I had intended to talk about the “incalculable” harm that may have been done by the recent irresponsible media reporting about HPV vaccine, but then I realised that much of the actual damage can be estimated quite accurately. Previous unfounded scare-mongering about the side effects of vaccines have always resulted in measurable declines in vaccination rates, which have always translated directly into additional deaths or cases of disease.
In the mid 1970s, unjustified concerns about whooping cough vaccine resulted in a decline in vaccination coverage in the UK from over 75% to below 40%. As a consequence, there were several outbreaks of pertussis, and in the intervening 12 year period (until vaccination rates increased to over 75% again and there were few recorded deaths from pertussis), there had been nearly a third of a million cases and 62 deaths.
The MMR debacle, which was almost entirely media-generated, saw a drop in vaccination rates in the under twos from over 90% in England and Wales (around the threshold required to provide good herd immunity) to 80% in 2004, and vaccine coverage is still struggling to recover.
As a result there have been significant measles outbreaks (which are still ongoing), measles has once again been declared to be endemic in Britain and our country has been identified as a major exporter of clinical measles, turning the once-achievable goal of eradication of measles in Europe into an impossible pipe dream.
There have been at least 2 deaths in England from acute measles (the last death before that having been over 15 years previously), and dozens of deaths across Europe. Many of the tens of thousands of children who have suffered measles will also go on to develop a fatal form of chronic encephalitis in their later years.
Now the media has turned its focus onto human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, which prevents infection with oncogenic strains of virus that can cause cancer. Cervical carcinoma is still a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in women, and one of the tragedies is that it should not occur at all. Cervical screening should pick up suspicious lesions before they turn malignant, allowing women to get curative treatment. But despite a vigorous national screening programme, there are still around 3000 cases of this disease and nearly 1000 deaths each year (nearly 3 every day).
Around half of all sexually active women will become infected with HPV in their lifetime. HPV vaccine, by preventing infection with 2 of the viral strains that cause over 70% of cervical cancers, is widely predicted to reduce the incidence of disease and save the lives of about 400 women each year. The recent uptake of HPV vaccine has been 70% among adolescent girls, the targeted vaccination group.
Previous scurrilous tales about supposed reactions to HPV vaccine have ensured that this would never be 100%, but the main obstacles to vaccination have been from the “conscientious objectors” who have decreed that having their children vaccinated is a recipe for moral fecklessness.
But following the most recent fevered exposés of “side effects” from the HPV vaccine (which in reality are merely entirely coincidental or fabricated illnesses), the HPV vaccine coverage will undoubtedly plummet. Certain sections of our media, which are willing to print any story true or not in order to fulfil an agenda will ensure that eventuality, and to hell with the consequences for public health and society.
Let’s say the vaccine coverage drops by a quarter as a result of the media campaign against the vaccine. This means that an additional 100 women will die sometime in the foreseeable future, and will continue to do so each year until vaccine rates improve again.
But will anyone pay attention to the damage? The consequences of his actions are likely to remain completely invisible to journalists such as the “Daily Mail Reporter” (who anonymously fronts up every shock story). He probably will not even realise, that in 15 years time when one of his relatives (perhaps even a daughter) is diagnosed with cancer, that he bears a large portion of that responsibility. Or if not cervical cancer, maybe a nephew with measles encephalitis, or a granddaughter with meningococcal meningitis, for he holds all vaccines in similar contempt, and delights in persuading his readers to do likewise.
This phoney propaganda war that some tabloids are waging against vaccines is criminally irresponsible, and it can have only one outcome; the destruction of the public’s confidence in what are truly remarkable and life-saving innovations. The end result can only be more disease and death, something I am becoming distressingly familiar with.
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This is a guest post by British doctor DeeTee.
http://layscience.net/trackback/666
So reporter, how many women did you kill today? It’s an ignorant question, again. Bringing the facts to the public, even when they counter the medical orthodoxy, doesn’t kill people. You’ve clearly been trained to have absolute faith in the system.
Dr Diane Harper of Dartmouth Medical School, who herself worked on the development of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, said in a CBS report on August 19: “the rate of serious adverse events is on par with the death rate of cervical cancer.” And on another occasion, she said: “All this jab will do is prevent girls getting some abnormalities associated with cervical cancer which can be treated. It will not decrease cervical cancer rates at all.” And last year, she told the New York Times this: “Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politician, and went directly to the people—it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now.” She told me personally she doesn’t think it should be administered to women as young as 11 or 12 years old.
Cervical cancer is a big problem in the developing world (and anywhere malnutrition or toxic overload is an issue)—but it is still listed as a rare disease in the developed world, which means we should accept only a small risk of harmful effects from the vaccine...which is anything but the case. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has reported that adverse events with Gardasil have been disproportionally high—one in every 1,855 shots is followed by a bad health outcome report.
ABC Chief Medical Editor Dr. Timothy Johnson has stated that for the first time in his career, he “cannot recommend a vaccine for its intended population—in this case, young girls.” He recommends parents read an August editorial in JAMA before they decide.
Dr. Scott Ratner, whose teenage daughter became very ill with autoimmune disease following her first HPV shot, told CBS his daughter was so ill with the neurological problem “..she’d have been better off getting cervical cancer than the vaccination.”
Vaccines are business, like any other. CNN Money reported that though Merck’s stock price is starting to climb out of its hole this year, the drug giant still faces a long uphill climb: “‘We have high expectations for Gardasil,’" wrote Tim Anderson of Prudential Equity Group in an analyst's note, where he said vaccine sales could be fueled by routine vaccination in girls as young as 11 and 12.” He’s projecting annual sales of $3.2 billion by 2010.
While I agree that giving the public the facts doesn't kill people, I would point out that much of what has been printed recently has been factually incorrect. For example, Richard Halvorsen's apparent insistence that there is no such thing as an asymptomatic tumour. Or the widespread reports that Natalie Morton's death was linked to the HPV vaccine. I could go on.
Irresponsible articles such as those in the Daily Mail and Sunday Express are likely to lead to lower vaccination rates and future (preventable) deaths, as DeeTee says. I am baffled as to how the question asked in the headline to this article can be considered ignorant.
While I don’t know the facts around Natalie Morton’s death (and therefore wouldn’t write about it), the facts I presented above may discourage people from getting the vaccine too, absolutely—and I wouldn’t appreciate being asked how many I’d killed by presenting them, which is why I applied the uncharacteristically strong label of ignorant to the question.
Facts leading to lower vaccination rates are not a bad thing, not when harm done by the vaccine is as great or greater as that done by cervical cancer. And the tragedy is that it is young women on the cusp of their lives that are felled, women who may or may not ever at mid-life or later have encountered cervical cancer.
@Connie: the vaccine being used in the UK is Cervarix, not Gardasil, so quoting opinion of the developer of the latter on its appropriateness or otherwise is not only irrelevant, it's disingenuous. The same goes for Dr Johnson's comments.
@Anonymous:
They’re different, true. Cervarix was designed with a novel adjuvant (AS04, which contains aluminum, a known neurotoxin) for the purpose of delivering a very strong immune response. And as both shots have been associated with autoimmune disease, the point that cervical cancer isn’t a major risk, and that Gardasil has harmed as many as the disease itself is valid one—Cervarix may well turn out to be equally devastating.
"...aluminum, a known neurotoxin"
I'd better get rid of my saucepans, dammit.
Oh, hang on, they're made of aluminium.
"You’ve clearly been trained to have absolute faith in the system."
Good heavens, the system doesn't have absolute faith in the system, that's what the flipping system is all about!
"women who may or may not ever at mid-life or later have encountered cervical cancer."
It isn't the point of vaccinations to give them only to those who will certainly develop the condition they vaccinate against. For multiple, pretty clear and obvious reasons.
Connie
Do you have any links to support your assertions?
The nonsense printed in tabloid newspapers is moronic, irresponsible trash designed to sell newspapers regardless of journalistic merit or who might get hurt or killed, and this remains true whether or not vaccines are harmful.
Which, by any reasonable standard, they're not.
"the point that cervical cancer isn’t a major risk,"... (I'm sorry, >2 deaths every single day in the UK alone? Pretty major, I'd say) ..."and that Gardasil has harmed as many as the disease itself"... [citation needed] ..."is valid one" Oh yeah? Sez you.
@Connie
Let's talk about Gardasil then. You said 1 in 1855 shots had a bad outcome. But what you did not say was that 90-95% of these "adverse" effects were classified as non-serious, and the adverse events reporting rate was "not greater than background rates compared with other vaccines".
Syncope and vasovagal syncope were present at higher rates and these were considered as "serious" adverse events. But the reporting rate for these were 8.2 cases per 100,000 doses administered. A higher incidence of falls and hence a larger chance of physical injury may occur as a result of syncope.
It seems like you just took the 53.9 reporting rate and divided it by 100,000 doses distributed to get your 1 in 1855 number. I think the overall message from the study you cited was that the vaccine is safe...
@connie: "cervical cancer isn’t a major risk".
I aways knew that anti-vaccination liars hated children, but when did they start hating adult women as well?
Cervical cancer is the fifth most frequent cause of women's death from cancer in the world, but of course that doesn't matter when there are vaccines to be lied about.
Not a major risk - it would be funny if it wasn't so stupid and irresponsible.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/index.html
D-Notice: which assertion do you want a link for?
Anonymous: That the rate adverse effects from Gardasil is on par with cervical cancer deaths came from Diane Harper, who developed the vaccine, in August on CBS.
That the disease isn’t a major risk in the developing world comes from official statistics. The National Institutes of Health (in the US) lists it as a rare disease. In Canada, it is responsible for about one per cent of all cancer deaths.
DBH: One in 1,855 is high, in my mind, for my daughter, but if it’s not high to you, then by all means, do what’s right for your family.
Peter: No need to resort to name-calling and false assumptions; I’m a feminist, have never hated women (though I have sometimes hated men). Cervical cancer is common worldwide, but the overwhelming majority of cases occur in the developing world, not in the western world. That’s because the disease has a significant number of risk factors that have nothing to do with any strain of HPV.
The New England Journal of Medicine wrote last year that, “despite great expectations and promising results of clinical trials, we still lack sufficient evidence of an effective vaccine against cervical cancer.” Is that a credible enough source for any of you?
But you’ve clearly made up your minds and don’t want the under-reported facts. I just thought I’d offer, in case anyone was interested, but I’m done now; it’s a waste of my time.
Connie: 'The New England Journal of Medicine wrote ..."we still lack sufficient evidence of an effective vaccine against cervical cancer.” Is that a credible enough source for any of you?'
Would this be the same New England Journal of Medicine quoted by the Harvard School of Public Health last year?
"The cost-effectiveness of vaccination in the United States against human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually-transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, will be optimized by achieving universal vaccine coverage in young adolescent girls, by targeting initial "catch-up" efforts to vaccinate women younger than 21 years of age, and by revising current screening policies, according to an analysis by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers in the August 21, 2008 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine."
Anyone can grab a quote...
Connie
The following:
"Dr Diane Harper of Dartmouth Medical School, who herself worked on the development of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, said in a CBS report on August 19: “the rate of serious adverse events is on par with the death rate of cervical cancer.” And on another occasion, she said: “All this jab will do is prevent girls getting some abnormalities associated with cervical cancer which can be treated. It will not decrease cervical cancer rates at all.” And last year, she told the New York Times this: “Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politician, and went directly to the people—it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now.” She told me personally she doesn’t think it should be administered to women as young as 11 or 12 years old."
"Cervical cancer is a big problem in the developing world (and anywhere malnutrition or toxic overload is an issue)—but it is still listed as a rare disease in the developed world, which means we should accept only a small risk of harmful effects from the vaccine"
"The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has reported that adverse events with Gardasil have been disproportionally high—one in every 1,855 shots is followed by a bad health outcome report."
"Dr. Scott Ratner, whose teenage daughter became very ill with autoimmune disease following her first HPV shot, told CBS his daughter was so ill with the neurological problem “..she’d have been better off getting cervical cancer than the vaccination.”"
"CNN Money reported that though Merck’s stock price is starting to climb out of its hole this year, the drug giant still faces a long uphill climb: “‘We have high expectations for Gardasil,’" wrote Tim Anderson of Prudential Equity Group in an analyst's note, where he said vaccine sales could be fueled by routine vaccination in girls as young as 11 and 12.” He’s projecting annual sales of $3.2 billion by 2010.""
"Cervarix was designed with a novel adjuvant (AS04, which contains aluminum, a known neurotoxin) for the purpose of delivering a very strong immune response."
i.e. the majority of your posts
A more measured assessment of the vaccine risks is described here:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/578110
In it there are direct quotes from Dr Harper.
"Serious adverse events reported do happen, but in small numbers of women being vaccinated, and some of these events may be so rare that they will never be directly linked to the vaccine."
That doesn't mean they don't happen, but risk assessemnt indicates this is a beneficial vaccine, and is one I would be quite happy to give to my daughters. Saying the risks from vaccine are the same as risks of the cancer are facile... 3 women die a day in the uk from Ca cervix, but no-one has died from vaccine. Connie you are being ridiculous.
The original post points out that the media has hyped reports of side effects quite unjustifiabley, and no-one can argue with this fact. You are spot on Deetee.
The doctor Harper concerned also had this to say about the vaccine trials:
"The results of this trial are actually stunning"
http://dartmed.dartmouth.edu/winter04/html/disc_vaccine.php
We must remember these vaccines are extremely effective.
The fact that she has subsequently pointed out there are also side effects (actually very very few) and that she has some reservations about vaccine programmes giving vaccine to 11 year olds (which is not done in the uk) is a side issue.
Connie, you say we have "absolute faith in the system", i.e. thousands of well-informed doctors and scientists, but then you show what looks rather like absolute faith in the opinions of 3 doctors.
For every doctor you cite I could cite a hundred who disagree. Why do you think you know better?
Also, just out of interest what on earth is "toxic overload"?
Also, also, out of interest, do you ever eat food? Because food companies make a lot of money out of food. Big Food is making billions out of food! Something bad must be going on! And you're sitting there eating it! Wake up!!!1111
I would like to take this opportunity to say "Jade Goody". That is all.
I'm not going to weigh in on the merits of the two HPV vaccines.
I will, however, comment on the deliberately provocative title of this post. You're no more credible and no more responsible than the media you criticize when your blog post headline suggests saving lives is part of a reporter's job description. That hed would never have made it past even one of The Daily Mail's editors. And it's the editors and copy editors who write the headlines, not the reporters themselves.
It wasn't the media who commissioned - or released - the Wakefield study, so saying the MMR debacle was media-generated is also specious.
What I'm seeing happening is this: empowered by the internet, UK doctors in particular have become positively rabid in their response to less than ideal reporting on and discussion of issues. The polarization of views leads to the entrenchment of opinions, not to greater understanding of risks and benefits of a particular course of medical treatment. The general public is skeptical of both the media and of the 'doctor as god' concept these days (would you care to talk about hormone replacement therapy and the decades of 'treatment' of menopause via HRT as a disease, which it is not)? I thought not.
I think it's time to start building some bridges rather than continuing to blow them up. Not sure how many readers your blog has vs The Daily Mail, but you'd be better off learning how to convey information effectively and learning how to reach audiences of varying levels of knowledge and education than continuing to fire broadsides and positioning yourself as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution.
"You're no more credible and no more responsible than the media you
criticize when your blog post headline suggests saving lives is part of
a reporter's job description."
I can't answer for DeeTee, but I completely and fundamentally disagree with this statement. You simply cannot report on health issues, and then claim that you have no responsibility for any lives affected as a consequence of the message you put out.
"It wasn't the media who commissioned - or released - the Wakefield
study, so saying the MMR debacle was media-generated is also specious."
The Wakefield study was obviously and critically flawed, and had been debunked by the medical community by the late 1990s. The media's MMR scare barely kicked off until the early 2000s, and many organs, rather than present a balanced view, concocted stories as ridiculous as the recentt Express piece on a regular basis. Journalists actively went out and sought to sensationalize and play up the scare. And again, I totally reject this idea that journalists don't have a responsibility to public health when reporting on public health issues.
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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Well said Ruth! But beware; Dr Peter Flegg (DeeTee) takes a very dim view of vaccine heretics. Such bridge-building heresies will be used against you if you are one who makes an annual subscription to the GMC.
If the Wakefield study HAD been successfully debunked by the medical community in the late 1990s it wouldn't have become an issue in the early 2000s. My point is that the hostile stance to the media taken by many UK doctors these days is not at all helpful and demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of how media works. Fighting fire with fire is not the way to go with the media. It's rarely even the way to go with fire. Surely you've heard the old saw, 'If it bleeds, it leads' - controversy sells newspapers, and that's what mainstream media is all about.
What you say is not necessarily what people hear. I recently found myself explaining the difference between non-enriched uranium used to fuel nuclear reactors and weapons-grade plutonium by saying it was like the difference between skim milk and whipping cream. That was an analogy that worked for my audience (of two), in a way that a more detailed and scientific recitation of facts, figures, a brief update on the periodic table and a crash course in fission would not have.
Are the media frustrating to deal with? They certainly can be. But if you have ever been on the receiving end of a half-hour dissertation from a scientist waving reports and going into mounds of detail acquired through seven years of post-secondary education who is incapable of synthesizing information so the general public can form its own opinion while a journalist waits for a simple answer to a pretty simple question (while the clock ticks towards a print deadline), you'd better understand the disconnect between the medium and the message. I hate to break it to you, but not even the concept of herd immunity has been successfully communicated to the general public. How do I know this? The giggles I get when I mention it to people with an average of 14 years' education, who are not at all entrenched in opposition to vaccines of any kind and actually have a clue about - and an interest in - how disease spreads. But the vast majority of newspapers are written for people who read at the grade three to six level, which in the UK is well below that of 'O' levels, much less 'A' levels.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's not about dumbing down information, it's about communicating effectively and successfully. Which is a whole harder than most people realize.
I'm not a vaccine heretic in any way, shape or form. My grandmother, who was, contracted smallpox in Ottawa early in the 20th C, as did two of her children. They survived, which means they either had extraordinary immune systems or it was not a particularly virulent strain.
In a conversation last year with an NIH doctor I mentioned to him that if you're over 40, live in Canada and work in an office, you have to dodge the annual flu vaccine, even though the vaccines developed annually rarely match the forms of flu likely to strike. He was bewildered, and told me that in the UK, regular flu vaccines are not advocated for those under 70 unless they're HIV positive. There are vast discrepancies even in the developed worlds between public health information, policy, and the administration of those policies. Which means everyone has to try a lot harder to get the information they need to make informed choices - which is why I say taking an antagonistic stance corrupts the communications process.
"But if you have ever been on the receiving end of a half-hour dissertation from a scientist waving reports and going into mounds of detail acquired through seven years of post-secondary education who is incapable of synthesizing information so the general public can form its own opinion..."
If it takes the scientist who did the work half an hour to explain it, how on earth are the general public going to understand it, and why would they want to if it's so arcane?
The idea that the general public are qualified to form their own opinion on complicated science after reading a few hundred words is very iffy. It would be unthinkable if you replaced "science" with, well, most other technical topics.
It would be ludicrous to suggest that the average man in the street could fly a plane, or fix a microwave, without the proper qualifications. Or to suggest that they could "form their own opinions" about aerodynamics or microwave maintenance.
It would be even more ludicrous if the person who was meant to be informing about these topics didn't understand them himself, and was working to a ridiculously tight deadline.
If a plane crashes or a microwave breaks you call an expert, you don't try to tackle the problem yourself.
Science journalists have a very difficult job. However, that's not an excuse for doing it badly. It's an explanation for why it happens.
It's also not an excuse to claim that scientists are bad at explaining themselves, because it takes scientists about 2 minutes to explain their work to other scientists in the field, which is what our jobs require. If certain people are unable to keep up the pace they should be better informed before asking the questions...
"If the Wakefield study HAD been successfully debunked by the medical community in the late 1990s it wouldn't have become an issue in the early 2000s."
The study had been debunked by that point - although it was never strong evidence in the first place so strictly speaking no debunking should have been necessary in order to prevent the scare... but that's another story.
You say we should be building bridges etc. but then you demonstrate that you don't know the history of the MMR issue, which as I'm sure you've realized is still a very sore point with us.
Here's what would really help to build bridges - admit that the MMR debacle was a debacle and that it was mostly the fault of certain people in the media, aided and abetted by the rest of the media who didn't stop them.
If you admit that then we have some common ground to build on, we could talk about whether things have improved and how to improve them. But if you defend the conduct of the media in the MMR case then, really, we'll find it difficult to discuss anything else.
Information without context is pretty much meaningless.
Respectfully, @neuroskeptic - what you've just said to me is 'agree with me and then we can talk' while accusing me of defending the media in the MMR debacle, which I was certainly not even trying to do. I'm neither attacking nor defending anyone. I'm merely trying to point out that aping sensationalistic behaviour while simultaneously condemning it is neither helpful nor effective, and that successful communication is tough.
The incident to which I referred related to the use of a chemical to kill organisms blocking a water intake valve in a large body of fresh water. It took half an hour to get the scientist to stop quoting actual data, dates, quantities, and frequencies and results and get him to the point of saying, 'it's the equivalent of putting a single drop of chlorine in a litre of water.' That's something pretty much everyone can understand. I mentioned the herd immunity concept because if you want 90% of a given population to get a vaccine, you're either going to have to persuade 90% of that population to do so or enact legislation to make it so.
I'm in awe of those with highly specialized information. What makes me despair is the notion that communication is a simple process and that we are all equally effective communicators. And with that, I think I'll bow out of this discussion.
Ruth
- the Wakefield study (Lancet Feb 28th 1998) was first debunked in the very same Feb 28th issue of the Lancet by a sceptical commentary by Chen and DeStefano.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9500313
The authors were even righter than they knew. For instance, they commented on the risk of "referral bias" (people who thought their children had gut problems related to vaccination might have sought out Wakefield's group). Later, of course, it emerged - the Wakefield paper did not disclose this - that the childrens' parents had in effect been sent on to Wakefield by the lawyers who were sponsoring his study.
More on this in a rather good comment from an old Left Brain Right Brain thread:
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=1914#comment-57173
The next issue of the Lancet (Mar 6th) also carried a ton of letters critique-ing the Wakefield study.
Essentially, the paper never had any "legs" in the scientific community, and the untold story, perhaps, is how it ever made it past the Lancet's referees in the first place.
The point of repeating this is that any journalist who had actually read the accompanying commentary, or had asked a vaccine specialist, or a paediatrician, or an epidemiologist, to comment or to provide "background" or context for Wakefield's work, could hardly NOT have heard these folk sounding lots of notes of caution right at the time the study first came out. However, little to none of the scientific caveats got heard, or printed. And the rest -sadly - is history.
Dr Biggus Dickus Horton was legless when he published the paper in the Lancet ...
"Essentially, the paper never had any "legs" in the scientific community, and the untold story, perhaps, is how it ever made it past the Lancet's referees in the first place."
http://briandeer.com/mmr/horton-wakefield.htm
Goodness, ShabbyTabby / CyberTiger / Papageno / PotTosser
- how many different internet aliases do you have?
Ruth,
I do take your point about my headline aping the behaviour I am criticising. Perhaps it could have been better chosen. Successful communication is tough, I would also agree, and I would be the first to say I am no expert, just a clinician trying to do his best to convey what I feel and hopefully make some people think twice about what they do and why.
I might upset or antagonise someone with my headline, but I certainly won't be contributing to someone's death. Whilst I appreciate your comments on our own abilities to communicate, I would like to have heard your thoughts about the subject of the article, not just the headline.
Just for completeness regarding the Dr Harper issue mentioned earlier by Connie....
Seems Dr Harper was seriously misquoted/misrepresented/misconstrued/misled. She has now filed a Press Complaints Commision report about the Express article. Both the BMJ (Rebecca Coombes) and Ben Goldacre have been in contact with her, and she denies just about everything.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/oct07_1/b4124
"Speaking to the BMJ, Harper, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, community and family medicine, and bioinformatics and personalised medicine at University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, said that she was extremely unhappy at the "horrible misconstruction" of her statements.
"I was not accurately quoted in either the Daily Mail or the Sunday Express," she said. "I never said that the ‘jab was as deadly as the cancer,’ nor was the interview exclusive [as was claimed]. The journalists did not reveal the autopsy results of Natalie Morton at the time of the interview, leaving the statement that she died after her injection—without clearing any inferences that the injection was the cause of her death, which we now know is clearly not the case."
Although Harper has reservations about the delivery of the mass HPV vaccination campaign, she is satisfied with the safety record of both vaccines.
"The evidence base is quite adequate for both vaccines. The evidence for Gardasil does show a very small risk of adverse events. Both vaccines are in general safe for most women."
(Deleted)
Editor: Again, I have no interest in censoring views or opinions, which is why I don't edit the comments of critics. However sustained, childish abuse directed at guest bloggers or other commenters is unacceptable; particularly when the person doing it makes no actual argument of their own.