Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails

by Sharyl Attkisson

When one admiring article about human papillomavirus (HPV) cervical cancer vaccines is published in the British journal Lancet, I decide to do a little digging. The article is written by Dr. Sharon J. B. Hanley. It was published after the Japanese government decided to stop promoting HPV vaccines due to concerns about vaccine injuries. Dr. Hanley defends HPV vaccines in her article and criticizes the Japanese government. She also implies patients are incorrectly blaming HPV vaccines for unrelated illnesses. What do I find after I poke around a little? Naturally, Dr. Hanley has financial ties to HPV vaccine makers, though she didn’t disclose that in her medical journal article defending them. I discover she’d received funding from middlemen. They’re entities supported by makers of both HPV vaccines: Gardasil and Cervarix. I also find that she’d previously admitted, elsewhere, to having received “lecture fees” from vaccine makers. But she discloses none of this in her Lancet article. After I make these discoveries, I write Lancet to point out Dr. Hanley’s undisclosed financial conflicts of interest. To its credit, the journal issues a correction based on my letter. Of course, it probably doesn’t make much practical difference. The physicians who read the original article aren’t going to comb back through the journal looking for corrections. I wonder, Why don’t journal editors or reviewers do at least a tiny bit of research, like I did, to uncover lapses in studies or conflic...