By Gary Null PhD and Nancy Ashley VMD | January 25th, 2012

With complete disregard for the welfare and safety of the people who take their products, the pharmaceutical industry has made a habit of putting profits above all else. Despite a track record of bringing us drugs that kill and maim, such as Vioxx, AZT, Fen Phen, and Thalidomide, there is never an apology, never a commitment to improve, never even an acknowledgement that they have done anything wrong. Now, as if we have learned nothing from history, the drama is unfolding yet again, this time with Gardasil.

Gardasil, the human papillomavirus vaccine produced by Merck, was brought to market in 2006 with great fanfare, widely proclaimed as the first ever anti-cancer vaccine. Merck created a market for Gardasil out of thin air with deceptive and dishonest advertising,^[1] and thereby planted fear in the mind of consumers: fear of an enormous, yet unknown health crisis, an invisible time bomb waiting to explode and harm women everywhere. When criticized for their aggressive marketing, Merck countered that they were performing a public service by raising awareness about the human papillomavirus and weren’t selling anything.^[2] Really?

This lie became public as Merck was caught lobbying the 50 states for mandatory Gardasil vaccination before it had even secured FDA approval![^3] The fact is that there was never a need for Gardasil in the first place: regular Pap testing had already lowered the incidence of cervical cancer by 80% in the US to a few thousand cases a year and the vast majority of all HPV infections resolve of their own accord.[^4]

But by lining the coffers of such groups as Women in Government (WIG), and, of course, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Merck was able to influence legislation such that almost immediately after the vaccine was approved, it was part of the vaccine schedule recommended for all girls.^[5] If it hadn’t been for Governor Rick Perry’s blunder of trying to mandate Gardasil for school attendance in Texas in the face of huge conflict of interest and a $50 million contribution to his presidential campaign, Gardasil might have gone even further.^[6]

There is something deeply wrong with a giant pharmaceutical company spending hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate women and influence legislation in order to generate a revenue stream of billions of dollars a year for themselves at the expense of a gullible public. Because what is wrong with Gardasil isn’t just that it is unnecessary. Gardasil is possibly the most dangerous vaccine on the market with the potential to injure, maim, or even kill the children who receive it.

The program of coercion to vaccinate every 11 to 26 year-old girl with Gardasil is relentless. This vaccine is given not just in doctor’s offices, where doctors have been known to “fire” non-compliant patients, but in schools and colleges, where the pressure on girls and their parents to conform can be extreme. These institutions all have quotas — sometimes including financial rewards — and they are anxious to prove high rates of compliance.^[7]

But there is no informed consent prior to vaccination, so most of these girls and their parents have no idea what they are risking by agreeing to vaccination with Gardasil. While Merck, the FDA, the CDC and the medical establishment all deny that there have been serious, life-altering adverse events associated with Gardasil, the fact is that compared with the mandated vaccines which are given with greater frequency, Gardasil still has the most adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of any vaccine. And since reporting of adverse events is not mandatory in the US (although outbreaks of so-called vaccine-preventable illness are), it is likely that only 10% even get reported!^[8]

POSTED 6 January 2012

GlaxoSmithKline Argentina Laboratories company was fined 400,000 pesos ($93,000USD) by Judge Marcelo Aguinsky following a report issued by the National Administration of Medicine, Food and Technology (ANMAT in Spanish) for the killing of 14 babies during illegal lab vaccine trials conducted between 2007 and 2008.

Likewise, two doctors -Héctor Abate, and Miguel Tregnaghi- were fined with 300,000 pesos each for irregularities during the studies.

The charges included experimenting with human beings, falsifying parental authorizations so babies could participate in vaccine-trials conducted by the laboratory from 2007 to 2008.

Since 2007, 15,000 children under the age of one from Mendoza, San Juan and Santiago del Estero have been included in the research protocol, a statement of what the study is trying to achieve. Babies were recruited from poor families that attended to public hospitals.

A total of 7 babies died in Santiago del Estero; 5 in Mendoza; and 2 in San Juan.

Pediatrician Ana Marchese, who reported the case through the Argentine Federation of Health Professionals (FESPROSA in Spanish), and was working at the Eva Perón children's public hospital in Santiago del Estero when the studies wee being conducted, said this morning in conversations with Continental AM radio that “GSK Argentina set an protocol at the hospital, and recruited several doctors working there.”

“These doctors took advantage of many illiterate parents whom take their children for treatment by pressuring and forcing them into signing these 28-page consent forms and getting them involved in the trials.”

“Laboratories can't experiment in Europe or the United States, so they come to do it in third-world countries."

Colombian and Panama were also chosen by GSK as staging grounds for trials of the vaccine against the pneumococcal bacteria.

Likewise, Marchese, explained the modus operandi: “Once a picked patient arrived, it would automatically disappear to be taken somewhere else in order to be treated by those doctors specially recruited by GSK. These kind of practices are not legal and occurred without any type of state control, plus they don’t comply with minimum ethical requirements.”

Marchese also remembered that “laboratory trials on human beings are not legalized in Argentina.”

Furthermore, the pediatrician explained that “it is also known that in various particular cases, the doctors who had conducted the trials did not answer the calls made by the worried parents after witnessing their babies’ reactions to the vaccines.”

According to Marchese, “there already exist very good vaccines for the same diseases, but we all know how laboratories work, they only care for their own business.”

To end, Doctor Marchese aimed to Santiago del Estero Governor, Gerardo Zamora, who “never ever came out to stage to comment on the case, and same happened with national deputies and senators that didn’t even bother into discussing a hot topic that was echoed worldwide. I’m also ashamed of the scientific community that also kept its mouth shut.”