I am aware that Merck has lobbied heavily for HPV vaccine.  And, it really blew up in their face, if any of you remember the controversy in Texas when HPV vaccine was mandated for school attendence unexpectedly and rather heavy handedly by the executive order of the governor. Hopefully, Merck learned their lesson and no, they didn't fool anyone.

What is sad about the desperate lobbying is that they made the most efficacious vaccine ever put on the market with rates of 99-100% in girls who had not experienced sexual debut (the polite medical research term for being a virgin).  After sexual debut, efficacy dropped a lot, a whole lot.  This has to do with the epidemiology of HPV infection.  Vaccines are designed to prevent infection and HPV is the most common STD (STI is the more PC term now) and infects 80% of sexually active adults.  Penetration is not required for transmission and condoms are not protective.  There are rare medical reports of virgins contracting HPV by nonsexual transmission. 

The main thing that I found slightly misleading about the article I just read by John-Henry Weston was that it gives the impression that VAERS reports are verified cases of vaccine deaths or injuries.  They are not.  VAERS is a surveillance system only, an opportunity for physicians and health departments or anyone really to report any thing at all that occurs at the same time as the administration of a vaccine.  A great explanation of VAERS data and its interpretation is found at http://www.vaers.hhs.gov/info.htm

I don't think this is commonly known to the public but it is well known at the CDC that anti-vaccine advocates have sabotaged the VAERS system with fake events.  I am not under the impression that this happens a lot or is a big problem but it has occurred.  Which is sad because it makes a hard statistical job even more difficult.  VAERS is and was and always will be an extremely important surveillance system but it takes a Ph.D in math and statistics to sort it all out.  When concerns are raised by VAERS it actually gets turned over for investigation to another CDC project called the Vaccine Safety Datalink.  VAERS successfully informed us of the problems with the first rotavirus vaccine back in the mid 90's and it was taken off the market very quickly. 

My impression from the really important CDC officials (like Larry Pickering) is that the integrity of the vaccine system always takes highest precedent.  Public health professionals simply don't want to give the anti-vaccine movement any more fodder.  They aren't afraid to change their mind and pull stuff off the market, and they definitely warn physicians and the public when they see concerning trends.  I think the Merck lobby in Texas was a good example of this integrity, it was the naive state government politicians who took the bait in that case, not the CDC.

www.immunize.org is the place to go for updates or official CDC warnings on vaccines.  I just checked and they are not raising the red flag on HPV vaccines.  It is true that we cannot learn absolutely everything about a drug or vaccine by doing a medical study on 10,000 or 100,000 people.  There are really rare events that are only revealed with wide release to millions.  That is exactly what VAERS is for, I just don't think that most people without degrees in statistics can interpret that kind of raw data. 

My 2 cents, Dr. Jill

P.S.  The article last week on the high c/s rate was really good.  My instincts always told me not to prefer a surgical birth and that article reminded me why.  I noticed that a couple of days later the same article was on the editorial page of the AJC.