Maryland’s $145 Million Cervical Cancer Policy Fail
By Josh A. Mazer, CHD Guest Contributor (Originally published in Eye on Annapolis)
Human papillomavirus (“HPV”) will infect about 90% of Marylanders. It is usually harmless and self clearing. Very rarely, undiagnosed and untreated infections may lead to cervical cancer. The Baltimore Sun reported in 1990: From 1983 to 1987, “406 Maryland women died of a cancer that…need kill virtually no woman, because a Pap smear can detect cervical cancer while it is curable.”
In the modern era, cervical cancer incidence in Maryland was cut almost in half, from 11 cases per 100,000 in 1995 to 5.9/100,000 in 2013.
I have been following Maryland’s HPV vaccine policy very closely since 2018, when our children became eligible to receive Merck’s controversial, liability free HPV vaccine. I was confused by the state sponsored hard sell put on my family to buy the shot. My concerns about state policies have increased as more recent data has emerged.
Maryland cervical cancer control policy has now reached a crisis point. Incidence “increased at a rate of 1.9% per year from 2012 to 2016.” From 2013 to 2017, it surged 16.9%.
In 2007 Delegate Pena–Melnyk changed Maryland cervical cancer policy with HB 1049/SB 774 Task Force on the HPV Vaccine. The bill made Merck’s Gardasil vaccine the new centerpiece—the proven test and educate strategy was abandoned.
The new law kicked off a vaccine gold rush
Over $145 million washed through our state in various schemes to push Gardasil into our kids. University of Maryland grabbed $2 million for a “study” targeting African-American adolescents for the shot. MD DOH brought in a Merck spokesperson to front an “HPV Symposium” in 2018. The agenda was money. Sales contests, cash bonuses to individual physicians, and cash bonuses to practices that hit industry set sales goals. The Prevention Health Promotion Agency maintains a comprehensive webpage that is focused solely on selling the shot.
Despite the millions spent, the vaccine centered policy is an expensive failure. Cervical cancer incidence in Maryland is up 8% since it was enacted. Other countries that went all in with Gardasil are replicating the negative results.
For example, the Australian National Cancer Registry 2020 data shows a 27% increase in cervical cancers since the vaccine was introduced there. In 20 to 24 year olds incidence more than doubled. Women too old to be vaccinated showed a decline over the same time frame.
Other countries with reliable, long term data show similar concerning trends: Sweden 1.86/100,000 in 2007 to 3.72 in 2015; Great Britain 2.7/100,000 in 2007 vs 4.6 in 2014; and Norway 1.8/100,000 in 2007 vs 2.4 in 2015.
One would think the negative results would give our state bureaucrats pause to consider. It did not. Instead, they doubled down.
In 2016, PHPA accepted $70,000 (page 16) from a Merck funded vaccine lobbying group. Pena-Melnyk promptly introduced House Bill 1178 to mandate Gardasil as a school entry required shot in Maryland. 2019-2020 legislative session, PHPA testified against a bill intended to strengthen informed consent requirements for Gardasil. The agency did not disclose its financial conflict of interest to the committee considering the bill.
In April 2019, Kimberly Cammarata, director of the Maryland State Attorney General Health Education and Advocacy unit reviewed FDA licensing data on Gardasil. She identified two areas of concern in the FDA fast tracked licensing process: the 44.6% increase in cervical lesions in some girls who got Gardasil; and that 2.4% of the clinical trial participants suffered “serious systemic autoimmune reactions.” State bureaucrats avoid these uncomfortable facts, as do the prescribing physicians, when recommending the vaccine.
The Maryland Gardasil story should have come to a swift and unceremonious end in February 2020. The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine published:
“It is uncertain whether HPV vaccination prevents cervical cancer”- and- “There is also a risk of substitution where a non-vaccine oncogenic HPV type fills the void left by the reduction of an HPV type targeted by the vaccines.”
In other words- when a state bureaucrat tells you, “Gardasil prevents cancer” they are either lying or ignorant.
Nothing, it seems, will derail the Maryland Gardasil money train.
Not even the death of a young women. Christina Tarsell of Baltimore County followed the recommendations of her state bureaucrats, and her physician. She took all three of the recommended doses. She died days after her third dose. Though the US Court of Federal Claims decision implicating Gardasil in her death was announced in 2017, your public health bureaucrats have studiously ignored this tragic event. They did receive $17 million from pharma front groups to push Gardasil in 2017, and another $18 million in 2018.
It is time for Maryland families to demand an end to this public health fraud
Children are getting hurt, and they are not being protected against cancer. The same state bureaucrats who signed a contract with AstraZeneca to dump the absolutely useless FluMist into Maryland youth are the ones pushing the failed Gardasil policy.
Add your voice to the more than 4000 families who have already emailed Governor Hogan using www.hpvisstd.com/contact-governor-hogan telling him to DEFUND GARDASIL IN MARYLAND. Japan booted the shot in 2013. We can certainly do the same in the Free State. Out of respect for the Tarsell Family, stop the lies, stop the medicine by sales contest, stop the Gardasil rip off in Maryland.
More Information:
HPV Vaccine Incentive Payments Must Stop
Informed Choice Maryland
HPV vaccine safety: Cochrane launches urgent investigation into review after criticisms
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