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What You Didn’t Know About a Doctor’s Stance on the HPV Vaccine

It appears to be a neutral source in a prestigious medical journal: an article defending the controversial human papillomavirus (HPV) cervical cancer vaccine. It criticizes the Japanese government’s decision to stop promoting the vaccine amid concerns about injuries. And it implies patients are incorrectly blaming the HPV vaccine for unrelated ills.

“Individuals who have the misfortune to be unwell with rare or difficult to treat disorders have been encouraged by antivaccination advocates to blame the HPV vaccine, especially in an unrestrained media environment,” writes lead author Dr. Sharon J.B. Hanley.

But a key disclosure is omitted from the article: Hanley’s financial ties to Merck and GlaxoSmithKline—makers of the multi-billion dollar HPV vaccines promoted in the article.

Critics say it’s an example of hidden cronyism among physicians and corporations who use medical journals, regarded as pillars in the medical community, to influence physicians and public policy.

Debate Over Disclosure

In the HPV vaccine article, Hanley reported receiving fees for lectures from “Japan Vaccine” and “the Japanese Expert Board for the Eradication of Cervical Cancer.”

What’s omitted is the disclosure that “Japan Vaccine” is a venture of GlaxoSmithKline; and “the Japanese Expert Board” has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Merck and GlaxoSmithKline. GlaxoSmithKline makes Cervarix vaccine. Merck makes Gardasil.

“It’s important to acknowledge and recognize conflicts of interest could influence what someone who’s viewed as an expert in the field says and how it’s interpreted,” says Dr. Michael Carome, an internationally recognized expert on research ethics and head of the Health Research Group at watchdog Public Citizen.

Contacted by email, Hanley insisted she followed The Lancet’s conflict of interest disclosure policy. She added that HPV vaccine safety data has been analyzed by respected international bodies and “Commercial entities cannot influence this.”

“I would disagree with that,” says Carome. “With any commercial product, drugs or vaccine, an author’s financial conflicts of interest could influence how they are describing or recommending a particular treatment or intervention.”

Reached for comment, The Lancet indicated that, upon further review, Hanley’s disclosure did not comply with their conflict of interest disclosure policy.

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” Lancet senior editor Audrey Ceschia wrote to me in an email. “We will publish a correction stating that the [Japanese Expert] Board received funding from [GlaxoSmithKline and Merck].” Hanely would not confirm to us that Japan Vaccine is a GlaxoSmithKline venture, but Ceschia later acknowledged that it is.

‘A Very Bad Idea’

Critics say too often corporate influence encroaches on respected scientific journals—unbeknownst to the physicians and patients who read them.

Three former senior editors of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) recently blasted what they view as some medical journals, including their former employer, allowing and defending drug industry influence.

Their essay in the British Medical Journal is titled, “Justifying conflicts of interest in medical journals: a very bad idea.”

“In a series of rambling articles, one of the [NEJM’s] national correspondents, Lisa Rosenbaum, supported by the editor in chief, Jeffrey Drazen, tried to rationalise financial conflicts of interest in the medical profession,” write former NEJM heavyweights Robert Steinbrook, Jerome Kassirer and Marcia Angell.

“[W]e find it sad that the medical journal that first called attention to the problem of financial conflicts of interest among physicians would now backtrack so dramatically and indulge in personal attacks on those who disagree. … Put simply, financial conflicts of interest in medicine are not beneficial, despite strained attempts to justify them and to make a virtue of self interest.”

Carome says disclosure is crucial:

“It’s important to be transparent about conflicts of interest so readers can make their own judgement about whether real or apparent conflicts of interest are being reflected in what authors are saying.”

Hanley declined to provide a list of pharmaceutical industry compensation she has received.

Japan began offering free HPV vaccine in December of 2010. In June of 2013, amid concerns about adverse event reports, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare instructed local governments and doctors to cease promoting the HPV vaccine.


Note: This article was reprinted with the author’s permission. It was originally published by The Daily Signal. Sharyl Attkisson is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Her website is at www.sharylattkisson.com.

6 Responses

  1. Thank you Sheryl Attkisson. Your investigative reporting is awesome – thanks also for your exposure of the RbGH thing.

  2. Trying one final (third) time to comment on your GREAT articles – after filling everything in, my comment(s) vanish into the wormhole……..Just know I support your important work………blessings……..cheers!

  3. Thank you for your inquisitive and probing articles. We need more reporters like yourself, searching for the truth and justice not money fame and popularity. You are a unique and amazing person for committing to being the underdog simply for the sake of what is right. You are truly performing a grand service to the public whether everyone realizes it or not. My son was severely allergic to some of the vaccine ingredients and long story short, he ended up with vaccine induced encephalitis of the brain causing brain damage, severe autism and seizures. He IS vaccine injured and as far as vaccines causing other adverse events or reactions, there are many more and I believe there is an extreme downplay on the prevalence of the other known reactions and induced condition. For example flu vaccines causing GBS and being 1 in a million, it can’t be 1 in a million. In one season alone a decade ago someone I know ended up in the hospital after a flu vaccine and received a diagnoses of GBS but there were 4 others there at the same time for the same thing my friend is the only one who almost fully recovered, one died, one is stuck in bed and the other 2 need assistance walking or wheeled. The thing is we only have 50,000 people in my city and there were 5 adults all in one season in this city at one time. That would be 1 per 10,000 per year and that is if they didn’t have any others that year. The only reason I know about these cases is because I know one of them who was there at the time. It isn’t like they announce these things, like they do when someone, heaven forbid, gets the measles or the chickenpox. (note the sarcasm) a couple years later I found out about 2 new cases of GBS because they were my mothers co-workers, they all work for the government and are told they need to get they flu shots. Again we are a city of a mere 50,000 people. We also have at least 1-2 autistic children per class in grades 3 and under at my sons school and classes consist of 20-25 children per class. Pretty scary! Good luck to you and I pray more follow your brave lead in your attempts to protect the people.

  4. Thank you for digging into this. After the umpteenth provax article from vox.com showing up in my Google news feed I started digging. Turns out the company is owned by Comcast. Looked at the Board of Directors for Comcast. Low and behold…Madeline Bell is on the BOD AND is the CEO of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, home to vaccine industry mouthpiece Dr Paul Offit who also claims his financial interest in vaccines presents no conflict of interest!!

    Madeline S. Bell has served as a director since February 2016. Ms. Bell is the President and CEO of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), a top-ranked children’s hospital in the United States. Prior to being promoted to CEO in July of 2015, Ms. Bell served as CHOP’s Chief Operating Officer for eight years. Ms. Bell began her career as a nurse in pediatrics and moved from a variety of different nursing roles into hospital administration in 1989.

    These incestuous tentacles of hard core vaccine pushers is far and wide. They take money from pharma then write so called scientific articles. They sit on Boards of the some of the biggest media news corporations in America that control the narrative pushed to Americans about vaccines. Without fair and balanced science and reporting Americans will never be fully informed about the risks of vaccines. Just two of so many examples of how this plays out.

  5. Thank you Sharyl for yet another probing article. Be it known that my daughter Christina died from the HPV vaccine Gardasil ten years ago. We have successfully litigated in the “vaccine court” and the DHH has conceded that she died from Gardasil. Yet when I said that at a symposium for doctors on the HPV vaccine, the medical presenter dismissed it as “anecdotal” and I was called an antivaxxer. That symposium for doctors was being sponsored by the Maryland Department of Health with funding from Sanofi/Merck. Any probing questions about the vaccine were shut down and the information given to doctors was biased. For example, they were given literature that said “More than 80 million doses of the HPV vaccine have been given in the US with no serious problems.” I guess they don’t consider an HPV vaccine induced death to be a serious problem.

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