Why authorities should tread carefully on the uptake of cancer vaccine

By Kamau Kaniaru  

NAIROBI, KENYA: Now that the Government has launched a pilot project to vaccinate schoolgirls in Kitui against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is associated with cervical cancer, our health authorities should find time to familiarise themselves with a petition to prohibit similar vaccinations of Indian girls that is currently awaiting determination by the Supreme Court of India (SCI).

The petition is asking the SCI to declare two HPV vaccines, Gardasil, manufactured by Merck Pharmaceuticals, and Cervarix, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, as unproven and hazardous. The petition alleges the Indian drugs controller licensed the vaccines without adequate research on their safety and efficacy.   

The authorities should also note that Merck Pharmaceuticals is facing a mountain of victim lawsuits in the US and Australia. Adverse reaction statistics from the US Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System include details of 42 deaths of previously bubbly, healthy young girls between September 2009 and September 2011 as well as incidents of seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, memory loss and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.     The Programme undertook the Indian vaccination project in Andhra Pradesh and Gurat States for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), a non-profit organisation funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. PATH recruited 24,000 girls in a pilot project that has attracted heavy criticism for unethical practices and causing serious harm and death. The project was stopped when four girls died in Andhra Pradesh after receiving HPV vaccinations.  

The petition alleges that both Gardasil and Cervarix have not been tested long enough to provide proof of their safety or ability to prevent cervical cancer. Our Health Ministry should also familiarise itself with a June 21, 2012 report in the British Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that asserts that vaccinating girls with Gardasil or Cervarix cannot be justified in India or elsewhere.  The report backs up its claim by citing Indian cervical cancer rates that have been falling from 43 per 100,000 in 1982-83 to 22 per 100,000 in 2004-05 in tandem with rising standards of living. The decline started long before the advent of Gardasil and Cervarix.

Significantly, the Journal concluded that there is no proof that HPV vaccines prevent cervical cancer. Moreover, the purported protection lasts a few years while the vaccines have devastating adverse effects. “It will take at least 30 years to know if the vaccines work to prevent cancer”, said Prof Allyson Pollock who led scientists from Queen Mary University, London, and the University of Edinburgh to study the efficacy of the Indian HPV vaccination project. Prof Pollock’s comments echo similar sentiments earlier expressed by Dr Diane Harper, a pioneer HPV researcher at the Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire. According to Dr Harper, 95 per cent of women who get infected with HPV never develop cervical cancer.