Consultants paid by Merck and the Gates Foundation are publicly advocating to administer HPV vaccines to children as young as 12-24 months — an age group in which the vaccine has never been tested and for which no safety data exist.
Mark Kane and Eduardo Franco laid out the campaign to extend HPV vaccination to toddlers in an opinion piece published in Clinical Infectious Diseases — an official journal of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
Merck, a “Silver” level industry partner, donates tens of thousands of dollars annually to the IDSA foundation.
The push to vaccinate younger children comes as Merck — maker of Gardasil, the only HPV vaccine marketed in the U.S. — partners with major universities to run clinical trials of its HPV vaccine in children ages 4-8 in the U.S. and Gambia.
Merck’s Gardasil vaccine is designed to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease. In the U.S., the drug is approved for children starting at age 9 — well before children are sexually active.
Conflicts of interest ‘so thick’ they obscure the science
In the conflict-of-interest statement at the end of the IDSA op-ed, Franco disclosed that he is a vaccine consultant who also holds a patent on a cervical cancer test.
Kane reported no conflicts of interest. However, that claim omits these significant financial and professional credentials:
- Kane is the former director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Children’s Vaccine Program.
- Kane worked at the Gates-affiliated PATH organization.
- Kane was a consultant for Merck.
- Kane sat on the Merck Global Advisory Board for HPV.
“The conflicts are so thick it’s impossible to tell if this is a serious immunization policy suggestion, or a fact-pattern of Merck publishing Merck recommendations to use more Merck products,” said Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
Hellbound and Down 