Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6989
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: report
Vickers M, Blaxland R
Open Letter to the Minister for Health, the Hon Tony Abbott,MP; RE: Gardasil - Scare Tactics & Misleading Statistics
2006 Dec 1
Abstract:
OPEN LETTER TO THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH, THE HON TONY ABBOTT, MP
Dear Minister,
RE: Gardasil – Scare Tactics & Misleading Statistics
We are concerned that you, your department and Australian women have been conned by the pharmaceutical industry. By the use of scare tactics (playing on our fear of cancer) and the selective use of statistics, the manufacturers of Gardasil will absorb millions of health dollars.
We are not questioning the efficacy of the vaccine against human papilloma virus (HPV), just its efficacy as a public health strategy for cervical cancer.
Members of DES Action Australia have taken a keen interest in the current debate about Gardasil vaccine. DES exposed women not only have an increased risk of cervical cancer, but we are also only too aware of the need for drug safety. DES (stilboestrol) was prescribed to pregnancy women from the 1940s onwards but in 1971 it was found that in utero exposure to oestrogen caused a virulent clear cell cancer of the vagina and cervix in young women. (That is, the harmful effects only show up decades after the original exposure to the drug.) In addition, because of our DES exposure, we have a 4-fold increased risk of the more common cervical cancer that the current debate is about.
There are multiple risk factors for cervical cancer. HPV is one such risk factor, and in utero exposure to oestrogen another. There are no doubt other unknown risk factors as well. Gardasil apparently protects against 4 strains of HPV. Gardasil is a vaccine to prevent one risk factor of cervical cancer, not cervical cancer as such.
Although 70% of cervical cancer can be linked to HPV, the vast majority of women exposed to HPV will NOT develop cervical cancer … and last year your department spent a considerable amount of money to say just that.
In early 2005 the Department of Health & Ageing organised a series of forums to explain and gather acceptance of the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines for the screening for cervical cancer. One of the key changes to the guidelines was the recommendation that low-grade abnormalities associated with HPV were not treated but followed up with another Pap smear in 12 months. This was based on the finding that nearly all of these HPV-related low-grade abnormalities resolved, without treatment, within 5 years. There is no direct and inevitable cause and effect between being infected with HPV and the development of cervical cancer. For most women, the body’s own defence system will clear the virus and they will not develop related health problems.
[As DES daughters, most of us have experienced this on a personal level. The recommended management for us, even with our increased risk of this type of cervical cancer, is close monitoring with minimum intervention.]
As the guidelines for the screening for cervical cancer were ratified by the NHMRC in June 2005, and as the NHMRC is the peak medical body in Australia, we assume the guidelines represent the “best available evidence.”
As far as we can see, the only change over the past 18 months (ie between the NHMRC ratifying the guidelines and the current push to vaccinate against HPV) is that now the pharmaceutical industry has a product to market.
We are concerned that many women will assume they are “vaccinated” against cervical cancer and will stop having regular Pap smears. We believe public health money would be better spent on educational programs that encourage more women to have regular Pap smears.
This would empower women to take an active and informed role in their own health care, rather than passively relying on a “quick fix”, a wonder pill (or injection) to solve every ill. History shows that these “wonder drugs” usually disappoint and have hidden unexpected dangers.
