John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being obliged to step outside but I needed to raise an issue on the Order of Business relating to the charging of public patients. Perhaps Dr. Kelleher can explain a point to me. Other than cases in which the benefit of the doubt has been given, how many confirmed cases of serious life-changing damage from vaccines have really been proven in Ireland? I mean causally proven and not simply temporally associated cases of damage from any vaccine in Ireland. Second, what vaccine is considered to be the most risky in this regard?

I wish to make two brief points. A highly inaccurate statement was made again about the level of coverage of the HPV vaccine. The currently used vaccine is Gardasil, which prevents four subtypes of HPV, including two subtypes which are incriminated in the great majority of viral cervical cancers and virtually all cases of genital warts. The alternative product only covers the two cervical cancer-causing subtypes. That product did not win the bidding competition in Ireland at the time. All of the many other subtypes of HPV have in most cases not been clearly shown to be associated with any health risk. It is a virus that passes through and passes out. The subtypes that cause cancer or warts or result in greater morbidity are those that are well covered by the vaccine.

To put some perspective on this matter, everyone should realise what happened when the really spurious paranoia-driven scare about the MMR vaccine occurred in England and vaccination rates dropped below the level that would give herd immunity. There was a colossal increase in all of the diseases that are protected against by the MMR vaccine, which resulted in many cases of brain damage and many deaths. I ask Dr. Kelleher to answer that question for me.