All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative correspondent for CBS News.

---

Yesterday I spoke to the families of young women who believe the Gardasil HPV vaccine may have – or did in fact – cause their child's serious illness. One of the cases involves a now 18-year old young woman named Amanda.

Amanda's parents say she developed a serious reaction to Gardasil after her first dose last summer. It began with soreness where she received the injection. The soreness eventually travelled down her arm, her legs, and led to a horrible autoimmune myofasciitis that is so painful Amanda had to go on morphine for the pain.

She was transformed, through the illness, from a high school varsity sport athlete to a chronically ill person who takes a handful of pills a day just to keep her illness tolerable. When she goes off the medicine, the excruciating pain and other debilitating symptoms return.

One thing that's different about Amanda's case than some of the others is that both of her parents medical doctors who didn't think twice about having their daughter get the shot – but are now second-guessing themselves. They call their daughter's illness after Gardasil "a very sobering experience."

Read full post…

The controversial HPV vaccine has been all over the news lately, and has even made its way to 29 state legislatures. My always-concerned mother called me a few days ago suggesting I run out to the doctor and get myself injected. My roommate brought home a brochure on Gardasil last week. And now representatives in states from Texas to Michigan are introducing bills which would require young girls get the vaccine as well. Even my home state of Wisconsin has kicked around a bill which would mandate the vaccine for all girls entering the 6th grade.

Preventing cervical cancer is something no one would argue is a bad idea. But giving a relatively new drug to hundreds of thousands of girls raises concern on multiple fronts -- from a lack of knowledge of the long-term side effects to the sticky business that is women's rights. But the biggest question on my mind lately is...where are the men in on this issue?

HPV is transmitted through sexual contact. It's not something a girl catches from herself. If the virus is transmitted, more than likely it comes from boy to girl or girl to boy. Maybe it's my Women's Studies Major or my fear of needles that makes me wonder "if you're going to make the girls do it, why not the boys?!" I know men do not get cervical cancer for the same reason women don't get testicular cancer--but if men are helping spread the virus which can cause cervical cancer in women, why not have them vaccinated too?

After an afternoon of digging for the answers to my questions, I was pleasantly surprised to find Merck, the company which manufactures Gardasil, is currently conducting a study on the effectiveness of the vaccine on men. The results should be out at the end of this year. And so I found my answer, and hopefully answered the question for my fellow needle-fearing women.

Some states are considering requiring teenage girls to receive the controversial HPV vaccine. Correspondent Cynthia Bowers is working on a piece about the issue for tonight's CBS Evening News -- and tells us the debate hits close to home.

---

I am one of the millions of Americans with a teenaged girl, and over the last few months I have seen lots of ads for the HPV vaccine Gardasil.

Even though I like to think of myself as savvy and forward-thinking, I hadn’t yet scheduled my daughter for the series of vaccinations. Maybe I have been slowed down by the thought that Human Papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer, is a sexually-transmitted disease, and I still like to think of Chrissa as a little girl. But the truth is, none of us knows for sure when our daughters will become sexually active and, even though cervical cancer is relatively rare in this country, if my daughter were to one day become one of the 10,000 American women affected each year, I would blame myself.

The other night I went to her bedroom. After joking with her that this was a "closed door" conversation, we talked about HPV. She said she was aware of it. She and her friends have talked about the ads. I got the feeling she was waiting on me to come to her and tell her that her dad and I have decided we want her to go ahead and get the shots.

“Shots” isn’t a word kids usually want to hear, but this time she just smiled and said, “Okay.”

Read full post…