in some cases have proven and unproven side-effects.
Excellent! So you'll be dedicating the next couple of decades of your life to medical research?
@sabik: Glad you suggested anon dedicate the next couple of decades of their life, it's not as if they have a mind to dedicate.
"And I was saying that vaccinations are a primitive form of medicine (even if vaccinations save lives) and that we should be upgrading our minds to come up with more sophisticated understanding of the immune response so that we could find ways other than vaccinations -"
Gimme a break - vaccinations work better than most other forms of medicine and if you believe at all in prevention as opposed to treatment after the fact, they are the shining example of prevention. Any of you people under 40 have mumps, measles, or rubella? didn't think so. Polio anyone? These disease are largely forgotten, but they were killers of thousands.
The anti-vaccination crowd would be amusingly silly if they didn't threaten to cause new epidemics.
I wish we had vaccinations for every form of cancer and for atherosclerosis. How about AIDS - that would be nice.
to the 'why don't all these feckless idiots wear condoms?' brigade. condoms do not prevent the transmission of hpv. so the vaccine is a pretty good idea.
Oh Anonymous, you thing you, don't get all coy now!
You said "Ok - I'm not a doctor, but know a little bit about the thymus b/c I helped a family member deal with cancer and one of the alternative approaches to treating cancer (yes they did the regular routine as well) is to find ways to stimulate the thymus (which is part of how your body fight things like cancer) to start fighting the cancer. Vaccinations play havoc with the immune response.
Which on my reading suggests that the vaccination caused / aggravated the tumour being discussed. Or are you just throwing in completely unrelated anecdotes to add colour to your central message about safe sex?
@ Anonymous, who suggests that condom use may be effective against genital warts/HPV: because HPV is transmitted through skin-on-skin contact, wearing a condom is not enough to protect you or your partner. It can be transmitted orally (infected skin to mouth to another area), or from simple rubbing during foreplay. In addition: condoms don't cover the entire male genital area. HPV viruses are absurdly specialized, only surviving long-term in very specific areas: genital HPV, for example, is not the same HPV that will cause a wart on your finger.
More here: http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm#howget
Unfortunately, condom use does always not prevent the spread of HPV (the virus causing most cervical cancers). It can be spread by skin to skin contact with areas not covered by a condom.