By Dr. JULIAN WHITAKER, MD
Of all the dangerous nonsense perpetuated by Big Pharma and its savage attack dogs infederal and state government, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is surely the most fraudulent and wasteful.
I’ve spoken out against this debacle since
Gardasil, Merck’s HPV vaccine, was approved back in 2006. Now it’s in the
news again, ever since Michele Bachmann dusted up Texas governor Rick Perry
during a presidential candidate debate for issuing an executive order to
require vaccination of all 11- and 12-year-old girls in Texas. (This was
later revoked by the Texas state legislature.) Mike Toomey, Perry’s former
chief of staff, was a lobbyist
for Merck at that time. If that isn’t quid pro quo, I don’t know what is.
Nevertheless, all females as young as age 9 through age 26 are being urged to get this vaccine—with or without parental consent or knowledge in some states. They’re even recommending it for preadolescent boys and young men!
The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and the most repugnant odors are the clear lack of scientific validity, astronomical costs, and, most of all, the horrific harm inflicted on our children.
Lack of Scientific Validation
The purpose of Gardasil and Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline’s HPV vaccine),
according to the fuzzy logic of Big Pharma, is to prevent cervical cancer.
Regardless of what the drug companies, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), or your child’s physician says, not only is there no firm
scientific data to support that widespread contention, but the whole concept
is irrational.
The vaccine has been shown to prevent precancerous changes of the cervix, but to assume that these changes will progress to cancer is dishonest and manipulative. Ninety percent of HPV infections clear up spontaneously.
USPSTF Agrees
Recognizing this, in October the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)
issued new guidelines recommending that women be tested for cervical cancer
with Pap tests (not HPV tests) every three years rather than annually
because more frequent testing leads to overtreatment of low-grade changes
that would in all likelihood not turn out to be cancerous.
The Task Force further bolstered the stupidity of vaccinating young girls when they changed the screening guidelines to include only women ages 21 through 65, noting that cervical cancer is exceptionally rare in women under age 21.
In any case, cervical cancer is very slow growing, so we won’t know whether mass vaccination reduces death rates for 20–30 years! It’s all presumption, a huge lottery in which there may well be no winners—other than the drug companies.
Skewed Statistics
Even more damning are the infection statistics. The vaccine camp underscores
the need for mass inoculation by trotting out government statistics showing
that more than a quarter of American females ages 14–59 and nearly 45
percent of those ages 20–24 have been infected with HPV.
However, they fail to mention that there are 40 sexually transmitted HPV strains, and those targeted by Gardasil (types 6, 11, 16, and 18) and Cervarix (types 16 and 18) are rare. HPV types 6 and 11, which can cause genital warts, were detected in 1.3 and 0.1 percent of women, respectively, and types 16 and 18, which are linked with some cases of cervical cancer, were present in only 1.5 and 0.8 percent!
Bottom line: very, very few women who have HPV are infected with high-risk strains, and far fewer get cervical cancer. Every year in the United States, about 12,000 women are diagnosed with this cancer, and 4,000 die of it. Of course, any premature death is a tragedy, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that, according to the latest statistics from the National Cancer Institute, only 0.68 percent of women will ever be diagnosed with, let alone die of, cervical cancer.
Number Needed to Treat
To further underscore the absurdity of universal HPV vaccination, let’s look
at the concept of “number needed to treat,” or NNT, an extremely useful
statistic for evaluating any medical treatment. Simply stated, NNT tells us
how many people need to be treated with a given therapy to get the desired
benefit in one patient. The lower the NNT, the more effective and
predictable the treatment.
For example, peptic ulcers are primarily caused by Helicobacter pylori bacteria, and antibiotics that eradicate it are an extremely effective therapy. For every 11 patients with H. pylori who are treated with antibiotics, 10 are cured of their peptic ulcer. Therefore, the NNT is 1.1 (11 divided by 10).
Another example is statin drugs, which are prescribed to millions of people to lower cholesterol. According to a recent study, in order for statin drugs to prevent one heart attack, stroke, or cardiovascular death (the desired outcome of cholesterol-lowering), they would have to be taken by 1,000 patients, making statins’ NNT 1,000 (1,000 divided by 1). The other 999 people per 1,000 who take these drugs and are subjected to their adverse effects get no benefit at all.
Unacceptable, Sky-High NNT
So what is the NNT of the HPV vaccine in terms of preventing cervical cancer
deaths? Even if it completely wiped out cervical cancer—which no one expects
it to do—thousands would have to be vaccinated in order to prevent one
death. The others would obtain no benefits, yet would be needlessly exposed
to the inherent risks of this vaccine. Most statisticians agree that an NNT
over 40 is no more than a crap shoot. An NNT in the thousands is an
unmitigated fraud, and there’s no evidence that the vaccine will save even
one life!
We already have a system in place for preventing cervical cancer that works very well: regular Pap tests (every three years for women ages 21–65). Even the most vocal vaccine proponents admit the vaccine doesn’t eliminate the need for Pap testing—or that most cervical cancer deaths occur in women who haven’t been screened in the past five years. This system has reduced the incidence of cervical cancer from 15 in 100,000 women in 1975 to 6.6 per 100,000 in 2008. Why fix something that isn’t broken? The answer is obvious: Follow the money.
Astronomical Costs
In the United States, there are roughly 30 million females between the ages
of 9 and 26 who are “eligible” for HPV vaccination, which requires three
doses spread out over six months at a retail price of $130 each ($390
total). That’s nearly $12 billion right into the pockets of Big Pharma.
Now, let’s add in physicians’ fees and average the cost for the three-dose course at $500. (Some doctors will charge more, some less.) So $500 x 30 million patients = $15 billion. Imagine spending $15 billion on a vaccination program with no hard evidence that any lives will be saved!
Let’s take it a step further and assume this lavish blanket of presumed protection actually works and cervical cancer is eliminated. (Nevermind that a miniscule percentage of HPV-infected women ever develop cervical cancer, that 30 percent of women with cervical cancer have not been infected with HPV, and that we won’t even know if the darned thing works for decades.) Guess how much it would cost per life saved in this best-case scenario? $7.5 million!
If we took that $15 billion and put it towards food subsidies and other proven health interventions, we could save tens of millions of lives. But, incredibly, the powers that be prefer to waste it on a fraudulent vaccination program that funnels the money into the coffers of Big Pharma!
Now They’re Going After Boys
As if 30 million girls and young women weren’t enough, Merck tried to get
Gardasil approved for women up to age 45, but even the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) recognized this absurdity for what it was. However, Big
Pharma also has males in their sights, arguing that they too must be
vaccinated to prevent the spread of HPV to their sexual partners.
If vaccinating females makes no sense, going after males is a crime against humanity. HPV is almost always an inconsequential infection in males, so the NNT for them is infinity! No male gets any benefit at all. Unfortunately, they are not immune to the adverse effects of the vaccine. In fact, they are likely at greater risk of damage—at least that’s what we’ve learned from the standard childhood vaccinations, which negatively affect two to three times more boys than girls.
As for costs, don’t get me started. We would spend another $15 billion vaccinating all males in the target age range—with zero benefits to them and absolutely no assurance or evidence that this “experiment” would ultimately reduce the rate of cervical cancer in women. There’s only one given: Any amount of money spent on such an ill-advised campaign would be 100 percent waste to the public, yet hugely profitable for Big Pharma.
Horrific Damage to “Gardasil Girls”
I predict that the entire HPV vaccine folly will not only be a colossal
failure in terms of health benefits, but it will also leave an expanding
wake of “Gardasil girls” suffering with seizures, strokes, chronic
headaches, and worse. One of these girls is Zeda Pingel, whose mother Amy
Pingel chronicles her daughter’s destruction in the excellent, must-read
book Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive
Government
Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children.
In 2008, 13-year-old Zeda was a happy, healthy straight-A student and cheerleader with a bright future when, during a routine well-child checkup, her pediatrician suggested she have the Gardasil vaccine. Although neither Amy nor Zeda knew much about it, they went along with the doctor’s recommendation. The problems started a week later, and within three weeks, Amy reports, “I began to lose my precious daughter. Zeda stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped walking, and…lost control of her bladder.”
Doctors in Denial
Despite spending months in a top-notch children’s hospital specializing in
neurological problems and undergoing hundreds of tests, Zeda’s doctors
couldn’t find a single explanation for her rapid deterioration. Given that
it started after Zeda was vaccinated, Amy thought it could be related to
Gardasil, yet every time she brought it up, the medical team aggressively
denied that it could have been involved.
Their denial borders on the diabolical. For weeks, the doctors and nurses accused Zeda of faking her symptoms, even though she was having frequent grand mal seizures. Even worse, they suspected her mother was coaching her to keep up the pretense and went so far as to install 24-hour surveillance cameras in hopes of “proving” that the mother and daughter were involved in a hoax.
Today, Zeda is fed through a gastric tube, breathes through a tracheotomy, and lives in a vegetative state in the living room of her mother’s home. Her tragedy is not an isolated incident. Tens of thousands of adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine have been documented—including over 100 deaths.
Bypassing Parental Consent
One of the most disgusting aspects of this entire charade is the lengths to
which they’re going in order to force this vaccination program down our
throats. Several state governments have enacted laws that require schools to
hand out information on the vaccine to sixth graders and their parents and
insurance companies to provide reimbursement.
For example, the state of New Jersey delivered HPV vaccine propaganda to parents via their children’s backpacks. And, here in California, Governor Jerry Brown recently signed legislation that enables children as young as 12 to be vaccinated against HPV and hepatitis B without a parent’sknowledge or consent.
Imagine, parents have to sign waivers for their children to go on a school picnic, but 12-year-olds, without parental knowledge or consent, can have toxic substances injected into their growing bodies. This combination of Big Pharma plus government is, in a single word, evil. There is no other way to describe it.
Parents, It’s Up to You
Unfortunately, you can’t count on your doctor to help you make educated
decisions on the HPV vaccine. Virtually all pediatricians follow the
dictates of the American Academy of Pediatrics, CDC, and other handmaidens
of Big Pharma and vigorously support every vaccination program that comes
down the pike. Their refusal to rock the boat by acknowledging the growing
body of evidence about the dark side of vaccines is safe for the doctor but
terribly dangerous for your child. (Just imagine what it would be like if
you were Zeda’s mother, Amy Pingel.)
Parents, it’s up to you to protect your children. Keep the lines of communication open and make sure your kids understand the extreme risks and no proven benefits of the HPV vaccine. As Amy Pingel says, “…people who pressure you to vaccinate don’t own the consequences. Only you, as parents, do.”
In Summary
Folks, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. In addition to blowing
the cervical cancer angle way out of proportion, vaccine proponents are now
fabricating additional “benefits” in order to sell their wares. When a
recent small study demonstrated a potential, preliminary link between HPV
infection and risk of heart attack and stroke, headlines across the country
screamed that the vaccine protects against cardiovascular disease! Now,
that’s a stretch if there ever was one.
It may take many years and, unfortunately, countless injuries and untold numbers of deaths, but we’re not as naïve or stupid as Big Pharma takes us to be. Mark my words. The public will eventually wake up and see the HPV vaccine for what it is—a dangerous, money-grabbing, scientifically invalid fraud.
References
Dunne EF, et al. Prevalence of HPV infection among females in the
United States. JAMA. 2007 Feb 28;297(8):813–819.
Gostin LO. Mandatory HPV vaccination and political debate. JAMA.
2011 Oct 19;306(15):1699–1700. Epub 2011 Oct 6.
Habakus LK, and Holland M. Vaccine Epidemic. Skyhorse Publishing.
New York, NY. 2011.
Kuo HK, Fujise K. Human papillomavirus and cardiovascular
disease among U.S. women in the National Health and Nutrition
Examination Survey, 2003 to 2006. Am Coll Cardiol. 2011 Nov 1;58
(19):2001–2006.
National Cancer Institute. Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines.
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/prevention/
HPV-vaccine.