The controversy over the use of HPV vaccine in Colombia, centered on the “adverse vaccine reactions/mass hysteria” event in El Carmen de Bolívar, 2014

Abstract: During 2014, in the town of El Carmen de Bolivar (Colombia), over 600 females between 9 to 17 years old experienced “bizarre symptoms” which were attributed by their parents to adverse reactions after they had received the HPV vaccine as part of a national vaccination program against cervi...

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Autores:: Téllez Pedroza, Marlín

Tipo de recurso:: Doctoral thesis

Fecha de publicación:: 2018

Institución:: Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Repositorio:: Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Idioma:: spa

Description
Summary:	Abstract: During 2014, in the town of El Carmen de Bolivar (Colombia), over 600 females between 9 to 17 years old experienced “bizarre symptoms” which were attributed by their parents to adverse reactions after they had received the HPV vaccine as part of a national vaccination program against cervical cancer. Due to the large number of cases, the lack of specificity of symptoms and the lack of clinical evidence that allowed diagnoses of the presence of physical illness, a suspicion of a “mass hysteria” was raised. The National Health Institute of Colombia conducted research on the outbreak that concluded that it was a mass psychogenic response. Around these two main positions, a public debate arose along with severe social problems (including suicides), in a population of girls and adolescents. This research describes that controversy and intends to reveal the co-production of the HPV vaccine and the social order in that event, through the combination of the Social Studies of Science and Technology and Discourse Analysis. Results: A description of the controversy, in which the variability of the meaning of the event and the multiplicity of explanations offered by participants was illustrated. The analyst suspended a realistic approach to the event, focusing on discourse as a topic in its own right. Conclusion: The social order is characterized by an arrangement of different entities linked together, which include humans and nonhumans. The HPV vaccine is a pervasive non-human actor in the accounts of this event and the last survivor among all competing hypotheses.

The controversy over the use of HPV vaccine in Colombia, centered on the “adverse vaccine reactions/mass hysteria” event in El Carmen de Bolívar, 2014

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