HPV does not cause cervical cancer; HPV vaccination can be deadly

(Cross-posted from http://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/)

Evidence continues to mount that the presumed connection between HPV and cervical cancer is no more than a statistical association, not a causative relationship:

The Gardasil controversy: as reports of adverse effects increase, cervical cancer rates rise in HPV-vaccinated age groups

Annette Gartland

“The Gardasil vaccines continue to be vaunted as life-saving, but there is no evidence that HPV vaccination is reducing the incidence of cervical cancer, and reports of adverse effects now total more than 85,000 worldwide. Nearly 500 deaths are suspected of being linked to quadrivalent Gardasil or Gardasil 9.
As Merck’s latest human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil 9, continues to be fast tracked around the world, the incidence of invasive cervical cancer is increasing in many of the countries in which HPV vaccination is being carried out.”

Once again independent scientists without conflicts of interest are maltreated by bureaucratic organizations with conflicts of interest to commercial interests, drug companies in particular:

“This article was updated with information from the AHVID  on 14/09/2018.

Update 15/9/2018:

Peter Gøtzsche has been expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration. Six of the 13 members of the collaboration’s governing board voted for his expulsion.
. . . . .
‘This is the first time in 25 years that a member has been excluded from membership of Cochrane. This unprecedented action taken by a minority of the governing board . . . . ‘
In just 24 hours, Gøtzsche said, the Cochrane governing board had lost five of its members, four of whom were centre directors and key members of the organisation in different countries.
Gøtzsche says that, in recent years, Cochrane has significantly shifted more to a profit-driven approach. ‘Even though it is a not-for-profit charity, our ‘brand’ and ‘product’ strategies are taking priority over getting out independent, ethical and socially responsible scientific results,’ he said’”.

Selling sickness and huckstering medications

Selling Sickness is the title of a book I mentioned in “You are ill — because we say you are” (2010/10/04). My full review of the book has now been published. I was reminded of it by this recent news item:
“Percentage of U.S. adults with hypertension holds steady at 30% — But CDC report shows more people have their high blood pressure under control”.
“Hypertension” means higher than “normal” or “natural”; but how is the normal or natural level determined?
In the United States, the appropriate levels for blood pressure, serum cholesterol, and a number of other physiological variables are defined by advisory panels at the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other such agency. Those advisory panels typically comprise a majority of researchers who consult for drug companies and who are thereby inclined to the view that treating such conditions is a good thing. As a result, the levels of blood pressure, serum cholesterol, weight (body-mass-index), etc., defined as appropriate or desirable are periodically revised, always in the direction of favoring expanded treatment.
As I pointed out in the post mentioned above, certain physiological changes with age are perfectly natural, including increased blood pressure; yet a large proportion of seniors are taking medications to treat “hypertension”. This recent news item prompts a rhetorical question:
“How likely is it that 30% of the US population could have blood pressure that is higher than appropriate?”

Not content to leave this as a rhetorical question, I decided to look at what the guidelines precisely are. Once again a surprise. I find myself increasingly astonished at the lack of logic, the absence of plain common sense, in official statements about matters of medical science. Concerning blood pressure, the authoritative documents agree that it rises steadily with age, certainly beginning in the teens. At the same time, “hypertension” is defined by a single number irrespective of age!

Various sources agree on how blood pressure typically changes with age between 15 and 64. I found only one source for ages 65-80:

The sources citing these numbers include official agencies like the website “NIH Senior Health”. There is no controversy about the increase in blood pressure with age.

Now, a commonsense definition of “hypertension” — pressure “too high” — would then be some percentage above the known, observed, natural range at any given age; or perhaps for any individual an increase of pressure with age at a significantly higher rate than average, or perhaps a sudden jump.
Instead, the definition of hypertension propagated by official agencies is a single number irrespective of age and equal to the average at age around 65!

“Your blood pressure changes throughout the day. It is usually lowest when you’re asleep, and it rises when you awaken. It also can rise when you are excited, nervous, or active. So it varies throughout the day. A systolic blood pressure of 140 mmHg or higher, or a diastolic blood pressure of 90 mmHg or higher, is considered high blood pressure, or hypertension. Hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure. . . . High blood pressure currently affects more than 72 million Americans. That’s 1 in every 3 adults” — NIH Senior Health.
So at what time of day should one regard 140 mm systolic as hypertension? When one is active, excited, or nervous, or when  one is relaxed and inactive? When measured in a doctor’s office, where it’s known to be typically higher than when measured at home?

Advice from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute states:
“A blood pressure level of 140/90 mmHg or higher is considered high. About two-thirds of people over age 65 have high blood pressure. If your blood pressure is between 120/80 mmHg and 139/89 mmHg, then you have prehypertension. This means that you don’t have high blood pressure now but are likely to develop it in the future. You can take steps to prevent high blood pressure by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
Those who do not have high blood pressure at age 55 face a 90 percent chance of developing it during their lifetimes. So high blood pressure is a condition that most people have at some point in their lives” [emphases added].
Well of course they do, since the normal range at age 55 is about 117-143.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  also enlightens us about how the proportion of people with “elevated blood pressure” changes with age:

So CDC, just like Big Pharma, is in the business of selling sickness, of persuading us that perfectly normal characteristics of human life are ailments to be treated. And as so often, African Americans seem to be categorized as inherently more diseased than others — or is it possible that there’s a correlation here with the higher proportion of African Americans who excel at various athletic pursuits?

Unfortunately this is not a willful conspiracy, it is the result of good intentions coupled with ignorance and incompetence within an enormously complicated bureaucratic system. Deliberate wrongdoing might be much easier to correct. The problem is this: They all take correlation as proving causation. Because the incidence of strokes goes up with age, and blood pressure goes up with age, why, therefore of course the higher blood pressure is causing the strokes! Makes obvious sense, doesn’t it?

Only if you don’t think about it. First, correlation NEVER proves causation, no matter how plausible the connection might seem. Second, the fact that blood pressure increases starting in the teens is powerful evidence that this is interconnected with other physiological processes, and it may well be that these increases are desirable, that they play an important function, as the rest of the organism also ages.
The variation of blood pressure with stress and with time of day demonstrates its interaction with other aspects of physiology. Since these changes are observed in healthy people, it’s plausible that they are appropriate changes. Blood pressure in older people also responds to external temperature, decreasing when it’s warmer and increasing when it’s colder (Alperovitch et al., Archives of Internal Medicine, 169 [2009] 75-80). By what stretch of some imagination could it make sense to try to force everyone’s blood pressure to below the same fixed value, no matter their age?
But that’s what we do. So it’s hardly surprising that older people in particular are over-medicated, to the extent that “Nearly 40% of the participants used at least one potentially inappropriate medication” — in quite a large a study of older people (>9000 individuals), not in nursing homes, living in France (Lechevallier-Michel et al.,. European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 60 [2005] 813-9). I doubt that the proportion would be less in the United States.
These circumstances also explain why “Disease-specific causes of death, especially vascular diseases, could be overestimated in this age group [senior citizens]” (Alperovitch et al., European Journal of Epidemiology, 24 [2009] 669-75). When someone taking medications for hypertension, high cholesterol, and other “ailments”  dies, the death is likely to be attributed to one or more of those “ailments”, not to side effects of the drugs that have been consumed steadily for many years.
This is a little -discussed but crucial aspect of drug “side” effects: the length of time during which a drug is supposed to be taken. Something that shows up in only 1% of cases in a clinical trial lasting 6 months might well show up in a lot of cases when the drug is then being taken lifelong, as is the case with substances “treating” high cholesterol or high blood pressure or seeking to “thin” blood to prevent clots or strokes.
So, for example, not much more than a year after Gardasil vaccine was approved to guard women against cervical cancer, there had been several deaths attributable to it as well as nearly 400 “serious” adverse events (CDC mongers fear and hawks deadly vaccine, 2008/03/13).
Unabashed, an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration urged that Gardasil and its competing knock-off Cervarix be administered to boys to prevent genital warts (Gardasil and Cervarix: Vaccination insanity, 2009/09/21). The push for this continues:
“Merck & Co’s Gardasil vaccine is approved for boys, safe and it would be cost-effective, CDC researchers and vaccine experts told a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices Thursday” (HPV shots for boys debated by experts — Gay men would be among groups protected from various cancers by vaccine, CDC says).  “HPV infection is best known as the primary cause of cervical cancer, but it can also lead to cancers of the anus, penis, head and neck. Vaccinating men and boys could prevent some of these cancers.”
Perhaps this continuing push comes because the earlier considerations judged that the possible prevention of genital warts in boys did not justify the high cost ($360) of the vaccination. That high cost did not prevent its inclusion in a federally funded program, though, “the Vaccines for Children Program, a government-funded system that provides vaccines to children eligible for the state-federal Medicaid health insurance plan and other uninsured children”. The new push cites a concern to safeguard gay men in particular:
”cases of anal cancers are increasing in the United States, especially among women, and men who have sex with men. ‘Estimates from various studies indicate that the incidence of anal cancer in men who have sex with men may be as high as 37 cases per 100,000 men’”.
The campaign seems to be working: “36 percent of pediatricians and 24 percent of family medicine physicians are administering the vaccine to males”.
Once again, I’m not pointing fingers at any conspiracy, any willful wrongdoing. These people think they are doing good — just like Tom Lehrer’s “the old drug peddler, doing well by doing good”. The problem is, they think correlations prove causation, even when the correlation is “as high as” 37 cases in 100,000. This incompetence in statistics is matched by ignorance of the problem of drug “side” effects, even though a decade ago already it was reported that there are in the United States “106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications” (Starfield, JAMA 284 [2000] 483-5).

Anecdotes don’t count as evidence, of course, but they are mighty impressive subjectively. In my bridge group of senior citizens, several have mentioned loss of feeling in their feet. Each one I’ve asked, “Do you take statins?” All have said “Yes”.
An older friend of mine, now dead, was very slight of build, and always found it difficult to persuade his doctors that he should be taking a lower than average dose of most medications. After a bad fall, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage from which he never recovered. The doctor who supervised his admission to hospital said he should never have been taking the blood-thinning Plavix that his physician had prescribed for him, let alone at the dose he had been using (and he had been using only half of what had been prescribed).

Gardasil and Cervarix: Vaccination insanity

In my memoirs of deaning, I had written,
“I would find myself thinking, Now I’ve seen everything; nothing can surprise me anymore, only to experience a novel surprise the next day or the next week”.

HIV/AIDS matters are like that too, only more so, and increasingly other “medical-science” “news”. The absurdities, the self-contradictions in the mainstream portfolio of shibboleths is an endless source of wonderment. Plain common sense is notable by its absence. But still, used as I am to this by now, periodically my jaw still drops as the level of absurdity reaches a new nadir. So it was when I saw the headline,

FDA panel urges HPV vaccine be given to boys

Gardasil is a very expensive vaccine against human papilloma virus (HPV), some but not all of whose strains seem to be significantly correlated with genital warts and cervical cancers. As everyone should know, as all students of Statistics 101 are taught, correlation doesn’t signify causation. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the rate at which HPV-infected women actually develop an “HPV-associated” cancer is as low as about 1 in 300 [“CDC mongers fear and hawks deadly vaccine”, 13 March 2008]  or perhaps even lower, say 1.2 per 1000 (see below). By what stretch of the imagination could HPV then be indicated as the cause of those cancers?
Bear in mind that the clinical trials of the vaccine could only show its effect in preventing HPV infection, not in any reduction of the incidence of cervical cancer — it would be decades before evidence of that could possibly come to hand.
What’s worse, Gardasil is responsible for some severe “side” effects including deaths.

So my jaw did drop at the suggestion that this drugmakers’ boondoggle should now be foisted on males as well as females:

“ Committee says shots could prevent genital warts in males 9 to 26
Vaccine’s maker claims studies show 90 percent less HPV-caused disease
HPV common in both sexes, CDC says, but men develop fewer problems
Committee also favors Cervarix, new vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Boys may soon be able to get Gardasil . . . .”

“May soon be able to get” sounds as though something highly desirable is at last being shared with a group previously discriminated against. Yet there’s no earthly reason why boys should be inoculated with a vaccine that has potentially serious “side” effects, is very expensive, and supposedly protects — though imperfectly — against what is experienced by only a very small proportion of those who harbor a virus that in rare instance supposedly causes things that, in any case, are no serious threat to health even if they occur.

“A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted Wednesday to recommend that the vaccine be made available to boys and young men aged 9 to 26 for protection against genital warts caused by HPV. The vaccine protects against four types of HPV, and two of those are believed to be responsible for 70 percent of cervical and anal cancers, and HPV-associated penile and throat-and-neck cancers. The other two cause 90 percent of genital warts cases, researchers say. At Wednesday’s advisory committee meeting, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., maker of Gardasil, presented data from three clinical trials that the company claims supports broadening the distribution of the vaccine to include males. The trials included more than 5,400 boys and men from six continents and 23 countries. According to Anna Giuliano, an independent scientist at Moffit Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, and the trials’ principal investigator, ‘The data clearly demonstrates that there was a benefit to men in receiving Gardasil. Overall, we saw a 90 percent reduction in disease — genital warts and pre-cancerous lesions — caused by HPV in men and an 89 percent reduction in genital warts incidence’. . . . Giuliano said there were no serious adverse events related to the vaccine. There were some minor side effects such as pain at the injection site and low-grade fever” [emphasis added: “believed to be” purely on grounds of an association, a correlation!].

As to side effects, other sources paint a very different picture indeed:
Gardasil side effects prompt CDC study (August 13, 2008 by Christe Bruderlin-Nelson)
“Merck is likely quite displeased with the barrage of negative press about its cervical cancer vaccine’s side effects, especially after a public interest group, Judicial Watch, released a report at the end of last month saying there were 9,749 adverse reactions and 21 reported deaths related to Gardasil in the last two years. According to the report, there have been 78 severe outbreaks of genital warts, six cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and at least 10 miscarriages reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since the approval of Gardasil. However, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that clinicians, patients and drug companies report only about 10 percent of side effects to VAERS, so the actual number of Gardasil side effects could be much higher” [emphasis added].

A law firm is preparing a suit for damages:
“As of June 1, 2009, more than 25 million doses of Gardasil were distributed in the United States and there have been 14,072 reports of adverse events following Gardasil vaccination in the United States. Of these reports, 93% were reports of events considered to be non-serious, and 7% were reports of events considered to be serious. As of June 2009, there have been 43 U.S. reports of death among females who have received the Gardasil vaccine! . . . Among the fatalities reported to government officials were a 17-year-old girl in New York who collapsed and died of a suspected heart problem two days after getting the last in the series of three Gardasil injections. An 11-year-old girl suffered a heart attack three days after a Gardasil shot. And a 12-year-old girl with no prior medical problems died in her sleep three weeks after a Gardasil shot.”

Gardasil Side Effects: Should Women Get It? (19 August 2009)
“Published in today’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a study shows that of the 23 million doses of Gardasil administered to young women since it came on the market on June 1, 2006 to December 31, 2008, 12,424 adverse reactions have been reported. The data also show that 6.2%, or 772 of the young women, experienced serious side effects after taking the Gardasil vaccine, including anaphylaxis, a lethal allergic reaction, blood clots, pancreatic failure, and otor neuron disease.  There have also been 32 reports of death, and only 20 of the deaths could be verified, as the others were either provided by Merck & Co. without further information or unverifiable secondhand reports.
Despite the figures, the tone of the study was reassuring.
‘We feel confident recommending people get the vaccine; the benefits still outweigh the risks,’ said Dr. Barbara A. Slade, the study’s first author and medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which did the study together with the Food and Drug Administration.”

Infatuation is less evident in Europe with this expensive intervention, which carries serious risks, to ward off a very rare threat that can be avoided readily and with less risk:
“Now there is another side of the controversy: when inoculating a healthy population against a disease that can be prevented through screening, is any level of risk acceptable?
‘There are not a huge number of side effects here, that’s fairly certain,’ said the editorial writer, Dr. Charlotte Haug, an infectious disease expert from Norway, about the vaccine. ‘But you are giving this to perfectly healthy young girls, so even a rare thing may be too much of a risk. I wouldn’t accept much risk of side effects at all in an 11-year-old girl, because if she gets screened when she’s older, she’ll never get cervical cancer,’ Dr. Haug said in an interview.”

Deborah Kotz, blogging “On Women”, points to the difficulty of learning about cases of side effects:
“Gardasil Side Effects? Parents Seek Answers
. . . In response to my recent post about the government deciding to take a closer look at cases of paralysis that occurred after Gardasil vaccination, I received comments and E-mails from several devastated mothers whose daughters became ill for no apparent reason in the days and weeks after getting the vaccine . . . .
Here’s a sample:
‘My 21-year-old daughter, Chris, got her third shot of Gardasil on June 3, 2008,’ Emily Tarsell wrote me last week in an E-mail. ‘She was found dead in bed 18 days later. She was a healthy, bright, talented young lady who played on the tennis team at Bard College where she would have graduated with honors this year.’
‘My daughter developed epilepsy since being vaccinated, and when I share her experience with people, most doubt the connection,’ Nina Kenney wrote in an E-mail.
‘My daughter, in the middle of her series of injections of Gardasil, had a bout of Bell’s palsy that paralyzed the right side of her face,’ Della Smith wrote in this blog comment. ‘Two months after that, she was diagnosed with Graves’s disease. The doctor says an immune reaction to something he can’t determine is most likely responsible.’
No one knows if these girls were injured by Gardasil or just coincidentally got sick after the vaccination, but certainly their cases need to be thoroughly investigated. And after hearing the stories of several parents who contacted me, I find that one thing is glaringly clear: There is nowhere for them to turn for help besides one another. . . .
Some doctors refuse to file VAERS reports at all, and sometimes the reports contain incomplete or ambiguous information. Tarsell says she’s heard from a few parents via her website who said their doctors don’t believe Gardasil could have caused their daughters’ medical problems. In Tarsell’s case, the physician who filed the VAERS report wrote that the autopsy report found that her daughter died of an inflammation of the spleen caused by a life-threatening virus. While the autopsy did find some minor inflammation of the spleen, the report concluded that the death was due to ‘cardiac arrest, cause undetermined.’”

Other anecdotes come from Australia:
“Allie Harvey lined up along with 2.2 million other Australian women to be administered with Gardasil, the cervical cancer vaccine developed by former Australian of the Year Professor Ian Frazer. ‘I had a headache, I was dizzy, I was nauseous, my right side was weak, my right fist was clenched and I was hallucinating,’ Allie said. ‘It was absolutely terrifying because I didn’t know why it was happening. I felt absolutely terrified.’ . . . Far more frightening for the year 12 student — who received the first of three injections for the vaccine at school courtesy of a government sponsored initiative — was the response she received from the health professionals around her. ‘The nurses that had come in from the government told me that I didn’t have a rash, that it wasn’t a reaction to the immunisation, that I was pretty much making things up,’ Allie said. But Allie wasn’t alone. Jade Foreman, 15, is another of the 496 young women who have reported having adverse reactions to the vaccine. ‘I woke up one morning and tried to stand up and I couldn’t put pressure on my legs, I had funny feelings in my legs,’ Jade said. Since receiving the life saving injection at her school in June this year, Jade has been under intense physio to enable her to walk again. She is only able to cope with two hours of school per day. ‘I now have no social life,’ Jade said. ‘The pain is ruling my life. Apart from the lower back pain and the neck and the middle back pain, I’m having trouble with my arms dropping things and funny sensations in my arms. It’s just ruining my life.’
Scientist and health researcher Bronwyn Hancock believes the mass-distribution of Gardasil is simply unsafe. ‘The Gardasil vaccine has never been shown to be safe or effective in preventing cervical cancer,’ Bronwyn said. ‘There are so many limitations with the testing that they’ve done.’ As a member of the Vaccination Information Service, an anti-immunisation group, Bronwyn says the research behind Gardasil is too flimsy and that the 18 million women worldwide who’ve already had the vaccine could be setting themselves up for broader health and fertility issues. ‘They themselves admit they haven’t tested it to show that it doesn’t cause infertility or cancer,’ she said.”

Vaccine Watch: Gardasil Side-Effects? (8 July 2008; Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative correspondent for CBS News)
“Yesterday I spoke to the families of young women who believe the Gardasil HPV vaccine may have — or did in fact — cause their child’s serious illness. One of the cases involves a now 18-year old young woman named Amanda. Amanda’s parents say she developed a serious reaction to Gardasil after her first dose last summer. It began with soreness where she received the injection. The soreness eventually travelled down her arm, her legs, and led to a horrible autoimmune myofasciitis that is so painful Amanda had to go on morphine for the pain. She was transformed, through the illness, from a high school varsity sport athlete to a chronically ill person who takes a handful of pills a day just to keep her illness tolerable. When she goes off the medicine, the excruciating pain and other debilitating symptoms return. One thing that’s different about Amanda’s case than some of the others is that both of her parents [are] medical doctors who didn’t think twice about having their daughter get the shot — but are now second-guessing themselves. They call their daughter’s illness after Gardasil ‘a very sobering experience.’ Amanda’s dad says, ‘as the father of three girls, I’ve had to ask myself why I let my eldest one get an unproven vaccine against a few strains of a nonlethal virus that can be dealt with in many more effective ways. It’s not like they are at high risk. It was the regrettable acceptance of the vaccine party line that [mis]led me.’”

That last sad story illustrates the dilemma in which physicians find themselves when official sources combine with drug companies to tout interventions whose benefits are anything but obvious and which have been insufficiently tested, let alone proven.

*****************

So, let’s by all means now extend the “benefits” of these injections to boys:
“The vaccine would be administered in boys and young men exactly as it’s been given to girls and young women: three doses over a period of six months. Merck spokeswoman Pam Eisele said the cost will be $130 per dose.”

Here are the risks being guarded against:
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 20 million Americans are infected with HPV. There are 6.2 million new infections each year. The CDC says that at least 50 percent of sexually active men and women get an HPV infection at some time in their life. The American Social Health Association says HPV is the most common sexually transmitted virus and puts that number at 75 percent or more.”

Yet while these “infections” are so common as to be virtually routine, almost no one contracts the diseases that these infections supposedly cause:

“The CDC says that although HPV is very common in both sexes, most men won’t develop symptoms or serious health problems, and there is no test to detect the virus in men. The only approved HPV test on the market is for women, for use in cervical-cancer screening.”

By far the most serious claimed consequence of HPV is cervical cancer; but this is a very rare condition, and the incidence has in any case been declining for a couple of decades:

“in the past 40 years, the number of cases of cervical cancer and the number of deaths from cervical cancer have decreased significantly. This decline largely is the result of many women getting regular Pap tests, which can find cervical precancer before it turns into cancer.1 In 2005,* 11,999 women in the U.S. were told that they had cervical cancer, and 3,924 women died from the disease.2” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Let’s say half the infected are men and half women. So the incidence of cervical cancer was about 12,000 among 10 million, or 1.2 per thousand; and the death rate was one third of that and could be decreased to essentially none by better screening.

It seems that the serious “side” effects of the vaccine
are about as common
as what the vaccination is supposed to protect against.

Nevertheless:
“The advisory committee also voted that Cervarix, a new HPV vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline, appeared to be safe and effective for girls and young women 10 to 25 years of age. Cervarix has been approved in Europe. ‘This is an important step in cancer prevention for the millions of girls and young women at risk for cervical cancer,’ said Barbara Howe, vice president and director of North American vaccine development for GlaxoSmithKline.”
— not to speak of an important step toward greater profits for GlaxoSmithKline. And, of course, there are those unfortunate “side” effects:

“Still, the panel recommended that Glaxo do more studies that would monitor miscarriages and other problems reported by patients” [emphasis added].

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Here’s a pdf of this post. Please distribute it widely.

CDC MONGERS FEAR AND HAWKS DEADLY VACCINE

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
— have confused correlation with causation, thus committing perhaps the most elementary error against which students of statistics are warned (p. 194 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory);
— invented an “hierarchical” classification scheme that set HIV/AIDS on a wrong course and made multivariate analysis impossible (ibid, p. 19);
— disseminated propaganda that everyone was at risk for AIDS while knowing that “for most heterosexuals, the risk from a single act of sex was smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning” (Bennett and Sharpe, Wall Street Journal, 1 May, pp. A1, 6);
— use incompetent computer models (ibid, p. 223) and disseminate their flawed estimates rather than actual counts (pp. 221-2);
— reduced retroactively some actually reported numbers, thereby obfuscating a decline in “AIDS” deaths (ibid, p. 221);
— had the gall to say in 2005 that “HIV infections” in the United States had surpassed a million “for the first time” when they had been estimating about a million for the past two decades (ibid, pp. 1-2);
— increasingly commingle “HIV” and “AIDS” data so that the lack of correlation between them is obscured;
— and for reasons not difficult to infer, they have invented “HIV disease” (post of Friday, 28 December 2007).

Given all that (and more), I hardly imagined that I would ever be taken aback at anything said or done by the CDC. Still they managed to surprise me with the 11 March announcement that

“1 in 4 Teenage Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease
— 3.2 Million Female Adolescents Estimated to Have at Least One of the Most Common STDs” (CDC Press Release, 2008 National STD Prevention Conference—Confronting Challenges, Applying Solutions)

1 of every 4 teenage females just seems awfully high. But how can one argue with scientific facts?

“Chicago [March 11, 2008] – A CDC study released today estimates that one in four (26 percent) young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States – or 3.2 million teenage girls – is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, and trichomoniasis).… The two most common STDs overall were human papillomavirus, or HPV (18 percent), and chlamydia (4 percent). …CDC also recommends that girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26 who have not been vaccinated or who have not completed the full series of shots be fully vaccinated against HPV.”

The study was based on data from a survey done in 2003-4. Why did it take more than 3 years to release information of this importance? Perhaps there was no point in frightening people before an HPV vaccine was available?

“ ‘The statistics are certainly disheartening,’ said Dr. Dorothy Furgerson, medical director at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte” (Julie Sevrens Lyons, Mercury News).

Indeed. But disheartening perhaps for other reasons than Dr. Furgerson had in mind:
“The new study by CDC researcher Dr. Sara Forhan is an analysis of nationally representative records on girls and women ages 14 to 19 who participated in a 2003-04 government health survey. . . . [of] 838 teens”

One might wonder whether 838 could be truly representative nationally. But the main point here has to do with human papillomavirus and the touting of “full” vaccination against it. Here are some other facts from the CDC itself:

“Approximately 20 million Americans are currently infected with HPV, and another 6.2 million people become newly infected each year. At least 50% of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives
….
The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2008, 11,070 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in the U.S. . . . [and with other] HPV-related cancers . . .
3,460 women diagnosed with vulvar cancer;
2,210 women diagnosed with vaginal and other female genital cancers;
1,250 men diagnosed with penile and other male genital cancers; and
3,050 women and 2,020 men diagnosed with anal cancer.”

In other words, with 6.2 million newly infected with HPV annually, about 20,000 women annually will be diagnosed with a cancer “related” to HPV.

Keep in mind that it has never been proven that HPV causes the cancer; all the CDC has, once again, is a correlation.

Evidently the chance of contracting one of these “HPV-related” cancers if one is infected with HPV is 20,000 out of 6.2 million, about 1 in 300 or 3.3 per 1000. Can something that is “associated” with a cancer only three times in a thousand really be said to cause that cancer?

Even were that so, consider the relative risks of vaccination and of not vaccinating. Leave aside that the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, costs $120 for each of three required shots. Consider only that it was approved in June 2006 by the Food and Drug Administration, and that within less than a year there had come numerous reports of dangerous “side”-effects:

“Judicial Watch Uncovers Three Deaths Relating To HPV Vaccine” (24 May 2007)

“Judicial Watch . . . today released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three deaths were related to the vaccine. . . . As of May 11, 2007, the 1,637 adverse vaccination reactions reported to the FDA . . . included 371 serious reactions. Of the 42 women who received the vaccine while pregnant, 18 experienced side effects ranging from spontaneous abortion to fetal abnormities. Side effects published by Merck & Co. warn the public about potential pain, fever, nausea, dizziness and itching after receiving the vaccine. Indeed, 77% of the adverse reactions reported are typical side effects to vaccinations. But other more serious side effects reported include paralysis, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and seizures. ‘The FDA adverse event reports on the HPV vaccine read like a catalog of horrors,’ stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. ‘Any state or local government now beset by Merck’s lobbying campaigns to mandate this HPV vaccine for young girls ought to take a look at these adverse health reports. It looks as if an unproven vaccine with dangerous side effects is being pushed as a miracle drug.’”

Yet the CDC is urging this dangerous vaccine on all females aged between 11 and 26… Evidently, press releases from the CDC ought to carry a “black box warning”:

Not that it’s necessarily better elsewhere:

“Glaxo wins European Union approval to sell Cervarix” (byline Marthe Fourcade)
“Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — GlaxoSmithKline Plc won European Union approval for its cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix, allowing the company to compete with Merck & Co.’s Gardasil in the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market. The vaccine was cleared for sale in 27 countries . . . .”

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Sometimes toxic things (think antiretroviral drugs) have temporarily beneficial side-effects (the general phenomenon is known as “hormesis”). In this case, the toxic press-release from the CDC has the side-benefit of allowing me to recommend the book “Virus Mania” by Torsten Engelbrecht and Claus Köhnlein (www.trafford.com/06-3226 or orders@ trafford.com; 320 pp, softcover, US$24.00, C$27.60, EUR18.71, £12.40).

I had been in a quandary, what to write about this book, which I’d just been reading. It contains some important eye-opening material; but the translation from German leaves quite a bit to be desired, and the tone is strident at times in indicting institutions and companies for deliberate deception and putting profits ahead of everything else. But any such defects are dwarfed by those in CDC publications. Readers should of course reach their own opinion by checking the sources cited in “Virus Mania”—just as they should always check in CDC publications for inconsistency of data, for estimates masquerading as facts, and so on. But all quibbles aside,“Virus Mania” reveals palpable facts that bring into serious question the widespread official propaganda about hepatitis C, mad-cow disease, SARS, avian flu, and cervical cancer, as well as more generally about vaccination and virology—not to mention AIDS, of course.