Ssssh! HPV vaccine not perfect. A few criticisms might be OK

By Jerome Burne

It seems widely agreed that to beat coronavirus, transparency and openness are essential because hiding problems doesn’t work. The same, I imagine, should be true for establishing vaccine safety.

Recently I went to a conference called ‘Spotlight on falling Vaccination Rates at the Royal Society of Medicine to see how doubts about vaccines were being handled.

It quickly became clear that this was a morale-boosting event for frontline medical troops, setting out the steps being taken to push vaccine rates up following an increase in ‘vaccine hesitancy’. 

‘There had been a drop of confidence,’ said Dr Heidi Larson Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine, ‘but it wasn’t that large’. 

UK wins gold star for delivering HPV vaccine 

The good news, she said, was that the UK had one of the lowest levels of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ and was a ‘global star when it came to the uptake of the HPV vaccine. Generally, people had ‘confidence in their hospitals and trusted scientists.’ 

All good so long as the evidence for the safety of the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer was solid. As it happened, a few days earlier, I had been sent controversial material claiming that serious safety issues were being ignored.  

 It was similar to material published by patients and doctors challenging the official treatment in other areas that I’ve written about, such as ME/CFS, statins, ketogenic or low carbohydrate diets for diabetes and treatment for certain forms of low thyroid. 

 Key concerns about HPV vaccine safety

  • Research showing that cases of invasive cervical cancer went up in nearly all wealthy countries after the introduction of the HPV vaccine
  • The European country with the lowest uptake of that vaccine is France where the rates of cancer have continued to fall.
  • Concern about the HPV vaccine is not limited to a small number of determined and opportunistic protesters but has the support of well-informed academics.
  • The NHS leaflet about The HPV vaccine says the main side-effect is pain at the injection site. The WHO database lists side effects involving Nervous System Disorders as three times more common; they include seizures, sleep disorders and paralysis.
  • A WHO conference last year discussed the failings of the vaccine regulatory system. Among the issues raised were that trials do not test for long term side-effects, that even front-line health professionals were concerned about the safety and the damage done by adjuvants.

Parents accused of fabricating a child’s illness

These are covered in more detail below. The evidence seemed plausible and came from sources that should be reliable. They seem to deserve a more considered response than the recommendation by one speaker at the RSM who suggested that since vaccination worries were irrational and purely emotional, just deal with their emotions.

That wouldn’t now work for Steve Hinks whose story I’d also been sent. He’d had to retire from his senior management job in Environment, Health and Safety with a big firm to help his wife with the care of their daughter Lucy who had suffered a very severe and damaging reaction to the HPV vaccine in 2011.  

They had both been “hesitant” about the vaccine because she had responded so badly to an earlier MMR jab, but they were persuaded HPV was quite different and safe.

After suffering constant headaches and debilitating fatigue for several months Lucy lapsed into a coma that lasted 13 weeks. Later she developed anorexia, was put on antidepressants and admitted to an eating disorder clinic. 

The NHS not only denied any possible vaccine link – not uncommon – but also attempted to blame the parents, diagnosing them with a condition called Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII). Not upheld.  

After 4 years she was still sleeping 12 to 16 hours a day, couldn’t walk unaided and didn’t want to eat. She had a horrendous year in an eating disorder clinic but was eventually diagnosed with a narcolepsy-like sleeping disorder and given medication which has helped. She is now wrestling with the damage the last 9 years has done to her confidence and well-being. 

NHS seriously underestimates side-effect risk

Hinks rational response to all this was to begin a painstaking examination of what was known about the HPV vaccine from official sources. ‘I focused on vaccine manufacturers’ own literature, parliamentary questions (supported by a countess in the House of Lords) and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, particularly to the MHRA (the UK drugs watchdog) and to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System), the American national vaccine safety surveillance program.’ 

The picture that emerged from these authoritative databases is far more stark and specific than that painted by the NHS leaflet: ’Frequently asked questions about the HPV vaccine.’ This says: ‘The side effects are quite mild. Soreness, swelling and redness in the arm are common but wear off in a couple of days. More serious side effects are extremely rare’.

However, the report that the MHRA provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, said that: ‘Since 2008 the HPV vaccine has had significantly more serious adverse events than any other vaccine in national programme.’ 

Brain disorders most common side-effect of HPV vaccine

And those ADRS (Adverse Drug Reactions) certainly weren’t limited to the injection site, according to the WHO Global Database of ADRs for the HPV vaccine. This puts the total of reported side effects at 407,000, of which just 33,000 involve the injection site but they weren’t the most common. 

Instead, it was Nervous System Disorders with 87.000, a category that included things like seizures, sleep disorders, paralysis and amnesia. Which sounds like what happened to Lucy.

Cancer cases rise after vaccine introduced

These stats show at the very least that parents get misleading information. Transparency, especially if it prompted more safety research, might prompt more trust. 

There is a balance to be struck between the risks of a treatment and its efficacy. The package also contained evidence that efficacy had been oversold. The vaccine has been linked to a rise in cervical cancer.

Within a few years of the vaccine being introduced in 2007, the number of cases, which had been dropping, started to rise. This is described in a presentation by two French oncologists Dr G Delepine, and his wife Dr N Delepine at a conference in Warsaw in June 2019.

They start by questioning whether it is really necessary. Cervical cancer makes up less than 1% of all cancers in the US, France, Australia and Canada. Before its introduction, regular “Pap” tests, which detect potentially cancerous changes that can be treated, had been steadily lowering the death rate between 1989 and 2007. In the UK the drop had been from 14 cases per 100,000 to less than 10.

Fewer vaccines cut cancer rate in France

The Delepines then showed charts tracking what was found 6 to 7 year after the vaccine introduction – a rise in invasive cancer in several Western countries. The women most affected were those in their late twenties, the group in which the most had been vaccinated – over 80%. 

Just coincidence? Correlation is not causation but there is evidence to indicate a link. In France, where the vaccine was far less aggressively promoted, the coverage was only around 30%. But instead of plateauing and then rising, the number of cases continued to fall, dropping from 3/100,000 when the vaccine was introduced, to almost zero. 

So, what might be linking the high level of side-effects and a rise in invasive cancers? One candidate is the ‘adjuvant’ used in the HPV vaccine, which is a form of aluminium. It is added to many vaccinations to trigger a strong reaction by the immune system. 

Aluminium was first used in vaccines 90 years ago and has commonly been assumed to be safe without being properly tested for toxicity. Aluminium is present in the soil and in plants and we all have some in our bodies. It is in breast milk. But there is a debate about how much could be harmful. 

Single HPV vaccine delivers massive aluminium dose 

Chris Exley is a Professor in Bioinorganic Chemistry at Keele University in the UK and an expert in the effect of aluminium in the body and brain. His papers contain details of the levels his research has found in the brain and links between high levels of aluminium and diseases.  

As a result, he has become concerned about the amount that babies get from the vaccination schedule. This had led to him being described, among other things, as a ‘vaccine pseudoscientist’ on social media. 

Exley has calculated that the amount of aluminium a baby can get from a single vaccination is the equivalent 155 days of breastfeeding. Sometimes babies get three vaccinations at once, the equivalent to 260 days of breastfeeding. Details of Exley’s work on children and aluminium and aluminium adjuvants are here.

This is an ongoing project and because of official hostility to his work – funding is hard to come by – there is more to be done to provide definite proof of risk. 

One way to gather more data would be to run trials comparing vaccinated with unvaccinated children. This has, apparently, never been done. Why not regard the children of vaccine deniers as a valuable resource, rather than threatening to ban them from school, and compare them with a similar group of vaccinated kids? 

HPV vaccine allows aluminium into the brain

What is clear is that vaccines containing aluminium adjuvants activate the peripheral immune system, which can allow aluminium access to the brain. Among the functions, it has been found to effect are calcium signalling, making new neurotransmitters, changing gene expression, and reducing the production of the body’s energy molecule ATP.

The American vaccine schedule exposes small children to a level of aluminium that is nearly 16 times higher than the recommended safe level, according to recent research. Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology March 2020; 58: 126444 

The way drug companies have tested vaccines has done nothing to help resolve the safety issue around adjuvants. This emerged from a study of HPV vaccine trials by the highly respected medical researcher Peter C. Gotzsche, a Danish physician and former leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen.  

Drug companies cheat with active placebo 

He co-wrote a scathing review of Cochrane’s 2018 review of studies on HPV vaccine, concluding that the harms of the HPV vaccine had been greatly under-reported and that the review had missed nearly half of the eligible trials. 

The Cochrane’s governing board responded by accusing him of encouraging anti-vaxxers and risking “the lives of millions of women worldwide’ and expelled him. It’s a complicated story told here.

A crucial finding of Gotzsche’s critique was that the controlled trials, which supposedly demonstrated the safety of the vaccine, didn’t do anything of the sort. Rather than comparing the effect of the vaccine on one group with the effect of an inert placebo on another, the placebo contained an active adjuvant very similar to the one found in the vaccine.  

The result was that the rate of side effects was bound to be much the same in the two groups, allowing the company to claim that the vaccine was no more risky than a placebo. 

A paper by UK academics published this January in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine analysed the 12 RCT trials of the HPV vaccine and found they failed to show that it could prevent cervical cancer because they weren’t designed to do that. They did show it prevented precancerous lesions, known as CIN1, but this wasn’t useful because the lesions often didn’t develop into cancer. 

And there was another serious flaw in the trials. A basic principle of evidence-based medicine is that independent investigators should be able to see all the data collected in trials.

Full data on HPV vaccine kept secret

This is not possible for HPV vaccines according to Dr Tom Jefferson, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford. In a follow-up article, he writes: ‘Noone outside the vaccine manufacturers has seen it, not the drug regulators and certainly not independent scientists. So, if you were to ask me what I think of HPV vaccines, I would say ‘I don’t know’ because I haven’t seen the full data set’. 

This uncertainty around the data for HPV vaccine safety is something that the WHO is aware of, according to a video recording, released in January, of nine WHO experts talked about the difficulties of gathering safety data

‘Because of the way adjuvants work,’ commented Professor Stephen Evans of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine ‘it is not surprising that they multiply the incidence of adverse reactions.’ This means ‘we need much more investment in safety science’ says the director of the Pharma-funded Vaccine Confidence Project. 

However, according to the director of the Brighton Collaboration, that aims to build trust in the safety of vaccines. ‘We are really in the beginning of the era of (the) large data sets,’ needed to gather specific data on vaccine effects.

Jerome Burne

Jerome Burne

Jerome Burne is the editor of HealthInsightUK. He is an award-winning journalist who has been specialising in medicine and health for the last 10 years and now works mainly for the Daily Mail. His most recent book “The Hybrid Diet” was written with nutritionist Patrick Holford, published 2018. Award: 2015: Finalist for 'Blogger of the Year' Medical Journalists' Association.

6 Comments

  • The boundaries between science and PR and marketing no longer exist.

  • Gerome
    Thank you for your always good articles!
    kind regards

  • Thank you for this invaluable information. Just wish this info was widely available to all parents, not just the ones who want to investigate fully before making their decision re vaccination. So many take the word of the NHS / big pharma as gospel. Such a shame.

  • Worrying that the “placebo” contained aluminium so not a real placebo.

    Worrying that the full results are not available from Big Pharma. Reminds me of statins.

    Worrying that there seems to be no major push to analyse long term results to confirm the trial results.

    I do really like the idea of the cohort who decline vaccinations being included in a long term study to confirm the effectiveness (or not) of the vaccine.

  • URL : http://Website
    Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/5.133.46.102
    Comment:
    There is a very good book written by USA lawyer Mary Holland: ‘The HPV Vaccine on Trial: Seeking Justice For a Generation Betrayed’. Chapter 2 tells the true story of two Danish women that were involved in the clinical trials by Merck. They provide documented evidence that indicated that the vaccine had no side effects. The Merck brochure stated that half the subjects would receive the vaccine and half would receive saline (but this was not true, they received the vaccine recipients excluding the antigen but including the aluminium adjuvant, etc.). Merck ignored reported and repeated side-effects of being tired, overcome by unusual feeling all over their body, dizzy and weird sensation in arms for weeks after shot. The second shot was even more painful and with same reactions. Tired and weak, flu-like symptoms, muscle pains, strange headaches, trouble sleeping. Felt exhausted. At third shot told nurse about the headaches which lasted all day, 4 or 5 times per week. Nurse said not to worry, this is normal! Felt dizzy and nauseated during following weeks. then took a sharp turn for the worse – incessant pain and fatigue. Both women eventually met up and shared that they were suffering with exactly the same side-effects. Merck claimed that the adverse reactions were a coincidence and didn’t record them!

  • There is a very good book written by USA lawyer Mary Holland: ‘The HPV Vaccine on Trial: Seeking Justice For a Generation Betrayed’. Chapter 2 tells the true story of two Danish women that were involved in the clinical trials by Merck. They provide documented evidence that indicated that the vaccine had no side effects. The Merck brochure stated that half the subjects would receive the vaccine and half would receive saline (but this was not true, they received the vaccine recipients excluding the antigen but including the aluminium adjuvant, etc.). Merck ignored reported and repeated side-effects of being tired, overcome by unusual feeling all over their body, dizzy and weird sensation in arms for weeks after shot. The second shot was even more painful and with same reactions. Tired and weak, flu-like symptoms, muscle pains, strange headaches, trouble sleeping. Felt exhausted. At third shot told nurse about the headaches which lasted all day, 4 or 5 times per week. Nurse said not to worry, this is normal! Felt dizzy and nauseated during following weeks. then took a sharp turn for the worse – incessant pain and fatigue. Both women eventually met up and shared that they were suffering with exactly the same side-effects. Merck claimed that the adverse reactions were a coincidence and didn’t record them!

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