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| Vaccine Industry Riddled With Corruption | ||
| VUE Weekly January 29, 2009 Well, Well, Well: Vaccine debate not over Connie Howard  January is cervical cancer awareness month in the US now, but didn’t we just finish an entire year of cervical cancer awareness? We’ve been subjected to full-page newspaper announcements about Gardasil winning the Prix Galien Canada 2008 Innovative Product Award, for “making the most significant overall contribution to patient care in Canada.” We’ve heard endless messages of “proven safety,” and of “no evidence of a causal relationship between the vaccine and the adverse events being reported.” (Tell that to those who were well one day, and not the day after their shot, and still not many months later, and tell them it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice the well-being of some for the benefit of the majority.) Not that the benefit to the majority is all that clear. Because despite the major public relations campaign, many—parents, doctors, microbiologists and immunologists alike—remain unconvinced that Gardasil is a good idea. And many feel strongly that over-immunization of our children in general is playing a major role in autoimmune disease. Resistance to vaccination programs is generally met with accusations of irresponsibility, and with assumptions that motive is rooted in an outdated moral code or hatred of women. The response to those who report the facts about harm done and potential danger is typically a version of, “What is it with you people that you deny young women the right to live free of cervical cancer?” But reporting the facts isn’t irresponsible. And the fact is that though industry has deemed the vaccine safe and conducted an extensive public relations campaign, not everyone is convinced. The facts are that the research was done by those who stand to gain magnificently, that it has been subjected to little independent scientific review, that drug companies are known for spinning or withholding unfavourable information, that some very serious adverse events are occurring, and that the true risk of cervical cancer has been inflated. The less pretty and underreported aspects of the issue are vital to good public health policy, and it is the silencing of dialogue—the insistence that the debate is over when it isn’t—that is in fact irresponsible. And despite appearances of concern for women’s health, medicine is industry. Merck has no new cholesterol drugs due to be launched anytime soon, their shares are down more than 50 per cent over the past year, and they need growth. They’ve put a new executive at the helm of the Gardasil ship, and from a memo distributed to Merck executives (reported in Forbes), we know that the reason behind the change has everything to do with sales and growth. To add yet another current to the maelstrom, the Nobel Prize Committee—which awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2008 to German scientist Harald zur Hauser for his work linking HPV to cervical cancer—may be facing an investigation of bribery for allegedly taking payments from the drug company that own the patents and collects royalties on both HPV vaccines. AstraZeneca has of course denied the charges, even though they did give a large sum of money to Nobel-affiliated corporations to spread the word about the “HPV medical breakthrough”, and even though they did have a company rep on the board that votes on candidates for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Economics and potential corruption aside, there are still the basics. From an FDA document we know that “identifying and typing HPV infection does not bear a direct relationship to stratification of the risk for cervical cancer. Most acute infections caused by HPV are self-limiting. It is the persistent HPV infection that may act as a tumor promoter in cancer induction ... most infections are short-lived and not associated with cervical cancer.” Other major risk factors such as smoking—which depresses immune function and has been shown to double our risk—will continue to receive scant attention, and Merck will continue to use fear to push their product. They’ve been denied approval for its use in women over 26, but they’re working on approval for use in boys. |
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