Gardasil was launched in the United States, Germany, and Denmark in 2006 and in Australia in 2007.

The pain in her back became unbearable, and then her back went numb. Paula and her father went straight to the emergency room and after some chiropractic exercises, she was told she’d be fine in a few hours and was sent home. At 3:00 p.m. her mother called her father and said, “Come home immediately. Paula doesn’t feel anything from her body anymore.”

“There was this pain. I think it was the worst pain I’ve ever had. And then this numbness—you just don’t realize it. You can’t walk, but you don’t think about it: What will the future be like? What will it be like now? Even when they said I had to stay in the hospital, I thought why?” said Paula.

Paula’s mother recalls, “When Paula was lying in her bed, the senior physician came and asked if she had had an infection recently. And we could deny that. She had neither a stomach bug nor a flu-like infection. Paula was always very healthy.”

“The next question was whether she had been vaccinated. And there it clicked—yes, she has been vaccinated. Everywhere we went to doctors, the second or third question was, ‘Did you have a vaccination recently?’” her mother said.

The damage has been officially recognized by authorities as caused by the HPV vaccine. Paula receives a monthly payment from welfare. Her inability to walk is likely caused by the severe attack of immune cells on the myelin layer of the spinal cord, which is an autoimmune response.

Paula is not a single case—she may even be the tip of the iceberg. There are numerous cases of disabilities, including an inability to walk or to see, following Gardasil injection.

A brain scan using magnetic resonance imaging revealed inflammation and swelling in the part of the brain where the optic nerves cross. It also affected the optic nerves behind the eyes. There was a mass in the right back part of the brain, which was later found to be a specific type of brain inflammation. This inflammation caused a large area around it to fill with fluid. To learn more about the brain mass, a small piece was removed and observed under a microscope, which showed that it had lost its protective myelin sheath covering.

The girl was diagnosed with demyelinated disease of the optic nerve junction and some parts of the brain. Her optic nerve injury was not minor but rather significant, which explains the rapid onset of vision loss from one eye to another within 48 hours.

The case was reported by five neurological experts from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. They concluded in the paper that her dramatic nervous system symptoms with consistent brain imaging abnormalities, including edema and bleeding, altogether suggest a severe and rapidly progressing form of brain disease, termed “acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.”

The main feature of this disease is the loss of the protective covering around the brain nerve cells due to an immune attack.

The lead author, Dr. Sutton, an Australian neurologist wrote, “Although the target population for vaccination, young females, has an inherently high risk for MS, the temporal association with demyelinating events in these cases may be explained by the potent immuno-stimulatory properties of HPV virus-like particles which comprise the vaccine.”

Demyelinating neuronal diseases are conditions where the protective covering around nerve fibers is damaged and causes problems with nerve signals, leading to symptoms like weakness, numbness, and coordination difficulties.

We rely on our nerves to do everything from walking to seeing, and even changing our gestures. For example, when we stand up from a lying position, our autonomic nervous system is stimulated to produce changes in blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, and blood flow to the brain. When these changes are abnormal, they may indicate an autonomic nervous system problem.

Dr. Mehlsen has worked both clinically and in research with patients with suspected side effects associated with the HPV vaccination. Their symptoms are common to those seen in chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis).

For a tilt test, a patient lies on a table that is slowly tilted upward, while blood pressure and heart rate are measured to analyze autonomic nervous system responses to the force of gravity with changes in position.

All 53 patients had symptoms consistent with pronounced autonomic nervous system dysfunction, with varying degrees of orthostatic intolerance, excessive fatigue, severe headache, cognitive impairment, gastrointestinal discomfort, and extensive neuropathic pain. Dr. Mehlsen’s findings suggested an urgent need for additional research to clarify the pathophysiology of symptoms.

“And I got better. And then after the third shot I just never got better.

“My parents took me to a lot of doctors all around the area of Copenhagen, and they did a lot of scans of my back and bloodwork and lung function tests and looked at my heart. Everybody told me that I wasn’t sick—that there was nothing wrong with me, and I should just go home—which was hard because I couldn’t just go home and be a normal kid.

He explained the tilt test: “If you stand up, normally we will get a sharp increase in heart rate, and then we’ll come down to about 10 beats higher than when you lie down. But in this case, it stays up there.”

“You can see the difference between this blood pressure and then what the normal blood pressure should be like, and this is nothing you can have in your head. This is not something you can think: ‘Now I want my blood pressure to oscillate.’ That’s an objective measure of a disease,” Dr. Mehlsen said.

Dr. Mehlsen suspects that Marika’s immune system has attacked her own nerves—an autoimmune reaction possibly triggered by the vaccine.

“After so many people are telling me that it’s something I’m imagining and I’m not sick, someone is finally telling me that that it is a disease—it is real—and I’ve been sick all these years. But now hopefully that’s a way out in the future,” said Marika.

POTS involves a rapid heartbeat upon standing and is a nervous system dysfunction, sometimes similar to syncope.

According to her mother, “She was just a normal 12-year-old girl being very happy about her life—had lots of energy. She always told me ‘Mama, I love my life.’ But now she’s extremely tired. No energy and not eager to do something. And she has been lying in bed for three years now. So it’s very sad. Very sad to see your healthy daughter being almost an invalid.”

“I have always been a cheerful person, I was active in sports. I had my circle of friends and was with them. And the vaccination came and I was out of order. I couldn’t do anything anymore and I was just lying in bed at home. In general, my brain is not able to absorb all the impressions that are happening around me. The faster I move or something moves around me, the dizzier I get,” said Sara.

“I have atypical migraines, which means that there are more than 15 days of pain per month. When I have a migraine, I have migraine headaches for at least three days in a row. I have tried different types of relaxation techniques and yoga was my favorite. I think if I didn’t do that, I would surely have migraines more often.”

Sarah’s disease was officially acknowledged and she now receives a small monthly payment.

DiMario, FJ, Hajjar, M., & Ciesielski, T. (2010). A 16-Year-Old Girl With Bilateral Visual Loss and Left Hemiparesis Following an Immunization Against Human Papilloma Virus. Journal of Child Neurology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0883073809349322.

Slade BA, Leidel L, Vellozzi C, et al. Postlicensure Safety Surveillance for Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus Recombinant Vaccine. JAMA. 2009;302(7):750–757. doi:10.1001/jama.2009.1201

B. Wildemann, S. Jarius, M. Hartmann, J. U. Regula, C. Hametner. ACUTE DISSEMINATED ENCEPHALOMYELITIS FOLLOWING VACCINATION AGAINST HUMAN PAPILLOMA VIRUS. Neurology Jun 2009, 72 (24) 2132-2133; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181aa53bb