Lead Developer Of HPV Vaccines Comes Clean, Warns Parents & Young Girls It’s All A Gi

[Cebu_4_2]

Lead Developer Of HPV Vaccines Comes Clean, Warns Parents & Young Girls It’s All A Giant Deadly Scam By Matt Agorist (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/author/savy4/) on March 3, 2014
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http://www.thedailysheeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/VACCINE-KILL-599x275-300x137.jpg Secretsofthefed.com (http://www.secretsofthefed.com/)
March 3, 2014
Dr. Diane Harper was a leading expert responsible for the Phase II and Phase III safety and effectiveness studies which secured the approval of the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccines, Gardasil™ and Cervarix™. Dr. Harper also authored many of the published, scholarly papers about the vaccines. She is now the latest in a long string of experts who are pressing the red alert button on the devastating consequences and irrelevancy of these vaccines. Dr. Harper made her surprising confession at the 4th International Converence on Vaccination which took place in Reston, Virginia. Her speech, which was originally intended to promote the benefits of the vaccines, took a 180-degree turn when she chose instead to clean her conscience about the deadly vaccines so she “could sleep at night”. The following is an excerpt from a story by Sarah Cain (http://southweb.org/lifewise/the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-sleep-at-night-gardasil-and-cervarix-dont-work-are-dangerous-and-werent-tested/):
“Dr. Harper explained in her presentation that the cervical cancer risk in the U.S. is already extremely low, and that vaccinations are unlikely to have any effect upon the rate of cervical cancer in the United States. In fact, 70% of all HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment in a year, and the number rises to well over 90% in two years. Harper also mentioned the safety angle. All trials of the vaccines were done on children aged 15 and above, despite them currently being marketed for 9-year-olds. So far, 15,037 girls have reported adverse side effects from Gardasil™ alone to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and this number only reflects parents who underwent the hurdles required for reporting adverse reactions. At the time of writing, 44 girls are officially known to have died from these vaccines. The reported side effects include Guillian Barré Syndrome (paralysis lasting for years, or permanently — sometimes eventually causing suffocation), lupus, seizures, blood clots, and brain inflammation. Parents are usually not made aware of these risks. Dr. Harper, the vaccine developer, claimed that she was speaking out, so that she might finally be able to sleep at night. ’About eight in every ten women who have been sexually active will have HPV at some stage of their life,’ Harper says. ’Normally there are no symptoms, and in 98 per cent of cases it clears itself. But in those cases where it doesn’t, and isn’t treated, it can lead to pre-cancerous cells which may develop into cervical cancer.’”
Although these two vaccines are marketed as protection against cervical cancer, this claim is purely hypothetical. Studies have proven “there is no demonstrated relationship between the condition being vaccinated for and the rare cancers that the vaccine might prevent, but it is marketed to do that nonetheless. In fact, there is no actual evidence that the vaccine can prevent any cancer. From the manufacturers own admissions, the vaccine only works on 4 strains out of 40 for a specific venereal disease that dies on its own in a relatively short period, so the chance of it actually helping an individual is about about the same as the chance of her being struck by a meteorite.”

UPDATE #1: Since coming forward with the truth about the devastating consequences of the HPV vaccine, Dr. Harper has been victim of a relentless campaign attempting to discredit the validity of her claims. Harper was even misquoted by British tabloid The Sunday Express which printed a false story loaded with fabricated quotations attributed to Harper. In an interview with The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2009/oct/10/sundayexpress-express-newspapers), Harper makes it very clear about what exactly she said in order to protect herself from a potential lawsuit. In an interview with CBS NEWS (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gardasil-researcher-speaks-out/), Harper clarifies her position, and once again makes it crystal clear just how devastating this vaccine can be: “If we vaccinate 11 year olds and the protection doesn’t last … we’ve put them at harm from side effects, small but real, for no benefit,” says Dr. Harper. “The benefit to public health is nothing, there is no reduction in cervical cancers, they are just postponed, unless the protection lasts for at least 15 years, and over 70% of all sexually active females of all ages are vaccinated.” She also says that enough serious side effects have been reported after Gardasil use that the vaccine could prove riskier than the cervical cancer it purports to prevent. Cervical cancer is usually entirely curable when detected early through normal Pap screenings.
“The risks of serious adverse events including death reported after Gardasil use in (the JAMA article by CDC’s Dr. Barbara Slade) were 3.4/100,000 doses distributed,” Harper tells CBS NEWS. ”The rate of serious adverse events on par with the death rate of cervical cancer. Gardasil has been associated with at least as many serious adverse events as there are deaths from cervical cancer developing each year. Indeed, the risks of vaccination are underreported in Slade’s article, as they are based on a denominator of doses distributed from Merck’s warehouse. Up to a third of those doses may be in refrigerators waiting to be dispensed as the autumn onslaught of vaccine messages is sent home to parents the first day of school. Should the denominator in Dr. Slade’s work be adjusted to account for this, and then divided by three for the number of women who would receive all three doses, the incidence rate of serious adverse events increases up to five fold. How does a parent value that information,” said Harper.
“Parents and women must know that deaths occurred,” Harper tells CBS NEWS. “Not all deaths that have been reported were represented in Dr. Slade’s work, one-third of the death reports were unavailable to the CDC, leaving the parents of the deceased teenagers in despair that the CDC is ignoring the very rare but real occurrences that need not have happened if parents were given information stating that there are real, but small risks of death surrounding the administration of Gardasil.” She also worries that Merck’s aggressive marketing of the vaccine may have given women a false sense of security. “The future expectations women hold because they have received free doses of Gardasil purchased by philanthropic foundations, by public health agencies or covered by insurance is the true threat to cervical cancer in the future. Should women stop Pap screening after vaccination, the cervical cancer rate will actually increase per year. Should women believe this is preventive for all cancers — something never stated, but often inferred by many in the population — a reduction in all health care will compound our current health crisis. Should Gardasil not be effective for more than 15 years, the most costly public health experiment in cancer control will have failed miserably.” Harper notes that her concern for the vaccine’s deadly side effects applies only to women in the Western world. ”Of course, in developing countries where there is no safety Pap screening for women repeatedly over their lifetimes, the risks of serious adverse events may be acceptable as the incidence rate of cervical cancer is five to 12 times higher than in the US, dwarfing the risk of death reported after Gardasil.”
UPDATE #2: The National Vaccine Information Center HAS CONFIRMED (http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/July-2012/merck-lawsuit-reignites-vaccine-safety-concerns.aspx) two virologists, Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski have filed a lawsuit against their former employer and vaccine manufacturer Merck. NVIC writes: “The lawsuit alleges that Merck defrauded the U.S. for over 10 years by overstating the MMR vaccine’s effectivenes. The virologists claim in their lawsuit that they ‘Witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falseification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine’s efficacy findings.” NVIC president and co-founder, Barbara Loe Fisher, warns of the disturbingly cozy relationship and overwhelming conflict of interest between federal agencies charged with vaccine safety oversight (such as the Centers for Disease Control) and vaccine manufacturers. Merck’s global vaccine sales total more than $20 BILLION A YEAR.
As the world’s pharmaceutical giants continue to be driven less by moral accountability and more by profit and shareholder-driven bottom lines, we are going to see more and more products such as this vaccine which are marketed as “essential to one’s survival.” While some vaccines are indeed essential, such as vaccines for polio and measles, the HPV vaccine is a new beast entirely. To learn more about how pharmaceutical giants are putting profits ahead of ethics you need to watch FRONTLINE’s terrifying new documentary “Hunting The Nightmare Bacteria.” (http://www.feelguide.com/2013/10/24/frontline-doc-hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria-will-scare-you-shitless/)
image: http://www.secretsofthefed.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/VAERS2.jpg
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Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/lead-developer-hpv-vaccines-clean-warns-parents-young-girls-its-giant-deadly-scam/#uHbw428jx8r0qmAF.99

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Ignore This Dumb Facebook Hoax--the HPV Vaccine is NOT Deadly (http://jezebel.com/ignore-this-dumb-facebook-hoax-the-hpv-vaccine-is-not-1463990764) 3 (http://jezebel.com/ignore-this-dumb-facebook-hoax-the-hpv-vaccine-is-not-1463990764#) http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--Xv4llwyx--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_center,h_120,q_80,w_120/myyecqodamjsjh1u6f2p.jpgLindy WestProfile (http://lindywest.kinja.com)Follow (http://jezebel.com/ignore-this-dumb-facebook-hoax-the-hpv-vaccine-is-not-1463990764#)

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11/13/13 8:30pm (http://jezebel.com/ignore-this-dumb-facebook-hoax-the-hpv-vaccine-is-not-1463990764)




I'm not sure what drags fear-mongering garbage memes like this 2009-vintage "Developer of Gardasil Admits that Vaccine Is Basically Just Bubonic Plague" hoax back from the dead every couple of years, but there it is, going around and around on my Facebook feed again today. Because this apparently needs to be said: THIS STORY IS DISINGENUOUS DOODOO. DO NOT BELIEVE IT AND DO NOT REPOST IT.
As always, when your cousin you don't know that well posts a link to a website you've never heard of with an outra-a-a-a-a-ageous headline you can't quite believe (http://www.naturalnews.com/041644_gardasil_vaccination_scam_hpv_vaccine.html) (especially when that headline is hinting at something wingnutty like anti-vaccination hysteria), get thee to Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/gardasil.asp#DbJcMrj6JAgIf8Ih.99) immediately. The claim that Gardasil has been responsible for the deaths of 32 women, and that a researcher has finally come clean about some sort of nefarious coverup, is entirely fabricated.
Here's your official debunkification (http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/gardasil.asp#DbJcMrj6JAgIf8Ih.99), in brief:

The message quoted above warns that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has already received nearly 12,000 complaints about adverse medical issues related to Gardasil vaccinations, and that 32 young women died after receiving Gardasil vaccinations. Although this information is accurate in a strictly literal sense, it is a misleading presentation of raw data that does not in itself establish a causal connection between Gardasil and the posited medical dangers.
Regarding the supposedly damning video interview with Jenny Thompson of Health Sciences Institute:

Note that this video deals primarily with subjects such as the political and moral issues involved with requiring HPV vaccinations for young girls, the notion that vaccinated girls might mistakenly believe they had been immunized against contracting sexually transmitted diseases (other than HPV), and the claim that cervical cancer deaths can be effectively eliminated through means other than HPV vaccinations. It offers no real evidence that Gardasil vaccinations are dangerous other than to cite the raw VAERS data referenced above (without noting that analysis of those reports failed to establish a causal link between HPV vaccinations and the reported serious adverse events).
And as for that terrible "confession" from the (misidentified) Gardasil researcher:

That article grossly misrepresents what Dr. Harper actually said. Dr. Harper has expressed concerns such as how long protection from vaccines such as Gardasil will last (which is not a safety issue, but rather an issue of whether the expected results of an HPV immunization program will justify the financial costs), and whether the marketing of Gardasil might lead some women to avoid taking other STD-preventing precautions, but she has never said that Gardasil "doesn't work," "wasn't tested," or was "dangerous."
So, Facebook, are we good? We can debate the merits of widespread HPV vaccinations all day long, but let's at least try to stick to talking points that are true.

[Cebu_4_2]

Gardasil researcher is against the vaccine–another myth debunked (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/gardasil-researcher-against-vaccine-myth-debunked/)2014/01/01 Filed in: Cancer (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/category/medicine/cancer/) | Vaccines (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/category/medicine/vaccines/)
http://i0.wp.com/www.skepticalraptor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/bullshit-meme-that-lies-about-harper.jpg?resize=300%2C300 (http://i0.wp.com/www.skepticalraptor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/bullshit-meme-that-lies-about-harper.jpg)
For New Year’s Day, I’m republishing the top 10 articles I wrote in 2013. Well, actually top 9, plus 1 from 2012 that just keeps going.
#9. This article was published on 8 August 2013, and has had over 22,000 views. Although Diane Harper seems to have been bought out by the antivaccine gang, she still publishes peer-reviewed articles providing strong evidence of Gardasil’s safety and effectiveness. The facts and evidence support Diane Harper the real medical researcher not Diane Harper the antivaccine shill.
Because vaccine deniers (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Vaccine_denialism) lack any scientific evidence supporting their unfounded belief system about immunizations, they tend to rely upon unscientific information like anecdotes, misinterpretation of data, or ignorant Italian provincial courts (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/mmr-vaccines-do-not-cause-autism/) to make their case. It’s rather easy to debunk these claims, but because of the nature of the internet, old news is recycled as “brand new,” requiring a whole new round of blog posts to discredit the misinformation. It’s impossible to recall one single instance where a vaccine refuser made a statement about vaccines that was not, in fact, rather quickly debunked. Not one.
The pro-children’s health side, those of us who think that vaccines save lives, have been winning the hearts and minds for awhile, given that still around 95% of children in the USA get all of their immunizations prior to entering kindergarten (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/activities-vaccine-refusers-kids-immunized/). But that doesn’t stop the refusers from trying, because it’s apparent that the we have gone 360º, so a batch of old anti-vaccination memes are making the rounds again.
One of the latest ones involves a researcher, Dr. Diane Harper, a former Merck & Co. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merck_%26_Co.) researcher who apparently had some management role in the clinical trials of the HPV quadrivalent vaccine, also known as Gardasil (or Silgard in Europe). The HPV vaccine prevents the transmission of certain types (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr5602.pdf) (pdf) of human papillomavirus (http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/whatishpv.html) (HPV), specifically types 6, 11, 16 and 18. Importantly, HPV types 16 and 18 cause (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16670757) approximately 70% of cervical cancers (http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/cervical/), and cause most HPV-induced anal (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/anal/) (95% linked to HPV), vulvar (http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/vagvulv/) (50% linked), vaginal (http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/vagvulv/) (65% linked), oropharyngeal (http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth/topics/cancer.htm) (60% linked) and penile (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/penile/) (35% linked) cancers. These HPV-related cancers can be prevented as long as you can prevent the HPV infection itself, which are generally passed through genital contact, most often during vaginal, oral and anal sex.
Dr. Harper, as is claimed by a number of vaccine refuseniks (http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/208-the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-qsleep-at-nightq-gardasil-and-cervarix-dont-work-are-dangerous-and-werent-tested.html) (there are numerous websites that repeat the same story, almost verbatim), decided to “come clean” about Gardasil so that she could “sleep at night.” The antivaccination world have attached themselves to this story, because they think it uncovers a conspiracy or lies by the vaccine manufacturers, since obviously Dr. Harper escaped from the evil clutches of Big Pharma.
During a presentation at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination, which took place in Reston, Virginia on Oct. 2nd through 4th, 2009, Dr. Harper is alleged to have stated that the cervical cancer risk in the USA is already low, and that vaccinations will have no significant effect upon the rate of that cancer in the USA. It is correct to state that the number of HPV-related cancers is relatively low.
According to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm#a5), the annual numbers of HPV-related diseases in the USA are:


About 360,000 persons in the U.S. get genital warts each year
About 10,300 women in the U.S. get cervical cancer each year
2,100 vulvar cancers
500 vaginal cancers
600 penile cancers
2,800 anal cancers in women
1,500 anal cancers in men
8,400 oropharyngeal cancers in men and women (Note: oropharyngeal cancers are also related to smoking, chewing tobacco, and other factors, so it’s difficult to determine which are HPV-related and which are only partially related.)

So, though this risk of these cancers is low, it is not 0. This misuse of statistics is one of the most problematic issues I have with anti-science, woo-pushing individuals. Over 20,000 cancers, most of them very deadly or damaging, can be prevented quickly and easily with a vaccine that has shown, in massive (100’s of thousands of patients) clinical trials, to not have any serious side effects (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/large-study-supports-safety-gardasil-hpv-vaccine/). None.

According to transcripts, during the meeting, Dr. Harper actually stated:

About eight in every ten women who have been sexually active will have HPV at some stage of their life. Normally there are no symptoms, and in 98 per cent of cases it clears itself. But in those cases where it doesn’t, and isn’t treated, it can lead to pre-cancerous cells which may develop into cervical cancer.
Wait, did she say that the HPV vaccine wouldn’t help? That’s not what I’m reading with that quote. But here’s how one antivaccine lunatic interprets her comments:

One must understand how the establishment’s word games are played to truly understand the meaning of the above quote, and one needs to understand its unique version of “science”. When they report that untreated cases “can” lead to something that “may” lead to cervical cancer, it really means that the relationship is merely a hypothetical conjecture that is profitable if people actually believe it. In other words, there is no demonstrated relationship between the condition being vaccinated for and the rare cancers that the vaccine might prevent, but it is marketed to do that nonetheless. In fact, there is no actual evidence that the vaccine can prevent any cancer.
That’s not what she said. What she is saying is that the event is statistically rare, but it is not 0. When science says “it may develop into cancer” it means that for each individual the risk that the cancer “may develop” is small, but when looking at a large group, it’s no longer “may”–it is definite that some number of that group will contract the cancer as a result of an HPV-infection. We don’t know why some women will get cervical cancer and some won’t. Some women have better screening (but even finding it early can have bad consequences for reproductive health). Typically, science deniers, including the antivaccination gang, lack understanding of how statistics work. A low risk is not a zero risk. But on the other hand a low risk is not a 100% risk (the antivaccine crowd works both angles).
Then the vaccine refuser writes:

So far, 15,037 girls have reported adverse side effects from Gardasil alone to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (V.A.E.R.S.), and this number only reflects parents who underwent the hurdles required for reporting adverse reactions. At the time of writing, 44 girls are officially known to have died from these vaccines. The reported side effects include Guillian Barré Syndrome (paralysis lasting for years, or permanently — sometimes eventually causing suffocation), lupus, seizures, blood clots, and brain inflammation. Parents are usually not made aware of these risks.
Let’s look at VAERS first. Vaccine deniers (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Vaccine_denialism), especially in the USA, use passive data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (http://vaers.hhs.gov/index) (VAERS), a system where individuals can report supposed adverse events post-vaccination, to “prove” certain adverse events. (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/properly-evaluating-vaccine-mortality/) The reports can be made online, by fax or by mail. However, there are no investigations to show any type of causality between the vaccination event and the claimed mortality that are reported to the VAERS database, and, frankly, it can be gamed by those with corrupt intentions (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/11/20/dumpster-diving-in-the-vaers-database-again/).
VAERS is a feel-good system for those who think that there’s a link between vaccines and something terrible, but without an active investigation, the data is just above the level of totally meaningless, and is absolutely not scientific. Most epidemiologists know it is valueless. (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/11/28/h1n1-vaccine-and-miscarriages-more-antivaccine-fear-mongering-about-flu-vaccines/) Even the VAERS system itself says (https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/index)that the data cannot be used to ascertain the difference between coincidence and true causality. There is a background rate for mortality, across all causes, irrespective of whether an individual is vaccinated or not, and unless you understand the background rate, the vaccine “mortality” rate has no scientific meaning. In fact, we could provide a Starbucks coffee drinking in the car “mortality rate”, which may or may not have any causality whatsoever.
Furthermore, there is simply no evidence that 44 girls (http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/05/03/here-is-how-we-know-gardasil-has-not-killed-100-people/2/)“are officially known to have died from these vaccines.” This is one of those myths that keep getting transmitted by one antivaccine group to another, much like an HPV infection. Using VAERS to make any kind of conclusion is merely an intellectually lazy and ignorant method of trying to make a point. Real research done by real researchers published in real journals show no evidence of any kind that Gardasil does anything but prevent HPV infections in young girls.
But let’s set this aside, and go back to Dr. Harper. Guess what? The truth is a lot different.


First, Dr. Diane Harper is described as “the lead researcher in the development of the human papilloma virus vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix.” Firstly, Cervarix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervarix) is an HPV vaccine, but Dr. Harper had little to do with the development of that product. It is a bivalent vaccine (Gardasil is a quadrivalent vaccine) manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.
With that piece of misinformation out of the way, Dr. Harper’s role, as is typical with most pharmaceutical companies, was to manage various aspects of the clinical trial for the company. That would be everything from making certain that protocols are accurate, that Institutional Review Boards have approved the trial, that appropriate numbers of patients are enrolled, that placebos and drugs are delivered in a blinded manner to the researchers, and about a few hundred other items. In general, Dr. Harper, as an employee of Merck, would not have “lead the research”, and she could not vaccinate patients included in the Phase 3 clinical trial–that would be unethical and proscribed by ANY pharmaceutical companies’ protocols. There would have been an intentional wall between her and the clinicians. Moreover, she did not “develop” the drug in any meaningful manner, because she apparently was not a bench researcher–her role wasn’t in basic R&D, but mostly in clinical trials (though she may have provided a lot of guidance to the R&D staff, if Merck is structured like most Pharmaceutical companies).
Dr. Ben Goldacre, who consistently writes about making drug companies accountable for their actions and exaggerated claims, actually interviewed Dr. Harper (http://www.badscience.net/2009/10/jabs-as-bad-as-the-cancer/) after the antivaccine world exploded with this information. She told Goldacre that “I fully support the HPV vaccines. I believe that in general they are safe in most women.”
Dr. Harper’s view on the HPV vaccine is not a secret. She has published several articles about HPV, cancer and HPV vaccines. In one article (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19501728), she distinctly states her point of view. She says we do not know how the protection from the vaccines will last, and this might affect a cost-benefit decision about the vaccine. She is not saying that it’s a safety vs. benefit question, merely that the cost of an HPV immunization program, if the effect of the vaccine is not long enough, could mean that it is too expensive for the expected results. Though I am not a researcher of Dr. Harper’s level, I would argue with her that there is a value of saving even a handful of lives. I wouldn’t be troubled by the cost of the HPV vaccine (well, unless it were $1 million per dose or something), given that it has a measurable effect on reducing the risk of cancer, and would purchase it for my daughters.
She also stated that she is concerned about the aggressive advertising campaign of Merck, which may lead individuals to believe they are now completely invisible to HPV, so they may avoid other STD-preventing precautions, which might lead to higher rates of other types of STD’s, even HIV infections. This is valid, since this invincibility is suggested by Merck’s advertising. Moreover, many of us in the biomedical field, even ones who have worked for Big Pharma, are disgusted by the advertising claims for prescription pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Harper also suspects that women who get the HPV vaccine are probably the ones who will be more punctilious about scheduling and visiting their doctor for every one of their cancer screening appoints, so the vaccination would have little impact on their risk of death from cancer. But even there, she states that this select group will benefit in the reduction in certain conditions caused by treating for precancerous changes in cervical cells.

But do you know what is the most telling point about Dr. Harper? If she’s so negative about vaccines in general, and Gardasil specifically, where are her rants on antivaccination websites? Because other than the articles which misrepresent Dr. Harper’s actual viewpoint about Gardasil, it’s impossible to find any writing from Dr. Harper stating, either implicitly or explicitly, that she thinks that Gardasil is bad.
In a 2012 peer-reviewed article about Cervarix (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3216348/?tool=myncbi), Dr. Harper states that “Cervarix is an excellent choice for both screened and unscreened populations due to its long-lasting protection, its broad protection for at least five oncogenic HPV types, the potential to use only one-dose for the same level of protection, and its safety.” Again, she speculates that cervical cancer screening may be just as useful, but nowhere does she recommend that the vaccine not be used, that it’s safety profile is unacceptable, or that the vaccine cannot prevent cancer. In fact, she recommends expanding the guidelines for HPV vaccines for older women because as they age, they are more susceptible to other serotypes of HPV, against which Cervarix confers protection. She also states that Cervarix may also have a protective effect against some autoimmune disorders. This does not sound like a researcher who is losing sleep about the HPV vaccine, but who fully supports its use, with some exceptions.
Dr. Diane Harper is one of the leading researchers in biomedical science, an individual who has spent her life studying vaccines. She has the academic training and research credibility at a level that if she said “Gardasil is dangerous”, many of us would stand up and begin to wonder. But the facts are she has not said anything of the sort about Gardasil and Cervarix. In peer-reviewed articles published in important, high impact journals, she has given strong, but scientifically qualified, endorsements to HPV vaccines. These are the facts. Any other allegations about her lack of support for vaccinations is based on misinformation, disinformation and lies.
Gardasil does not increase sexual activity of young girls. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23071201) HPV vaccinations were found to be extremely safe (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6229a4.htm?s_cid=mm6229a4_e), with no serious adverse events observed in large clinical trials (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23027469). And it has been shown to reduce the prevalence of HPV in young women (http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/06/18/infdis.jit192.abstract). These are the scientific facts, and from them, we can conclude, as did Dr. Harper, that HPV vaccines save lives.

Use the Science-based Vaccine Search Engine. (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/vaccine.html)

[Cebu_4_2]

Yet another antivaccine meme rises from the grave again: No, Diane Harper doesn’t hate Gardasil (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/08/16/yet-another-antivaccine-meme-rises-from-the-grave-again-no-diane-harper-doesnt-hate-gardasil/) http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/files/2012/05/orac2-58x58.jpgPosted by Orac (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/author/oracknows/) on August 16, 2013

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Yet another zombie antivaccine meme rises from the grave to join its fellows
Oh, no, not again!
It was just two days ago that I decided to take on a zombie antivaccine meme that just keeps rising from the dead over and over and over again. I’m referring to the claim that Andrew Wakefield has been exonerated by legal rulings compensating children for alleged MMR-induced vaccine injury. As I pointed out (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/08/14/an-zombie-antivaccine-meme-rises-from-the-grave-again/), this particular claim is a steaming, stinking turd with no science (or even facts) behind it. As I further explained, even if a court rules that vaccines cause autism, that is not scientific evidence that vaccines do, in fact, cause autism. The courts screw up all the time on science, and court rulings cannot be considered a reliable indication of science. The example I like to use is the ruling against Dow Corning back in the 1990s that silicone breast implants were responsible for all sorts of autoimmune diseases, when epidemiological studies showed that they did not. I had hoped to rest after that and have fun either discussing or deconstructing scientific studies (whether I deconstruct them or discuss them depends upon their quality), leaving any further public service demolitions of zombie antivaccine memes for another time.
Then I happened to see Mike Adam’s wretched hive of scum and quackery yesterday, NaturalNews.com, and right there on the main page was a post entitled Lead Gardasil developer clears conscience, admits vaccine is useless and deadly (http://www.naturalnews.com/041644_Gardasil_vaccination_scam_HPV_vaccine.html) , and I knew my work wasn’t done. I had seen the article that “inspired” this particular antivaccine zombie meme several times before leading up to this. Like the previous one, it had appeared on Facebook multiple times. I hadn’t had to unfriend anyone because of it, but I had seen it. It had appeared an several antivaccine and “alternative health websites” basically verbatim (for instance, here (http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/208-the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-qsleep-at-nightq-gardasil-and-cervarix-dont-work-are-dangerous-and-werent-tested.html), here (http://www.undergroundhealth.com/the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-sleep-at-night/), and here (http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2264099/pg1)). The article had been starting to annoy me almost as much as the “Wakefield wuz right ’cause the courts said so” meme. And now it’s showing up on one of the two biggest, baddest quack websites on the entire Internet, NaturalNews.com. It’s like waving a cape in front of a bull or sending up the Bat Signal to summon Batman.
So what are the basic claims? Well, this particular meme follows a pattern in which Diane Harper, one of the investigators on the clinical studies for Gardasil has had some sort of attack of conscience and now wants to “come clean” about the vaccine:

Dr. Diane Harper was the lead researcher in the development of the human papilloma virus vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix. She is the latest to come forward and question the safety and effectiveness of these vaccines. She made the surprising announcement at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination, which took place in Reston, Virginia on Oct. 2nd through 4th, 2009. Her speech was supposed to promote the Gardasil and Cervarix vaccines, but she instead turned on her corporate bosses in a very public way. When questioned about the presentation, audience members remarked that they came away feeling that the vaccines should not be used.
What’s not mentioned is that this particular article is that the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination was a conference held by one of the oldest and most established antivaccine groups (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/crank-conferences-a-parody-of-science-based-medicine-that-can-suck-in-even-reputable-scientists-and-institutions/), the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). That’s the group founded by Barbara Loe Fisher, the grande dame of the antivaccine movement, the woman who was antivaccine before it was fashionable to be antivaccine (http://www.salon.com/2013/08/14/whats_with_rich_people_hating_vaccines/). Without Barbara Loe Fisher, there might not be J.B. Handley, Mark Blaxill, Dan Olmsted, Jenny McCarthy, or even Jake Crosby. I do not mean that as a complement. The NVIC is known for deceptive antivaccine advertising campaigns (is there any other kind?), a “memorial” web page for “victims” of vaccines called (appropriately enough) the International Memorial for Vaccine Victims (http://www.nvic.org/Vaccine-Memorial.aspx), and, of course, holding antivaccine conferences like the one at which Diane Harper appeared. It was a conference that was chock full of antivaccine speakers and a whole lot of “autism biomed” quackery, up to and including at least two talks on homeopathy to treat autism. It doesn’t get quackier than that.
And it was four years ago, which reminds me that this story, with similar or the same wording, has popped up periodically ever since 2009. Indeed, a chiropractor cited the very same article in 2011 in the comments of this post (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/beware-hpv-dna-in-gardasil/), quoting an article with exactly the wording of the article (http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/208-the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-qsleep-at-nightq-gardasil-and-cervarix-dont-work-are-dangerous-and-werent-tested.html) being promoted by NaturalNews.com.
Knowing what the conference was about (hint: it wasn’t science) also allows me to put the lie to the claim in these stories that Harper was there to “promote Gardasil.” If that’s what she was there for, then she was really, really in the wrong place. I can’t imagine a much worse place for a pro-Gardasil researcher to appear. Maybe at a meeting of SaneVax (http://sanevax.org/victims-2/vaccine-victims-memorial/) members or members of the (Not-So) Thinking Moms’ Revolution. Of course, Harper wouldn’t be the first researcher to have unwittingly accepted a speaking invitation to a questionable or even crank conference without realizing what they were agreeing to. For instance, Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Group accepted an invitation to the same conference until he realized that he would be receiving an award along with Andrew Wakefield who would be getting the NVIC’s Humanitarian Award (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/crank-conferences-a-parody-of-science-based-medicine-that-can-suck-in-even-reputable-scientists-and-institutions/). I must admit that, even four years later, I can’t figure out why Harper agreed to speak at this conference and have parts of her talk appear in the antivaccine propaganda movie The Greater Good (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/11/18/anti-vaccine-propaganda-lands-in-new-yor/).
Around the same time, as Ethan Huff of NaturalNews.com reports, Harper was quoted as saying things that sound anti-Gardasil. One that he cites comes from CBS News. What is not mentioned is that this article is by Sharyl Attkisson, an execrably credulous reporter for CBS who is antivaccine to the core and an admirer of Andrew Wakefield (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/08/complain-to-cbs-cbs-resident-anti-vaccin/). She’s even been caught exchanging information (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/08/01/sharyl-attkisson-of-cbs-and-generation-r/) with bloggers for the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism. But what did Harper actually say? In the article, she is portrayed as claiming that the vaccine is as deadly as cervical cancer. What she actually said was somewhat more nuanced than that, and it sounds to me as though she was selectively quoted. For one thing, a lot of what she said was quoted as being about Cervarix, which is the HPV vaccine sold in Europe, as compared to Gardasil, which is the HPV vaccine sold in the United States by Merck. Here’s what she’s quoted as saying in the article (http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/208-the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-qsleep-at-nightq-gardasil-and-cervarix-dont-work-are-dangerous-and-werent-tested.html) floating around the Internet:

Dr. Harper explained in her presentation that the cervical cancer risk in the U.S. is already extremely low, and that vaccinations are unlikely to have any effect upon the rate of cervical cancer in the United States. In fact, 70% of all H.P.V. infections resolve themselves without treatment in a year, and the number rises to well over 90% in two years. Harper also mentioned the safety angle. All trials of the vaccines were done on children aged 15 and above, despite them currently being marketed for 9-year-olds.
All of which is true but irrelevant. An infection doesn’t have to result in cervical cancer 100% of the time to make it worth vaccinating against. Even if the infection results in cancer only 1% of the time or less it could well be worth vaccinating against if the vaccine is safe, and, contrary to the claims by antivaccinationists, the HPV vaccine is very, very safe indeed (http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1363509), with the most serious adverse reactions generally being syncope and skin reactions. The deaths and thousands of adverse reactions reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database have never been causally linked to the HPV vaccine. VAERS, as I’ve pointed out many times, engages in minimal examination of individual reports, and anyone can submit them. It can also be (and has been) used for “dumpster diving” to try to find correlations that don’t hold up to scrutiny (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/11/20/dumpster-diving-in-the-vaers-database-again/). Lawyers have used vaccine litigation to distort the VAERS database (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/01/18/how-vaccine-litigation-distorts-the-vaer/). That’s why VAERS is pretty useless for determining causality from correlation. It wasn’t designed for that. It was designed as an early warning system with high sensitivity but very low specificity to pick up early warning signs of potential adverse events.
As for the article from 2009 by Sharyl Attkisson (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/cbsnews_investigates/main5253431.shtml), the key claim cited by the zombie meme article and repeated by Huff at NaturalNews.com is this:

“The rate of serious adverse events (from Gardasil) is on par with the death rate of cervical cancer,” admitted Dr. Harper at that time, refuting a pro-Gardasil piece published by Slate. “Gardasil has been associated with at least as many serious adverse events as there are deaths from cervical cancer developing each year.”
The interesting thing about this quote is that in an interview with Ben Goldacre Harper denied saying that the HPV vaccine is deadlier than cancer:

So I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper’s position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.
“I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a ‘controversial drug’. I did not ‘hit out’ – I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview.”
Professor Harper did not “develop Cervarix”, as the Sunday Express said, but she did work on some important trials of Gardasil, and also Cervarix. “Gardasil is not a ‘sister vaccine’ as the Express said, it is a different compound. I do not know of the side effects of Cervarix as it is not available in the US.” Furthermore she did not say that Cervarix was being over marketed. “I did say that Merck was egregiously overmarketing Gardasil in the US- but Gardasil and Cervarix are not the same vaccines.”
It is interesting how this UK article sounds (http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=138519.msg833602#msg833602) so much like the Attkisson hit piece against Gardasil, down to the same sort of rhetoric. Which is how I understood her misgivings about Gardasil as being: Not that Gardasil is ineffective, not that it’s dangerous, but that its benefits might be oversold, which is not an unreasonable concern. These accounts also almost uniformly list Harper as the “lead researcher” on Gardasil. I’ve described why Harper was in reality not what that title is clearly meant to imply, namely the main researcher who developed Gardasil, but I think Skeptical Raptor (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/gardasil-researcher-against-vaccine-myth-debunked/) did an even better job than I did. Basically, Harper was principal investigator (http://www.childrensmercy.org/content/uploadedFiles/Diane%20Harper%283%29.pdf) for some of the clinical trials for Gardasil and helped design them. She did not design the vaccine. She had much less to do with the development of Cervarix, and she does appear to be more enthusiastic for Cervarix (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3216348/) than for Gardasil (http://www.childrensmercy.org/content/uploadedFiles/Diane%20Harper%283%29.pdf) because Cervarix has crossreactivity with more cancer-causing HPV types. In any case, in 2011, Harper was quoted as saying (http://jdc325.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/dangerous-nonsense-in-the-sunday-express/):

I remain a vaccine supporter; and am grateful that GSK and merck have developed the vaccines.
Her other concerns were that unless Gardasil provides more than 15 years worth of protection against HPV it would only shift the age of diagnosis later and might not provide lifelong protection. In any case, my feeling is that Harper’s views have evolved. She became disillusioned with Gardasil but looks upon next generation HPV vaccines as potentially much more promising. She also feared that advertising was leading women to believe that if they are vaccinated with Gardasil they no longer require Pap smears. Finally, in the US, where Pap smear screening keeps the incidence of invasive cervical cancer low, she was concerned that the vaccine might provide marginal benefit in women who are very punctilious about their screening, although she never disputed that it would still protect against the reproductive consequences of HPV infection. It should be pointed out that her calculations to back up this assertion are not universally accepted and have been criticized (http://www.npr.org/2011/09/19/140543977/hpv-vaccine-the-science-behind-the-controversy).
The truly amusing thing about the NaturalNews.com article is the paranoia behind it (http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/dr-diane-harper-hpv-vaccines-the-tin-hat-version/). As quoted above, in her interview four years ago with Ben Goldacre Harper disavowed the way her statements about Gardasil and HPV vaccines were being characterized by the press and antivaccine groups. Of course, in a way she had no one to blame but herself. She still hasn’t apologized for speaking at an a wretched hive of scum and quackery of an antivaccine meeting quackfest, where her nuanced views on HPV vaccination were guaranteed to be misinterpreted and misrepresented as the “lead investigator” for Gardasil development having decided that HPV vaccination doesn’t work and is dangerous. She was either hopelessly naive or high on her newfound fame that she was enjoying four years ago, and I really wish Ben Goldacre had asked her about her appearance speaking at the NVIC. In any case, perhaps realizing her mistake, she spoke to Goldacre. That, of course, was viewed as the only thing it could be viewed as by antivaccine loons, evidence that big pharma must have gotten to her (http://www.naturalnews.com/041644_Gardasil_vaccination_scam_HPV_vaccine.html) or she is mentally ill:

But not long after clearing her conscience on this important issue so that she could sleep at night, Dr. Harper basically retracted all of her statements, claiming that media reports citing them were made up. What? The vaccine industry or some other power apparently got to Dr. Harper and convinced her to change her story — either that or she is schizophrenic.
Implying that someone you disagree with must have changed her mind because she was paid or threatened or because she is mentally ill. Stay classy, Ethan. Stay classy. It’s nice to see that the people who work for Mike Adams are just as classy as he is. To take a trip down memory lane, I can’t help but point out that in October 2009, Adams himself first made this charge (http://www.naturalnews.com/027225_vaccine_cancer_cervical.html):

Now, I can’t prove that Merck intimidated Dr. Harper into changing her story, but based on public court documents, this is a type of behavior in which Merck has apparently engaged. And I can’t prove that Dr. Harper changed her story, but I wouldn’t blame her if she did, especially if she was being threatened with losing her career.
Or maybe Dr. Harper finally realized that some of her previous statements, such as this one speculating (http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/on-women/2009/03/30/is-gardasil-more-effective-in-older-teens) about a link between Gardasil vaccination and amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s disease) were irresponsible. Maybe she learned her lesson about being too speculative with the press. Also, it’s clear from her more recent writings that she is definitely supportive of Cervarix, less so of Gardasil. Whatever her reasons, Adams’ rant is nothing more than a reverse version of the pharma shill gambit in which he claims that pharma intimidation is causing a noted clinical investigator to cower in fear, shut up, and toe the line. Maybe she realized she screwed up big time when she appeared at the NVIC conference. Certainly I’m unaware of her having appeared at any other antivaccine quackfests since 2009. Certainly she never appeared at AutismOne, the premier antivaccine quackfest.
On the other hand, I fear that we skeptics are a bit too quick to dismiss Harper’s prior statements as having been misquotes when it is clear that she did, at least for a while, either wittingly or unwittingly give aid and comfort to the antivaccine movement through inflammatory statements about “experimentation” giving Gardasil to 12-year-olds and her speculation that Gardasil might be linked to ALS even though there was no good evidence to support that link. That she’s straightened up and flown right since late 2009 is a good thing, but her irresponsible, borderline antivaccine statements in multiple media outlets before that were too numerous to ignore. It’s highly unlikely that her statements were all misquotes or taken out of context, and they live on, thanks to websites like that of Mike Adams. It’s good that Harper has stopped making them and hasn’t appeared at any further antivaccine quackfests like the NVIC conference since 2009, but we shouldn’t forget her previous statements. Even though she’s disavowed them for the most part, they keep coming back to haunt us as zombie memes that never die just like this one.
I fully expect that this particular meme will continue for the rest of my life, with the exact same article showing up periodically, being Tweeted all over the Internet, and spread all over Facebook, even though the basic article dates back to 2009. Zombie antivaccine Internet memes never die. They always rise again.

[Cebu_4_2]

And the war continues...

[singular_me]

California Infant Dies after 8 Vaccines, Family Gets Him Back from Hospital Cremated

Augustina Ursino

February 26 2015
‘Parents in California are distraught after losing their infant son after being vaccinated. He died in his sleep and was taken to the hospital already deceased. Hospital staff ruled his death as sudden infant death syndrome. The couple was told an autopsy was required to be performed on their son.

After returning home, waiting to get an update, they never received one. Numerous phone calls were made to get answers. Weeks went by. Finally, they received verbal confirmation and told their son was best not to be seen prior to being cremated, because of the condition he was in. Once cremated, they could pick up the remains of their child from the crematory. They were not given the chance to say their goodbyes.

More than one year and four months have passed and the family has yet to receive his autopsy report. It turns out their son was given a vaccine not approved for his age and an extra dose of the hepatitis B vaccine that he shouldn’t have received until later on.’
http://vactruth.com/2015/02/26/infant-dies-after-8-vaccines/

[mick silver]

dam a war on kids