According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the vaccine was tested in thousands of females (ages 9 to 26). The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the vaccine has only minor side effects, such as soreness around the injection area. The FDA and the CDC consider the vaccine to be safe. It does not contain mercury, thiomersal or live virus or dead virus, only virus-like particles, which cannot reproduce in the human body. There have been reports that the shot is more painful than other common vaccines, and the manufacturer Merck partly attributes this to the virus-like particles within the vaccine. General side effects of the shot may include joint and muscle pain, fatigue, physical weakness and general malaise.
The most recent update on adverse events was published by JAMA and looked at data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), covering 12,424 reported adverse events after about 23 million doses of vaccine between June 2006 and December 2008. Although more than 20 women who received the Gardasil vaccine have died, officials maintain that there is no evidence that deaths or serious outcomes were connected to the shot. Likewise, although a small number of cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) have been reported following vaccination with Gardasil., there is no evidence linking GBS to the vaccine. Critics suggest that Gardasil should be used primarily in populations at high risk for cervical cancer.
Further Reading
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