HPV vaccines and cancer prevention, science versus activism

The recent Editorial by Silvia de Sanjosé* [1] is problematic from a variety of perspectives. Mainly, it attempts to portray a complex issue as a simple dichotomy between supposedly unjustified “anti-HPV vaccine activism” and alleged absolute science which has presumably provided indisputable evidence on HPV vaccine safety and efficacy.

In spite of much unwarranted and premature optimism, the fact is however that HPV vaccines have not thus far prevented a single case of cervical cancer (let alone cervical cancer death). Instead, what the clinical trials have shown is that HPV vaccines can prevent some of the pre-cancerous CIN 2/3 lesions associated with HPV-16 and HPV-18 infection, a large fraction of which would spontaneously resolve regardless of the vaccination status [2–4]. For example, in adolescent women aged 13 to 24 years, 38% of CIN 2 resolve after one year, 63% after two and 68% after three years [5]. Moreover, the validity of CIN 2 being a cancer precursor is questionable due to high misclassification rates and poor intra- and inter-observer reproducibility in diagnosis, as well as high regression rates [6–9]. According to Castle et al. [7] CIN 2 is the least reproducible of all histopathologic diagnoses and may in part reflect sampling error. While CIN 3 is a more reliable marker for cancer progression than CIN 2, the use of this marker is not without caveats [2, 10].

It is also noteworthy that Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil received priority Fast Track approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after a 6-month review process, despite the fact that it failed (and still continues to fail) to meet a single one of the four criteria required by the FDA for Fast Track approval. Gardasil is demonstrably neither safer nor more effective than Pap screening combined with the loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP) in preventing cervical cancers, nor can it improve the diagnosis of serious cervical cancer outcomes [12]. In this regard, Gerhardus and Razum have recently noted that the “…unwarranted confidence in the new HPV vaccines led to the impression that there was no need to actually evaluate their effectiveness” [11].

Similarly, the notion that HPV vaccines have an impressive safety profile can only be supported by highly flawed design of safety trials [2, 13] and is contrary to accumulating evidence from vaccine safety surveillance databases and case reports which continue to link HPV vaccination to serious adverse outcomes (including death and permanent disabilities) [2, 4, 14]. For example, compared to all other vaccines in the U.S. vaccination schedule, Gardasil alone is associated with 61% of all serious adverse reactions (including 63.8% of all deaths and 81.2% cases of permanent disability) in females younger than 30 years of age [12].

Although a report to a vaccine safety surveillance system does not by itself prove that the vaccine caused an adverse reaction, the unusually high frequency of adverse reactions related to HPV vaccines reported worldwide, as well as their consistent pattern (i.e. nervous system-related disorders rank the highest in frequency), points to a potentially causal relationship [2]. Furthermore, matching the data from vaccine surveillance databases is an increasing number of case reports documenting similar serious adverse reactions associated with HPV vaccine administration, with nervous system and autoimmune disorders being the most frequently reported in the medical literature [15–24].

In summary, the optimistic claims that HPV vaccines will prevent cervical cancers and save lives, and that they are extremely safe, rest on assumptions which are misinterpreted and presented to the public as factual evidence. We thus conclude that further reduction of cervical cancers might be best achieved by optimizing cervical screening (which carries no serious health risks) and targeting other factors of the disease rather than by the reliance on vaccines with questionable efficacy and safety profiles [2, 25].