Gardasil and Cervarix?

Doctor who reportedly diagnosed 'conversion disorder' received substantial payments from pharma companies.

Two pharmaceutical companies that make HPV vaccine have hired Dr. Laszlo Mechtler in the past as a speaker, paying him more than $150,000 in fees in 2009 through 2011, according to a ProPublica database.

Mechtler is the neurologist who reportedly diagnosed 11 teenage girls in Le Roy who have been displaying tics and verbal outbursts with "conversion disorder."

State public health officials relied, at least in part, on Mechtler's diagnosis to rule out vaccines for the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus as a cause.

The HPV vaccines are known as Gardasil and Cervarix, manufactured by Merck & Co. and GlaxoSmithKline.

While tics and verbal outbursts are not listed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as a possible side effect of either drug, the drugs have been known to cause serious health issues. According to WebMD, the vaccines have been tied to rare cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, neurological disoder that causes weakness.

Several observers of the Le Roy situation have suggested HPV vaccine as a possible cause, but at a public meeting in Le Roy Jan. 11, Dr. Gregory Young said HPV had been ruled out as a cause.

In a search of Google for "tics gardasil cervarix," pretty much all the results tie the outbreak in Le Roy to the drugs, but actual evidence of the drugs being tied to such an outcome is hard to find.

Mechtler was later interviewed by NBC and identified himself as the doctor who examined 11 of the girls and diagnosed them with conversion disorder, even going so far in another interview to blame 9/11 terror alerts for causing stress in the girls.

According to Propublica -- a nonprofit investigative journalism organization -- Mechtler received the following payments from Glaxo and Merck:

$62,400 in speaking fees in 2009 from Merck
$75,200 in speaking fees in 2010 from Glaxo
$19,819 for research from Glaxo in 2010
Another $10,000 from Glaxo in 2011

(It was very interesting reading the posts from the obvious "pharma trolls, those that benefit from doing a very poor job here of debunking the information and facts in the article down in the comment section.)