Bordeaux: On September 18, 2013, Judge Patrick Mairé handed down a decision stating Gardasil was 50% responsible for the permanent injury of a French teenager who had received two injections of the HPV vaccine. The other 50% was attributed to a genetic pre-disposition for autoimmune disorders. Judge Mairé presides over lawsuits filed with a regional branch of the CRCI in France, which is the equivalent of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) court in the United States.

Marie –Océane’s parents, Jean-Jacques and Yveline Bourguignon, have granted permission for their daughter’s story to be published hoping they can help make people aware of the potential risks involved with HPV vaccinations. They do not want anyone else to go through what they have experienced without knowing of the possibility in advance.

In 2010, Marie-Océane Bourguignon, age 15, received two injections of Gardasil® the first on October 11th and the second on December 13th. Two weeks after the first injection, she experienced sensory and motor problems in the upper limbs, lasting approximately two weeks before spontaneously and gradually regressing.

Three months after the second injection, on the 13th of March 2011, Mlle. Bourguignon was hospitalized at Centre Hospitalier de Dax for deterioration in her general health, cerebral-vestibular disturbances and sensory-motor impairment (ataxia, vertigo). On March 15, 2011, an MRI of her brain revealed lesions in the white matter.

The initial diagnosis was that she was suffering from either multiple sclerosis or acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM). After multiple subsequent hospitalizations, it was determined that Marie  had developed multiple sclerosis, a chronic, typically progressive disease involving damage to the sheaths of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, whose symptoms may include numbness, impairment of speech and of muscular coordination, blurred vision, and severe fatigue. Marie-Océane will live with this condition for the rest of her life.

Read the full article at SaneVax.org.