Independent on Sunday’s HPV Scare Story
The Independent on Sunday apparently thought it would be a good idea to publish a front page story scaremongering about the HPV vaccine. Some elements remind me of previous unfounded vaccine scares promoted by the press and the anti-vaccine movement. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Safe’ WDDTY Magazine Kills Up To 200,000 A Year
Now, I don’t believe that around 200,000 people a year are dying because of What Doctors Don’t Tell You magazine. But nor do I believe that in the region of 1700 young girls have been killed by the HPV vaccine. WDDTY, apparently, do believe this. They’re certainly happy to tell people that this is the case, in the highly misleading headline of this article. So, where did WDDTY get their figure of “up to 1700” from? Read the rest of this entry »
WDDTY: McTaggart, McCartney and HPV Vaccination
After the What Doctors Don’t Tell You magazine’s October issue was published, Margaret McCartney, a GP, had an article in the BMJ criticising it. Some of the criticism related to Lynne McTaggart’s commentary on the HPV vaccines (something I wrote about here). McCartney took issue with the comments regarding deaths following HPV vaccination, stating that “to suggest that it has led to death is alarmist and does not reflect or explain the evidence collated by the Food and Drug Administration”. McTaggart has now responded to McCartney’s article in a blog post. Read the rest of this entry »
What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You and the HPV Vaccine
The magazine What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You (WDDTY), who have apparently threatened Simon Singh with legal action, are at the centre of a row over the content of their magazine and its appearance on the shelves of several major retailers. Blogger JQH gave his views on the magazine’s content here and Andy Lewis of the Quackometer blog asked the question should WHSmith stock the magazine. (Josephine Jones has now gathered a list of blogs covering the complaints and legal threat here.) I decided to take a look at the WDDTY article on the HPV vaccine. I was not impressed.
Warning: some of the quotes in this blog post may contain misinformation. Please carefully evaluate what you read.
On page 29, the article by Lynne McTaggart claims that the vaccine is “a dubious, untested, ineffective and highly dangerous solution” to the problem of cervical cancer.
A CDC page describes a number of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of Gardasil. It seems to me that to describe the vaccine, without any qualifiers, as “untested” is misleading.You can find further studies of Gardasil on Pubmed, including systematic reviews. Like this one, for example. The article later claims, in large text, that “Gardasil was never tested in young teenaged women”. This is number 10 in a list of 14 ‘facts’. Here is the full text of a paper that looked at HPV vaccination in young people. They didn’t use the same outcomes as the previous trials referred to but they did test the immunogenicity and safety of the vaccine in over 500 girls aged 10-15. It’s worth noting that none of the serious adverse events suffered by participants was linked to the vaccine. Gardasil may not have been tested in the manner that McTaggart would like it to have been, but it most certainly is not “untested”.
The CDC’s section on efficacy describes the vaccine as having “a high efficacy for prevention of vaccine HPV type HPV 6-, 11-, 16-, and 18-related persistent infection, vaccine type-related CIN, CIN 2/3, and external genital lesions (genital warts, VIN and VaIN)” in participants receiving three doses of the vaccine who had no protocol violations and had not previously been infected with HPV. It seems that Gardasil does in fact do what it is claimed to do – prevent HPV infection and the abnormal growth of squamous cells on the surface of the cervix. In this, it is effective.
McTaggart uses VAERS data to support her suggestion that the vaccine is dangerous. Sorry, “highly dangerous”. Here’s what the VAERS website says about interpreting data:
When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.
McTaggart also refers to deaths in India. As Andy Lewis points out, these deaths included a drowning, a snake bite and the effects of malaria. Using deaths that are clearly unrelated to the vaccine in order to spread fear about Gardasil is, well, an interesting way to make your case.
I think the kindest way to interpret McTaggart’s use of VAERS data and the deaths in India involves assuming that she was unaware of both the nature of the information in the VAERS database and the fact that many of the deaths reported following administration of the vaccine have actually been clearly and unambiguously unrelated to the vaccine. I know of no deaths that have been attributed to the vaccine after investigation.
If people’s decisions on healthcare are being influenced by magazines such as WDDTY, then these magazines have a duty to be very, very careful not to inadvertently mislead anybody on topics such as HPV vaccination. I think they need to be rather more careful than they currently are.
More
I’ve just typed around 600 words arguing against a fragment of a sentence. There is so much wrong with the HPV article and the magazine as a whole that to address it all would take an age. Here are just a few further (brief) comments on some of the problems with WDDTY.
In the HPV article, there is a boxout on page 30 that is headed “first invent the problem”. Lynne McTaggart might not think that cervical cancer is the most serious or the most common problem women face, but it’s certainly not been invented by the vaccine manufacturers. Hundreds of women die each year in the UK from cervical cancer. In the US, there are thousands of deaths.
On page 35, McTaggart points out that HPV expert Dr Diane Harper has distanced herself from Merck’s marketing tactics. She fails to mention Harper’s views on the vaccine itself. Fortunately, Ben Goldacre did, in 2009. “I fully support the HPV vaccines,” she says. “I believe that in general they are safe in most women. I told the Express all of this.”
I’ve only looked at the HPV article, but I think it would be a mistake to assume that the rest of the magazine is any better. JQH points out that the research on vitamin D that is discussed is not as clear-cut as WDDTY would have you believe. He also points out that there is a recommendation in one article to take Ginkgo Biloba, but no mention is made of potential side-effects of this remedy.
Daily Mail Science Correspondent on Vaccination
The Daily Mail have this week published an article on the HPV vaccine. Remarkably, it’s actually quite good. Certainly better than those written by Rachel Porter, Paul Sims, and the anonymous (and ubiquitous) Daily Mail Reporter. (See here, here, here, and here for my thoughts on those articles.) The journalist in question is Fiona MacRae. The article is about girls being denied the “life-saving cervical cancer jab” because of the religious objections of schools. As I say, it’s actually quite good. The only quibble I have is that it includes the following sentence: Read the rest of this entry »
PCC Judgement On Daily Mail HPV Article
Back in November last year, I complained about a Daily Mail article on the HPV vaccine. Another individual also complained (about the Mail and other newspapers) and the PCC decided that theirs would be the main complaint, with mine being considered alongside it. It’s taken over three months, but the PCC have now made an adjudication. Read the rest of this entry »
Daily Mail On HPV Vaccine
The Daily Mail have published an article about the HPV vaccine. You won’t be surprised to learn that the tone of the article is scaremongering – with the very real benefits of the vaccine downplayed and a focus on the hypothetical risks. Read the rest of this entry »
Another Sunday Express Article On Vaccination
This article (frozen here and available as a PDF here, for those who would prefer not to reward the Express by clicking the link to their website) has been written by Lucy Johnston and concerns an ingredient in the flu vaccine. Read the rest of this entry »
Dangerous Nonsense In The Sunday Express
Following the Daily Express’s spectacularly misleadingly-headlined article on the death of Natalie Morton (PARENTS’ REVOLT AFTER GIRL DIES IN CANCER JAB HORROR – a headline written, believe it or not, after it became apparent from a preliminary post mortem that Natalie Morton had actually suffered from an underlying health problem), the Sunday Express have surpassed themselves by writing a new article on the HPV vaccine. This article, despite being written after further facts on the sad death of Natalie Morton were made available, is headlined JAB ‘AS DEADLY AS THE CANCER’.* Read the rest of this entry »
Stuff And Nonsense 