Having been given space by the Daily Mail to write a column on vaccination two days ago, Dr Richard Halvorsen has today been given air-time by Radio 4. The programme is available here on iPlayer and an unverified transcript is available here.

At one point in the interview (4 minutes 06 seconds to 4m 39s), Dr Halvorsen refers to the introduction of the HPV vaccine as being "rushed". Halvorsen appears to believe that not only has the vaccine been introduced prematurely, but that hype and marketing campaigns by Big Pharma are partly responsible for this:

... the new HPV vaccine was rushed on at a very fast rate. Partly because of the huge hype by the drug manufacturers to market the vaccine. They've been widely criticised for their marketing campaign. They paid doctors' organisations, patients' organisations, doctors. And in fact, they were congratulated for their vaccine as being the Brand of the Year by a marketing campaign for making a market out of thin air.

This criticism of what Dr Halvorsen sees as "huge hype" and a successful marketing campaign is interesting when contrasted with some of Halvorsen's other comments in the same interview. For example:

I run a Baby Jabs and Immunisation Clinic. I run an immunisation clinic. [...] my book, The Truth About Vaccines [...] yet again, I run a vaccine clinic

Halvorsen's book and clinic were also both mentioned by the presenter in the introduction to the show. Like the Today show, the Daily Mail article written by Dr Halvorsen had a plug for his book, and there was a also a reference to Halvorsen's clinic in the article.

In his opening comments, Dr Halvorsen states that "the initial reaction is one that certainly the vaccine has to be a suspect cause to the problem. And to think otherwise would be unreasonable". It may be worth pointing out that, as NHS Choices remark:

No link should ever have been made. However, the girl died on the same day as receiving her vaccination and this led to associations being drawn between the jab and her death. This happens largely through misinterpretation of probabilities. Unfortunately, young people do die suddenly of natural causes. Although such events are rare, they are statistically much more common than fatal reactions to routine medical treatments.

Given that it is more common for young people to die suddenly of natural causes than to suffer a fatal reaction to a routine medical treatment, it does not seem unreasonable to me to think that a vaccine does not have to be a suspect cause. Perhaps Dr Halvorsen was unaware of the probabilities involved, or misinterpreted them.

Halvorsen (1m 06s to 1m 30s) goes on to argue from personal incredulity:

I think clearly it does not appear to be the primary cause though it's interesting that a tumour of the, a malignancy a tumour, a cancer that could apparently kill her at any time sounds very bizarre when apparently she was well one hour beforehand, well enough to have a vaccine. Yet she has a malignancy that could have killed her at any time.

The idea that a girl due to be vaccinated may have a tumour that could kill at any time may sound bizarre to Dr Halvorsen, but that does not give us any reason to doubt the veracity of the claim that Natalie Morton had such a tumour. We should not assume that a claim is untrue simply because somebody finds it surprising and Dr Halvorsen provides no reasoning to support his suprise. If Halvorsen considers the findings of the post mortem to be implausible, it would be helpful if he could explain why he holds this belief.

Around the two-minute mark, Dr Halvorsen claims that "The risks of vaccines are downplayed and in fact, the risks of the diseases that are meant to be protected by vaccines are also exaggerated" - fortunately, Adam Finn responds to this:

I think that we have to be a bit careful that we use evidence rather than opinion in these kind of conclusions.
The epidemiology of vaccine-preventable disease provides a very solid base for the programmes that we use. All of which, in this country, are very carefully scrutinised for cost benefit as well as for health benefit. So, I think it's important to recognise that the opinions that Dr Halvorsen expresses today and in the Daily Mail put him in a very small minority amongst GPs who are equally well qualified to comment and who don't agree with him.

The presenter then remarks: "And the point, Adam Finn, that you make, is that we don't know - we don't meet - we don't see on the front pages - the people who are protected by vaccines." For every death or adverse event that is linked to vaccination, whether correctly or spuriously, there are many lives saved. The problem is that any deaths will be highly visible, whereas the lives saved are unseen - as Adam Finn puts it:

... stories such as this story this week, and this poor girl, are very powerful. They have very powerful effects on us. But what we don't see, and are not really aware of, are the vast armies of people who are walking around healthy, unmaimed, and 'not dead' today because of the vaccines we've been using for the last 50 years.

Notes
I have quoted from the transcript provided by Evidence Matters, but have made one or two slight changes where my interpretation of the available audio differs from that of Evidence Matters.