DeLong had read a case study in the British Medical Journal by Australian physicians Deirdre Little and Harvey Ward, who described a 16-year-old girl whose regular menstruation ceased after receiving HPV vaccinations and she was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure.In 2014, the doctors published a case series of more teens who had entered premature menopause — a phenomenon Little and Ward described as ordinarily “so rare as to be also unknown.” They raised troubling questions about some vaccine ingredients’ documented impact on reproduction, cited serious deficiencies (some would say criminal negligence) in preliminary vaccine trials and concluded that further research was “urgently required….for the purposes of population health and public vaccine confidence.”As well, between 2006 and 2014, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) cited 48 cases of ovarian damage associated with autoimmune reactions in HPV vaccine recipients. Between 2006 and May, 2018, VAERS catalogued other reproductive issues: spontaneous abortion (256 cases), amenorrhea (172 cases), and irregular menstruation (172 cases), all of which are likely under-reported symptoms.All of this intrigued DeLong, who has followed the vaccine debate for years and makes no secret of the fact that she has two daughters, 18 and 21, both having been diagnosed on the autism spectrum, whom she saw regress developmentally and withdraw following vaccinations early in life. “I am sceptical of vaccine science and the safety studies that are done, or not done,” she says.