1. World Mercury Project Aug. 4th, 2017: High-Risk HPV Type Replacement Follows HPV Vaccination
Markowitz LE et al., 2016 Prevalence of HPV After Introduction of the Vaccination Program in the United States. Pediatrics. 2016 Feb 22. pii: peds.2015-1968.That study concluded that type replacement did not occur because their univariate analysis of individual types showed no individual type with a significant increase. However, because the vaccines do clear the vaccine-targeted types, the lack of change in overall infection rate shows that type replacement must be occurring.The second study is by Fisher et al. (2016), which specifically found that high-risk HPV types replaced the vaccine-targeted types. They wrote “the percentage of non-vaccine HR-HPV types was higher than expected, considering that eight HPV types formerly classified as ‘low-risk’ or ‘probably high-risk’ are in fact HR-HPV types.”Fischer et al 2016: Shift in prevalence of HPV types in cervical cytology specimens in the era of HPV vaccination. Oncol Lett. 12(1):601-610.A third study is that by Guo et al., (2015) that also clearly found evidence of type replacement occurring as a result of HPV vaccination:“The prevalence of high-risk nonvaccine types was higher among vaccinated women than unvaccinated women (52.1% vs 40.4%, prevalence ratio 1.29, 95% CI 1.06–1.57), but this difference was attenuated after adjusting for sexual behavior variables (adjusted prevalence ratio 1.19, 95% CI 0.99–1.43). HPV vaccination was effective against all 4 vaccine types in young women vaccinated after age 12. However, vaccinated women had a higher prevalence of high-risk nonvaccine types, suggesting that they may benefit from newer vaccines covering additional types.”
Guo et al., 2015. Comparison of HPV prevalence between HPV-vaccinated and non-vaccinated young adult women (20-26 years) American Association for Cancer Research Meeting, Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; 2015. Abstract nr 844
A fourth study is that by Mollers et al., who wrote
“…our findings do suggest that clustering differs among HPV types and varies across risk groups.”
and
“The ecological niche could also be taken through type replacement, which refers to the possibility that elimination of HPV16 and HPV18 could lead to an increased transmission of nonvaccine types. For this to occur, antagonistic interactions are required between vaccine types and those not included in the vaccine (8, 9). Type replacement has been observed following vaccination against other pathogens (e.g., Streptococcus pneumoniae) (10) and is plausible whenever genotypically diverse pathogen strains compete for the same hosts.”
Mollers M et al., 2014. Population- and type-specific clustering of multiple HPV types across diverse risk populations in the Netherlands. Am J Epidemiol. 179(10):1236-46. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwu038.
A study of Italian women also considered type replacement and wrote that “an accurate post-vaccine surveillance is necessary to early detect a possible genotype replacement”:
Giambi C et al., 2013. A cross-sectional study to estimate high-risk human papillomavirus prevalence and type distribution in Italian women aged 18-26 years. BMC Infect Dis. 13:74. doi: 10.1186/1471-2334-13-74.
…studies now from the US, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands all support the same conclusions: there is evidence for grave concern over the adequacy of HPV vaccines: while the vaccine-targeted types are cleared, the hundred or so that can replace them across the sexually active population includes pathogenic types that may be more lethal than those targeted by the vaccines.
There are other studies that show type replacement. While some studies may show no type replacement, negative results do not take precedence over positive results. At best, one could say that the science is unsettled. However, CDC’s own study showed no net change in HPV infection rate, and studies now from the US, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands all support the same conclusions: there is evidence for grave concern over the adequacy of HPV vaccines: while the vaccine-targeted types are cleared, the hundred or so that can replace them across the sexually active population includes pathogenic types that may be more lethal than those targeted by the vaccines.
The statistics on the types that are said to be known to cause the most cancers are potentially misleading, because there is an inverse relationship between the ability of the pathogen to cause disease (morbidity) and death (mortality). If you count numbers of cases, yes, HPV-16 appears to be high-risk. But the low-frequency types may be even HIGHER risk – which would explain why they are low-frequency.
The study from Germany (Fisher et al., 2016) is definitive, and we have our answer: HPV type replacement is real, and is caused by partial vaccination against an oncogenic virus group.
Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, PhD is the author of several books, including “Ebola: An Evolving Story”, “Cures vs. Profits: Successes in Translational Research”, and “The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism”. He is the CEO and Director of IPAK, The Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, a not-for-profit pure public charity research institute focused on the reduction of human pain and suffering. You can support IPAK and its various projects, studies and initiatives at ipaknowledge.org. You can read more of Dr. Lyons-Weiler’s analyses at jameslyonsweiler.com and find his peer-reviewed publications at Pubmed.
The Vaccine Reaction Jul. 18th, 2017: EU Court Ruling May Hold More Vaccine Makers Accountable
“Justice is generally best served when courts are free to admit whatever relevant evidence they wish and judge it on its own merits along with the rest.” — Alex Stein, Brooklyn Law School
Many people are unaware that in 1986 Congress gave the U.S. vaccine industry a shield from product liability that is unlike any other in existence. In most cases, if a pharmaceutical product injures or kills a person, the manufacturer of that product can be held financially accountable in a civil court of law. With vaccines, however, this is not the case.
In the U.S., there is a federally operated vaccine injury compensation program(VICP) that Congress created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.
The VICP was created 30 years ago as an administrative alternative to a lawsuit when federally licensed vaccines recommended for children cause injury or death. Federal compensation was supposed to be awarded when there was no other biologically plausible explanation for the vaccine-related injury or death, and plaintiffs denied federal compensation or offered too little were supposed to be able to access civil courts.
However, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ruled that federally licensed vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” and completely removed liability from the vaccine industry—even if it could be proven that a manufacturer had the ability to make the vaccine less reactive.
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington handles vaccine injury and death cases contested by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Justice in what has become known as “vaccine court.” The federal VICP compensates vaccine victims through a federal trust fund that collects a surcharge on every dose of vaccine purchased and administered, which means that vaccine manufacturers pay nothing into the vaccine injury trust fund even though they have no product liability.
To add insult to injury, government agencies and the U.S. Court of Claims deny federal compensation to the majority of vaccine-injured plaintiffs. As noted by the National Vaccine Information Center’s Barbara Loe Fisher at the Revolution for Truth Rally earlier this year:
The $3.6 billion in federal vaccine injury compensation that has been awarded to more than 5,000 vaccine victims since 1988 doesn’t begin to pay for the damage done; not when two out of three claims are denied.
A recent ruling by the highest court of the European Union, however, could change the vaccine injury compensation landscape—in Europe, at least—and the ruling has the vaccine industry up in arms over potentially being held financially accountable in European civil courts for illnesses and injuries caused by government recommended and mandated vaccines.
EU Court Rules Circumstantial Evidence Should Be Considered in Vaccine Injury Cases
In many vaccine injury cases, it can be difficult if not impossible to prove cause and effect and directly link a related injury with the vaccine, in part because such injuries may occur days, weeks or months later and also because the quality and quantity of vaccine safety studies is extremely poor. Vaccine companies and government health agencies have refused to conduct methodologically sound research into how and why vaccines cause harm and who is biologically at greater risk for being harmed.
In 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), recently renamed Health and Medicine Division of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), appointed a physician committee to review over 1,000 vaccine studies on eight vaccines routinely administered to children. For more than 100 adverse health outcomes reported following vaccination, IOM was unable to determine whether or not the vaccines caused a commonly reported brain or immune system disorder.1
In short, the quality and quantity of the scientific evidence related to a wide range of brain and immune system disorders was insufficient to make a conclusion about whether or not a vaccine causes those disorders in a previously healthy person or a person biologically susceptible to vaccine harm.
So the IOM committee was unable to confirm or deny causation for most reported poor health outcomes, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, learning disabilities and autism, following receipt of certain vaccines. This does not exonerate vaccines as being safe, but rather highlights the challenges faced when a person attempts to prove a causative link between a vaccine they’ve received and a related illness or injury.
It makes common sense that the circumstances surrounding a vaccine-related illness—such as how soon reaction symptoms began following vaccine administration, or whether the person had suffered a previous vaccine reaction or was sick at the time of vaccination and so on—would be essential pieces of evidence to consider in determining probable cause. However, few civil courts have taken this kind of clinical and circumstantial evidence seriously in vaccine injury lawsuits.
This was the case with a man living in France, whose vaccine injury case is still ongoing. The man developed multiple sclerosis after receiving three doses of hepatitis B vaccine, and he and his family believe the debilitating chronic disease was caused by the vaccination. Much of the case was based on circumstantial evidence including the timing of the onset of disease in relation to vaccination.
A lower French court ruled that the hepatitis B vaccination was the probable cause of the man’s multiple sclerosis, but that lower court decision was subsequently overturned because of a lack of scientific consensus that hepatitis B vaccine causes multiple sclerosis. Eventually, the courts needed to decide what types of evidence were admissible in the case, which brought it before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the highest court of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).2
The ECJ ruled that “serious, specific and consistent” circumstantial evidence may be considered in vaccine injury cases, prompting a barrage of criticism from the pharmaceutical industry, doctors, public health officials and the media that it would “open the floodgates” for frivolous vaccine injury lawsuits. In Naturemagazine, however, Alex Stein, a law expert at the Brooklyn Law School in New York says this is not the case:3
The court emphasized that liability claims for vaccine harm must be considered on a case-by-case basis. It also ruled that the burden of proof remained on plaintiffs (the man’s family, in this case) and that courts must consider relevant evidence from medical research.
These caveats are important, says … Stein … ‘Under this framework, credible medical evidence showing that the vaccine is safe will win the case,’ he says. ‘Those who say that the ECJ decision has opened a floodgate for multiple vaccine liability suits are therefore mistaken.’
Stein continued that the ruling may, in fact, allow for justice to be fairly served, noting, “If courts were to use scientific methods of proof in all cases in which they must determine disputed facts, they would hardly be able to make decisions and to deliver timely justice to people. Justice is generally best served when courts are free to admit whatever relevant evidence they wish and judge it on its own merits along with the rest.”4
Indeed, the EU ruling will allow for important and pertinent evidence to be considered in vaccine injury cases to conclude “the administering of the vaccine is the most plausible explanation,” including the following:5