International PR Blitz Pushes Cervical Cancer Vaccine
The "first global summit against cervical cancer" was held in Paris on March 22 and promoted the need for national vaccination programmes for girls. The cost of the summit, estimated at millions of dollars, was "entirely funded" by Sanofi Pasteur MSD, the company with the European license to market Merck's Gardasil vaccine, reports Sarah Boseley. Gardasil is effective against the most common strains of human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer. The "Coalition Against Cervical Cancer" was launched at the summit, and promoted by a video news release produced by the PR firm Euro RCSG and distributed by AP Television News. "Celebrities, doctors and journalists were shipped in from across Europe and the United States by PR agencies working for Sanofi," Boseley reports. Diane Harper, a professor at Dartmouth medical school in New Hampshire, flagged potential concerns and described a mass vaccination program as being "a great big public health experiment."
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Harper Had More to Say About Using HPV Vaccine on Little Girls
Dr. Harper could not get a hearing from journalists, although she tried, until reporter Cindy Bevington, of KPC News called her. It was Bevington who broke this story. See http://www.kpcnews.com/articles/2007/03/14/online_features/hpv_vaccine/hpv01.txt.
The Guardian article did not say much about Dr. Harper's concerns, and in a way reburied her story. Here are two statements Harper made to Bevington about the Gardasil HPV vaccine:
-". . . it's not been tested for effectiveness in younger girls, and administering the vaccine to girls as young as 9 may not even protect them at all. And, in the worst-case scenario, instead of serving to reduce the numbers of cervical cancers within 25 years, such a vaccination crusade actually could cause the numbers to go up."
-"There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue."
Bevington is writing a series on this issue. Dr. Harper's story would not have been told if Cindy Bevington had not been curious and persistent.