New data suggests that the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, has utterly failed in its primary purpose of preventing HPV-related cancer.
First some backstory: In 2006 pharmaceutical giant Merck launched an award-winning ad campaign for their brand new product, Gardasil.
They trumpeted Gardasil as the first “Cervical Cancer Vaccine.”
Hand in glove with this campaign, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) enthusiastically recommended all girls aged 11–12 years receive three doses of the vaccine.
In addition, the committee recommended “catch-up” vaccination for females aged 13–26 years.
Then, in 2009, the US Food and Drug Administration licensed the HPV vaccine for use in boys and young men, ages 9 through 26 years.
Today the CDC recommends either two or three doses of the HPV vaccine for all boys and girls, starting at age 9.
You could be one less!
Though it’s now urged on both boys and girls, Merck’s early advertising campaigns targeted girls and young women.
You could be “One Less” case of cervical cancer, Merck told adolescent girls, if you have three doses of their spiffy new vaccine.
(They ran an even more obnoxious ad campaign in 2016, with kids asking “Mom, Dad, did you know” that my cancer could have been prevented? But I digress.)
Gardasil was designed to protect against infection by several strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV.
What the ads did not mention, however, was that the majority of HPV infections are asymptomatic and clear up by themselves within two years with no intervention whatsoever.
A vaccine against cancer, what’s not to like?
At first blush, Gardasil sounded like a terrific idea.
“A vaccine against cancer!” a friend enthused to me many years ago. “Who could not want that?!”
(This same friend, a smart, very liberal, and very hardworking young woman who herself decided not to have children, also didn’t understand why C-section birth could be problematic, since all her friends were having them. But I digress. Again.)
After all, long-term HPV infection—generally on the order of decades—with high-risk strains of the virus has been associated with a very high percentage of cervical cancers. And approximately 12,000 cervical cancers were diagnosed in the United States annual, causing on the order of 4,000 deaths a year.
If you prevent the infection, you prevent the cancer. If you prevent the cancer, you prevent the deaths. What’s not to like?
An expert on cervical cancer weighs in
But even early on, it became increasingly clear that Gardasil wasn’t actually offering the straightforward protection it was advertised to give.
In 2009 and 2010, Dr. Diane Harper, M.D./M.P.H., an expert on HPV infection and a lead researcher in the Gardasil clinical trials, painted a far more nuanced picture of the potential benefits of the vaccine.
In a country with high rates of testing for cervical cancer, like the United States, Harper said, the vaccine would be unlikely to significantly reduce cervical cancer rates.
Harper also warned that Pap smears would still be necessary.
A pap smear, or Pap test, is an uncomfortable procedure that involves a doctor scraping cells from the cervix to test them. The doctor or a lab technician then checks the cells under a microscope, looking for cancerous cells or abnormal cells that have the potential to become cancerous.
If the vaccine resulted in less frequent Pap screenings, Harper warned, the widespread use of the vaccine could even raise cervical cancer rates.
A 2003 Stanford study
A Stanford University study published in 2003, before the vaccine came to market, arrived at a similar conclusion.
After vaccinating 70% of girls for about 60 years, the scientists argued, we could potentially prevent 3,300 cases of cervical cancer and save 1,300 lives.
In sixty years without vaccinating, on the other hand, we could expect 720,000 cases of cervical cancer. And we could expect about 240,000 deaths.
Saving 1,300 lives could mean a reduction in overall deaths by 0.5%.
That’s it.
In other words, sixty years of vaccinating the majority of adolescent girls, and we might reduce the death rate from cervical cancer by half a percent.
Still, the Stanford scientists declared the HPV vaccine would be “cost effective” because the costs associated with cervical cancer cases are high.
Cost effective for whom?
The Stanford study failed to consider the costs associated with adverse effects of the vaccine.
To say nothing of the high cost of the vaccine itself (with a list price of $286.78, Gardasil is an expensive vaccine. Paying out of pocket, three doses will set you back $860.34.)
One thing is certain, however. Right from the start, Merck started making an enormous amount of money from Gardasil.
A 2023 article from FiercePharma crowed “Merck, nearing completion of $1B manufacturing push, eyes 2023 to double production—again.”
And the 2023 numbers were indeed really good: Merck raked in $8.9 billion from Gardasil that year.
Severe side effects
Worse than the science that shows that the vaccine packs very little bang for some very big bucks is the fact that reports of very severe side effects have dogged the vaccine from the start.
There were devastating reports of previously healthy, athletic teens and young adults dying. As well as reports of young people experiencing debilitating autoimmune illnesses like complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) after getting these shots.
With reports pouring in, Japan halted their HPV vaccine program in 2013. Despite a great deal of pressure, Japan only resumed routine vaccination in 2022.
Nearly 20 years later, we now have the numbers to show that Gardasil has failed
So, after 18 years in the game, how is Gardasil doing to reduce the cervical cancer death rate?
Vaccine uptake is high. According to Statista, “As of 2022, around 78 percent of female teenagers had received at least one dose of HPV vaccination, compared to 74 percent of male teens.”
That’s well above the 70% of girls assumed in the Stanford study.
In addition, the CDC claims there are about 11,500 cases of cervical cancer a year.
A reduction in 500 cases per year would put us well past our estimated reduction of 3,300 cases over sixty years and would be cause for cheering—if it were true.
Too bad it isn’t.
The American Cancer Society claims, “Studies are increasingly demonstrating steep reductions in the risk of cervical cancer among vaccinated women that are largest with immunization at or soon after the recommended age.”
The ACS immediately undercuts its own statement with actual numbers in the same report: “In 2024, an estimated 13,820 cases of invasive cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the US and about 4,360 women will die from the disease.”
I know I’m throwing a lot of statistics at you, but in case you missed it, that means we are now seeing nearly 2,000 more cases of cervical cancer than the pre-vaccine average of 12,000, and a higher number of deaths.
The ACS further undercuts its enthusiastic claim that Gardasil is to be thanked for “steep reductions” as well, saying that “Some types of cancer aren’t increasing in overall incidence but are increasing in subgroups,” and then lists “Cervical cancer in women ages 30 through 44” as one of the four listed subgroups. Oh, and another is “Oral cancers associated with HPV.”
We’ve been vaccinating for 18 years now.
Those first 12-year-olds are 30, and their “catch-up” friends and siblings are older now.
So, the first vaccinated cohort—which should be the first to demonstrate a reduced cervical cancer rate—is now 29 to 44 years old.
And that is the exact demographic experiencing an alarming rise in incidents of cervical cancer.
Author’s note: If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Two outstanding journalists from the Toronto Star wrote a meticulously researched and heartbreaking article about girls and young women who had been permanently injured or died after vaccination with Gardasil. That article created so much anger and outrage among Canadian doctors who were enthusiastically recommending the vaccine, however, that the newspaper issued a retraction and then expunged the article from the Internet. When I reached out to the two authors several years ago, as well as to their editor, I was told they could not discuss the censorship with me, on or off the record. I saved a PDF of the article and I will be publishing the devastating information it contains behind a paywall this coming Sunday. The Epoch Times has also been publishing detailed information about the untold harms of the Gardasil vaccine (also behind a paywall). These articles, including this one (which I co-wrote with molecular biologist Dr. Joe Wang), this one, and this one, are must-reads if you’re interested in this topic. And I highly recommend the documentary film, “Under The Skin.”
About the author: Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science journalist and book author.
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Gardasil was my first under the hood look at true corporate malfeasance. The assumptions used were all wrong: HPV causes cervical cancer being the main one There was a pushing of HPV to nonvaccinated strains. Side effects were absolutely ignored under a sinister it's teenage girl hysteria rationale. Then the spiral widened to boys who, it should be noted, do not have a cervix, under some vague things about incredibly rare penile cancers and protection of their future sexual partners. It was all hypotheticals based on nypotheticals.
I suspect they used the same marketing playbook with Covid jabs and just took it into overdrive
In a legal courtroom, if a witness is caught lying, his entire testimony becomes suspect. Similarly, if a vaccine manufacturer is so blatantly lying about a particular vaccine, then the entire vaccine schedule is tainted with distrust.