A new marketing campaign is promoting the Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for teenagers and young adults — despite risks to human health, a high rate of adverse events and hundreds of ongoing lawsuits against its manufacturer, Merck.
“It was pretty clear right from the get-go that [Gardasil] was causing severe injuries,” said Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense and co-author of “The HPV Vaccine on Trial: Seeking Justice for a Generation.”
Holland joined attorney Michael Baum of Los Angeles-based law firm Wisner Baum on this week’s “Defender In-Depth” podcast to discuss the risks of Gardasil, the lawsuits against Merck, and the new and “extreme” marketing campaign promoting the vaccine.
FDA approval of Gardasil ‘outrageous’
Holland and Baum said the risks of Gardasil were already apparent during its clinical trials, but the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA) issued an approval anyway.
“The clinical trials [for Gardasil] showed significant risks with this vaccine,” Holland said, noting that the trials showed that “for women who already had cervical infections or had antibodies to these viruses in their system … they were at higher risk for developing abnormal lesions of the cervix or worse, meaning cancer.”
“In their own clinical trials, Merck showed [a] 46% increased rate of those bad lesions, … occurred among girls who had an active HPV infection at the time,” Baum said.
Yet, “the FDA signed off on this in their clinical review in 2006, saying there’s no clear evidence that it causes cancer, which is outrageous, frankly,” she said.
“What Merck doesn’t do and what physicians [and] healthcare advisors don’t do, is tell people you ought to test for an active HPV infection” before vaccination, Baum said.
Holland said women who intended to get pregnant were not allowed to participate in the clinical trials for Gardasil, yet some did. What resulted were “miscarriage rates … staggeringly higher than what are considered the background rates,” Holland said.
While average background rates for miscarriages range from 9-15%, “for Gardasil 9, it was a 27.4% spontaneous miscarriage rate,” she added.
Baum said the vaccine is connected to a higher incidence of other severe conditions, too.
“There’s about a 20 times greater rate of POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, compared to all other vaccines,” he said. “Very similar with premature ovarian failure. It’s up to a 50 times greater rate. Both of those conditions are the result of what we call Gardasil-induced autoimmune conditions.”
‘This is really about the money’
Holland and Baum questioned the need for a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.
“The clinical trials were designed to measure whether or not there were abnormal cell developments,” Baum said, adding that these typically “self-resolve over time.”
“It was a condition that was almost wiped out as a result of the Pap smear campaigns in the U.S. and other developed countries,” Baum added.
Yet, according to Baum, “One of the main sales points [of Gardasil] has been that it’s the only cancer-preventing vaccine out there.”
According to Holland, one reason for this is because the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “are captured agencies by Pharma.”
“This is really about the money,” she said. “This information is censored … This is not getting out to the mainstream, so people don’t know.”
‘They’re manipulating and abusing people’s altruism’
What the public receives instead is “marketing” promoting Gardasil, the lawyers said.
Referring to the new “HPV Fucks Everybody” campaign designed by PR giant Publicis Groupe, Holland said this is an example of “extreme” and “direct-to-consumer marketing, to pre-teenagers” for “vaccines, biologics that can actually kill some people.”
“I don’t know why anybody would go out with a shocking campaign like that,” Holland said. “It literally, in my view, just degrades the culture. And it’s incredibly deceptive. Just like with the COVID shots … they’re manipulating and abusing people’s altruism.”
According to Baum, the ads “appeal to those really positive features of individuals, to take advantage of them, and it’s wrong,” Baum said. “It’s all, to me, an attempt to make a lot of money from a fear-based vaccine and a fear-based vaccine campaign.”
HPV vaccinations also are increasingly being promoted and administered at schools.
Referring to a recent incident in France where a 12-year-old boy died days after fainting after receiving Gardasil, Holland said that often, in such settings, “there’s no informed consent … there can be deprivation of parents’ rights, their religious rights, their informed consent rights. Then there’s the immediate risk to the children, like this boy.”
“One of the ways that I think this is perpetuated is that they have not been counting properly the adverse events that occur as a result of Gardasil vaccination,” Baum added, referring to evidence he and other lawyers uncovered during the discovery process in ongoing lawsuits against Merck.
Undercounting allows Merck to promote Gardasil as ‘”one of the safest vaccines ever,” Baum said. “That’s just not true.”
Hundreds of lawsuits filed for Gardasil-related injuries
Baum said advocacy and legal cases challenging Gardasil increasingly are succeeding.
“We successfully opposed a vaccine mandate in California schools and created a position paper … showing the harms and the failures to actually prevent cancer,” he said. “That data, given to the legislators, resulted in their changing their minds.”
And despite the challenges applicants face when filing a claim in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) — which is required before filing a lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer — claims are proceeding.
“If you’re in [VICP] for 240 days and you do not get an acceptable settlement from the program, you’re allowed to sue the manufacturer,” Baum said, noting that 110 lawsuits are currently consolidated in multi-district litigation and an additional 145 are pending, 205 cases are in the VICP program and several more are working their way through state courts.
The attorneys urged parents to be vigilant about the risks of Gardasil for their children.
“Remember that Merck is a global corporation,” Holland said. “They’re operating in a global context, and this is what they want for every pre-teenager around the world.”
Watch this week’s ‘The Defender In-Depth’:
Listen to this episode on Spotify here.
