France: Meeting to debate HPV vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix

by Norma Erickson

A three hour discussion was held during which various medical professionals, politicians, and health authorities had the opportunity to openly debate serious concerns about the HPV vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix.

Dr. Philippe de Chazournes recently sponsored an open letter to the French Minister of Health calling for the establishment of a parliamentary mission to investigate various aspects of HPV vaccination campaigns. (more information here) Over 200 medical professionals signed the letter confirming their agreement with the stated concerns about the safety, efficacy, and necessity of using Gardasil and Cervarix in national cervical cancer prevention programs.

Michele Rivasi, MEP, chaired roundtable discussions pertaining to the questions raised in Dr. de Chazournes’ letter to the French Health Ministry.

Stakeholders representing both sides of the debate were invited to attend as well as members of the French Parliament, representatives from Sanofi-Pasteur MSD, and national health authorities. Drs. G. Delepine, N. Delepine, A. Siary, Cl-Michal Teitelbaum, JP Hamon, and Mr. Coletti were in attendance along with many other interested parties.

The topics open for discussion are as follows:

• What is the justification for HPV vaccination programs?
• What is the risk/benefit profile of Gardasil and Cervarix?
• What place do HPV vaccines have in cervical cancer prevention strategies, and at what cost?
• Gardasil: Cervical Cancer or Political Cancer?
• What is the level of ’ethical care’ in the new ’cancer plan’?

Member of the European Parliament, Michéle Rivasi, opened the meeting with the following speech, eloquently stating the actions necessary to protect the public health as well as public health funding.

To paraphrase her words, these vaccines are unnecessary, dangerous to many, and certainly a huge drain on precious public health funds. To halt HPV vaccination programs, pending intense investigation and proof of stated purpose could very well be the salvation of our young people.

Presentation by Michele Rivasi, European Ecology MEP

Translation by Helen Kimball Brook

It is an honor for me to receive Dr. Philippe de Chazournes today in the Parisian offices of the European Parliament. Dr. de Chazournes has fought long and hard as spokesperson for doctors in the current scandal linked to the Gardasil vaccine, the famous Sanofi-Pasteur MSD vaccine against certain strains of the human papillomavirus which can cause cancer. A large number of doctors have signed his open letter to Marisol Touraine, French Minister of Social Affairs, expressing their fears around the idea of doubling the vaccination rate of young girls with a vaccine whose effectiveness is scientifically controversial. Some of them are here today and I thank them for being here. They are demanding a parliamentary mission to clarify this question. Last April, I personally made a public demand for a moratorium, i.e. an end to mass vaccination with this vaccine until in-depth research can be performed on its benefits, risks and effectiveness.

Vaccine safety, as a general rule, is being increasingly questioned. Between 2005 and 2010, the proportion of French people in favour or very in favour of vaccination dropped from 90% to 60% (2013 INPES Peretti-Watel health barometer). The percentage of French people between the ages of 18 and 75 who are anti-vaccination increased from 8.5% in 2005 to 38.2% in 2010. In 2005, 58% of doctors questioned the usefulness of vaccines administered to children while 31% of doctors were expressing doubts about vaccine safety. These figures must surely have increased since then.

Alongside this dramatic slump in confidence, research carried out worldwide – here in France by R. – K. Gherardi and F.-J. Authier, in Canada by C. Shaw and L. Tomljenovic, in North America by S. Seneff and S.-H. Lee, in Israel by Y. Shoenfeld and in the UK by C. Exley and others – blames the toxicity of the aluminium salts used as adjuvants in vaccines.

The injection of these aluminium salts could be the cause of the considerable and unexplained increase in the number of pathologies reported because they migrate through the body until they reach and accumulate in the brain. In certain predisposed individuals, very serious adverse effects have been observed following vaccination: death, convulsions, fainting, autistic disorders, Guillain-Barre syndrome, transverse myelitis, facial paralysis, chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune diseases, pulmonary embolisms, macrophagic myofasciitis, pancreatitis and others.

It was the work of E3M, an organisation formed by macrophagic Myofasciitis victims, which encouraged me to bring this subject up within the European Parliament. Macrophagic myofasciitis is a little known but extremely disabling disease caused by the aluminium salts in vaccines.

Without being totally against the actual principle of vaccination, I feel that it is absolutely essential for specification of our vaccine policy to reflect the greatest of transparency and that the voices of vaccine victims be heard so that appropriate responses may be given and solutions found: in particular, urgent and abundant research financing and provision of a basic vaccine which is aluminium-free.

I therefore invited scientists and specialists in this area to come speak to us about their work on Gardasil during a press conference held at the Parisian offices of the European Parliament, last April.

Over the last seven years, nearly two million young women between the ages of 13 and 26 have received at least one dose of this vaccine, 65% of which is reimbursed by the French Social Security… but its effectiveness has still not been proven. Since then, an increasing number of young girls have been claiming that it has made them ill and the matter is becoming an issue Europe-wide.

Marisol Touraine, French Health Minister, has nonetheless just re-affirmed her attachment to this vaccination by confirming the 2014 recommendations which advise “all young girls between the ages of 11 and 14” to get the HPV vaccine. The message was apparently not heard.

Worse still, in early May, EMA (European Medicines Agency) experts recommended that the Gardasil HPV vaccine indication be lowered to age 9 for prevention of anal cancer and pre-cancerous anal lesions. One of the arguments used for this was that there are 6,800 new anal cancers in Europe every year. This feels to me like an attempt to find new justifications for the overall recommendation of Gardasil.

The French government needs to save 50 billion Euros over the next three years and ten of those billions must be saved in Health Insurance. Widespread administration of Gardasil would cost 926 million Euros (i.e. 9.3% of the needed health insurance savings) over three to four years, this for the catch-up campaign alone.

To stop this plan would be a genuine move for public health: this vaccination is worthless, clearly dangerous and a financial black hole. It serves no purpose for the European Medicines Agency to rush to the aid of Gardasil by recommending its use in the prevention of anal cancer (which causes fewer than 200 deaths every year in France, which is 0.11% of all cancer deaths).

What does Europe want? How is it that we ask the member States to reduce their deficits while simultaneously inciting them to spend more and more for the greater good of the pharmaceutical industry? How is it possible that we ask the French (and Europeans because the situation is exactly the same in many countries) to “tighten their belts” while asking them to hand over such large gifts to Big Pharma at the same time?

We must ask ourselves these questions and continue to fight against the health scandals of today and tomorrow by demanding absolute transparency in these highly sensitive issues.

Learn more about the issues here.

View the entire press package in French here.

The SaneVax Team would like to thank all of the participants in this debate. We sincerely hope every country in the world holds similar events. If HPV vaccines are as safe and effective as advertised, public scrutiny should be no problem.

Until such time as open and honest scientific debates are allowed in every country, medical consumers need to remember – RESEARCH BEFORE CONSENT – you can’t unvaccinate.

Norma Erickson is the President of SaneVax, Inc., where this article first appeared.