The HPV Vaccine Tragedy Was a Test Run for COVID-19
Once touted as a breakthrough, this vaccine's track record reveals a series of health impacts many never saw coming.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Two decades ago, Merck introduced Vioxx, a profitable NSAID, despite knowing it could cause numerous heart attacks. After facing overwhelming lawsuits and ultimately withdrawing Vioxx, Merck quickly pushed Gardasil, an HPV vaccine, to market to recover losses
Gardasil proved to be extremely dangerous, yet both Merck and the FDA ignored the alarming data and continued promoting it, even as it resulted in unprecedented injuries, including autoimmunity, POTS, infertility, and death. Notably, many of these issues mirror those associated with the COVID-19 vaccines
This article examines the dangers of the HPV vaccine, the reasons behind its risks — including its tendency to cause rather than prevent cervical cancer — and the extensive negligence of the FDA and CDC. These lessons are crucial for understanding the events surrounding COVID-19
Prior to COVID-19, I considered Gardasil (for HPV) to be the most dangerous and unjustifiable vaccine on the market. It’s truly remarkable how many parallels can be found between it and the COVID-19 vaccines, so I feel it’s critically important for this already forgotten story to be told.
Help Pay for Vioxx (HPV)
The default strategy in medicine for any type of pain or injury is to throw NSAIDs at it — making the drugs immensely profitable. Unfortunately, they typically don’t help that much (which actually increases their sales since patients then need more of them), and they are fairly dangerous (e.g., NSAIDs kill tens of thousands of Americans each year and seriously injure far more1 — which is unfortunate since DMSO safely and effectively treats all the conditions NSAIDs are used for).
To create a new market, NSAIDs like Vioxx were created that were supposed to be safer … but actually had a huge stroke and heart attack risk (that Dr. Mercola warned the public about in 1999). However, despite evidence of harm continuing to mount, Merck and the FDA kept on covering it up, and when the drug was finally pulled, Vioxx was estimated to have killed 120,000 people.2
Sadly, as the FDA scientist who fought to get it off the market testified, this is business as usual, and another Vioxx disaster was inevitable.
Merck eventually had to pay a 5 billion Vioxx settlement3 (while the CEO received a $37.8 million "performance-based" bonus4), leading Merck short of funds. This was solved by the decades of research finally yielding an HPV vaccine,5 which Merck (and the FDA) immediately went to work marketing through an "award-winning"6 advertising blitz that convinced every American they needed to be scared to death of cervical cancer (a fairly rare cancer).
It worked, with 25.1% of adolescent girls getting Gardasil in 2007, 53.8% by 2011,7 and by 2023, 79.3%.8 It was one of the most expensive vaccines on the market and quickly became a leading source of revenue for Merck (e.g., 1.87 billion9 in 2023).
However, due to its cost (like the COVID vaccine), it required hefty government subsidies which included cash prizes to get the vaccine and a 40 million dollar HHS grant10 for developing the most effective sales script doctors could use to push the vaccine on "hesitant" patients.
Note: Because of its high cost, it frequently requires11 state or federal financial support for doctors to offer it (just like COVID-19).
Is Gardasil Effective?
The reason Merck had to aggressively market the fear of cervical cancer was that it was much less of a danger than it had been in the past, as it had largely been eliminated by pap smears.12
Furthermore, its benefit for cervical cancer was entirely theoretical (Merck even convinced the FDA "studying cancer itself isn't feasible, because it takes too long and it disadvantages too many women") and despite 80% of women getting it, it still has not reduced cervical cancer:
Gardasil's marketing also overshadowed the other two major risk factors for cervical cancer — smoking13 and birth control pills14 — have largely been overshadowed by the focus on HPV. Remarkably, the decline in smoking perfectly mirrors the decline in cervical cancer death.
Disease Provocation
Vaccines place the body under stress and divert the immune response to address the vaccine’s stimulus. If the immune system is already attempting to contain another infection, this can be quite problematic and allow the existing infection to spiral out of control. This phenomenon has been known about since 1893 and repeatedly demonstrated with many different infections15 (e.g., polio and typhus).
In turn, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen people around me get the flu after receiving a flu shot, and during COVID, severe cases of COVID often followed receiving the vaccine.16
The HPV vaccine also does this, with many reports of individuals developing or worsening HPV-related infections, including genital warts, and Gardasil’s trial data showing it made existing infections more likely to become cancerous:17
Note: An identical effect was also found with GlaxoSmithKline’s competing HPV vaccine.18
Despite these concerns, prescreening for HPV before vaccination isn't recommended. Instead, the "solution" has been to lower the age of vaccination.
DNA Contamination
Thus far, I’ve argued that the reasons vaccines can make you "become sick" is because they weaken the immune system and make you more susceptible to catching the actual infection or having an already existing infection spiral out of control. While I believe that is the primary issue, there is also another problem — manufacturing vaccines is an inherently dirty process.
Because of this contaminated "hot" lots will inevitably get released that sicken or kill many19 (a recurring problem which was ultimately "solved" by the government giving legal immunity to the manufacturers).
Producing genetically modified vaccines (e.g., Gardasil) requires synthetic DNA (plasmids) that frequently aren’t filtered out of the final product20 (e.g., this is a recurring issue with hot vaccine lots21). Worse still, those plasmids tend to be mixed with adjuvants that bring them into the cells22 and contain a dangerous part of the SV40 virus which draws them into the nucleus,23 allowing them to integrate into the human genome (e.g., this has been demonstrated with the COVID vaccines24).
Note: The early polio vaccines were contaminated with the cancer causing SV40 virus, but despite warnings not to, the government still released it,25 ultimately resulting in millions of cancers.26 Sadly, the current COVID vaccine cancer wave dwarfs even that:27
Likewise, with Gardasil, there have been numerous causes where a young vaccinated girl (e.g., one who died suddenly) were discovered to have HPV plasmid DNA in their bodies28 and those plasmids have been found in every HPV vaccine where it was tested for29 (leading to the government to switch from denying their presence to insisting they were "safe").30
Note: It is quite unfortunate a carcinogenic vaccine was able to be marketed to prevent a (fairly rare) cancer — especially since Gardasil (like the mRNA vaccines) was never tested for its cancer risk and trial data showed elevated leukemia rates.31
Safety vs Efficacy
Since all vaccines are viewed as "safe and effective," regulators prioritize how strong an antibody response they elicit, leading to manufacturers excessively stimulating the immune system at the expense of safety (e.g., this was why the COVID vaccines gave so many people autoimmune disorders).
In Gardasil’s case, it used a very powerful (but untested32) adjuvant that gave 49.6% of participants in Merck's trial33 a "New Medical Condition," including Guillain-Barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and other severe autoimmune disorders.
For reference, this is what is stated in Merck’s package insert34 for the vaccine, which discussed all the (reported) autoimmune disorders that developed throughout its clinical trials.
Note: One of the key mechanisms of injury behind most vaccines is them collapsing the physiologic zeta potential of the body35 — causing blood cells to clump together and triggering microstrokes throughout the body. And the most harmful vaccines that ever hit the market were uniquely toxic to zeta potential (which in Gardasil’s case came from its aluminum adjuvant, and COVID vaccine due to the [mass-produced] spike protein’s positive charge density).
As a result, treating those injuries often requires restoring the physiologic zeta potential. Additionally, those with hypermobility (e.g., Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) are particularly vulnerable to pharmaceutical injuries and often also require targeted nutritional supplementation to restore their ligaments and health.
This extraordinarily high rate of autoimmunity has caused large numbers of Gardasil recipients to become seriously and sometimes permanently disabled from the vaccine. In turn, there are thousands of pages of heart-wrenching stories (not that different from the COVID vaccine injuries) about how Gardasil ruined many people at the prime of their lives.
Note: One of the most common side effects of Gardasil (and COVID vaccination) was POTS (a debilitating disorder where severe lightheadedness occurs when standing up which can sometimes trigger fatal car accidents — and which coincidentally was a common cause of death in the Gardasil trials).
Many have since concluded this disease was in part an autoimmune disorder as Gardasil victims have been found to have antibodies to the autonomic receptors which are supposed to bring blood to the head.36 37 38 POTS appears to be due to an impaired zeta potential39 (something Gardasil was also notorious for doing), as restoring physiologic zeta potential40 often significantly improves POTS.
If you take a step back, it’s completely unconscionable that a vaccine that provides almost no benefit could be approved while simultaneously giving at least 2.3% of the recipients a serious lifelong autoimmune illness. To get around this, Merck doctored the trials by having the "placebo" be the vaccine’s damaging adjuvant.
As such, while a massive rate of harm was observed in those who took the vaccine, it wasn’t that much higher than what occurred in the "placebo" group (and thus "by chance") and hence deemed to be "unrelated" to the vaccine.
Infertility
Sadly, autoimmunity wasn’t the only issue. For example, since this vaccine was meant to be given to every woman in the world shortly before they became able to have children, the number one reason not to bring it to market would be if it had a fertility risk. Yet, consider what Merck’s original clinical data showed:41
For Gardasil 9 (a newer HPV vaccine with more strains), 17 of the 62 clinical trial42 pregnancies (27.4%) resulted in a miscarriage.
Note: For Gardasil, the miscarriage rate was even greater if vaccination occurred within 30 days of conception.43 Likewise, this issue was also seen with Gardasil’s birth defects.44
Deaths
Much attention has been brought to the explosion of "unexplained" (and often sudden) deaths that occurred after the COVID vaccines hit the market in the youngest and the healthiest members of society:
However, significantly less attention has been given to the fact that in the initial Gardasil trials, out of 21,458 10 vaccine recipients and 7 "placebo" recipients died45 including 7 from car accidents46 (which can be triggered by POTS causing drivers to pass out). However, despite the Gardasil death rate (8.5 per 10,000) being almost twice the background death rate in girls and young women (4.37), the FDA was not concerned.
Note: The actual expected death rate was likely lower since young and healthy girls were selected for the trials.
Risk vs Benefit
When you step back and look at the data, you will see that Gardasil's risk-benefit ratio is shocking. In the best-case scenario, Gardasil saved 0.6 lives per 10,000 in England and 0.2 per 10,000 in the U.S. However, it killed at least 4.13 per 10,000 recipients — young people, just starting their lives. On top of that, it caused serious autoimmune disorders in at least 230 per 10,000, impacted fertility, and caused a myriad of more subtle long-term complications.
That’s an awful risk-to-benefit ratio. I’ve thus come to believe much of modern medicine is akin to a sales funnel, pushing patients into costly, lifelong treatments at the expense of their health.
Fortunately, this is now a much greater awareness of these predatory tactics. For example, Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson recently discussed the birth control funnel, the dangers of antidepressants and the link between SSRIs and mass shootings (or other forms of psychotic violence):
Gardasil is a perfect example. Its neurological side effects can lead to psychiatric issues, pushing young women further down the medical sales pipeline — something I’ve seen firsthand. Many patients also develop costly lifelong autoimmune disorders after the vaccine, but most don’t connect the dots until I point it out.
This highlights two crucial points: vaccines often carry risks that far outweigh their benefits, and even when injuries are evident in trials (as they were with Gardasil), regulators still approve them. Sadly, this mirrors what we saw with the COVID-19 vaccines.
Note: I put together a summary of the risks and benefits of each childhood vaccine for parents here (e.g., Gardasil is one of the worst ones47).
Gardasil’s Clinical Trials
Previously, I argued Gardasil’s clinical trials, had many parallels to an abusive relationship48 as in both:
The abuser will initially say you are the most wonderful person imaginable for coming to them and give you numerous lavish promises to entice you into their trap.
Once they have you ensnared, begin to go back on every promise and continually gaslight you49 as they hurt you (e.g., beyond denying participants injuries, investigators will never allow injuries to enter the trial record regardless of how much the participants try).
Then, once you have nothing to offer them, they will discard you and leave you alone to pick up the mess.
Sadly, this type of abuse in research has become so normalized that by the time COVID-19 came around, as trial whistleblowers showed, not only did it happen again, but the government actually sided with the abuser.
Regulatory Response
Due to how toxic Gardasil was, once it hit the market, the FDA and CDC were deluged with a wave of reports of adverse reactions to it. However, rather than acknowledge them, they doubled down on the vaccine and concocted an increasingly elaborate series of steps to shield it.
Note: This was why I knew they’d do the exact same thing with the COVID vaccines. Even now that their harm has become so widespread, the majority of America believes they are killing people50 and there is no possible justification to keep on pushing the vaccine (e.g., the original strain it "protects you against" is extinct, the endless boosters make you more likely to get COVID,51 and now very few Americans are even getting them).52
For example, in 2009, in response to widespread publicity detailing severe adverse events attributed to HPV vaccines, the FDA and CDC initiated a study53 to examine Gardasil's safety profile by analyzing all VAERS reports filed since Gardasil's mid-2006 approval through the end of 2008.
The study found54 that "the VAERS reporting rate for [Gardasil] is triple the rate for all other vaccines combined." Additionally, the study found that 68% of the reports were submitted by representatives of Merck, Gardasil's manufacturer, most of which needed to be completed or more accurate, and 90% of which required more information essential for conducting medical assessments. Finally, the authors also noted that VAERS suffered from underreporting.
Despite these red flags, the authors instead declared55 that the high rate of adverse events "reflects greater public attention to HPV," which was purportedly "stimulated" by "widespread media coverage" and that Gardasil's "post-licensure safety profile" as calculated from VAERS data is "broadly consistent" with safety data collected in its clinical trials, while simultaneously failing to support these assertions.
Not surprisingly, following the study's publication, news organizations and health authorities such as the CDC and WHO repeatedly referenced this "study" as proof that Gardasil was safe. Sound familiar?
Conclusion
Typically, when a predatory industry wishes to do something unconscionable, it will begin by testing it on a group that doesn’t quite have the ability to fight back, and then once this gets normalized, enact it on a much broader scale.
For example, all the horrific playbook Fauci enacted upon America during COVID-19 was almost identical to what he got away with doing to the gay community during AIDS and once Gardasil was approved, American organizations immediately began conducting unscrupulous clinical trials overseas that tricked young girls into joining and then discarded them once they were injured (eventually leading to a scathing rebuke by India’s government).56
Sadly, the Gardasil debacle was not the only test run. For instance, the widely opposed childhood vaccine mandates57 pushed across America after the California measles outbreak in 2015 to 2016, mirrored the COVID-19 mandates.
Likewise, the disastrous military anthrax vaccine campaign (which ended up being so devastating laws were passed to make mandating experimental vaccines on our soldiers illegal) ultimately was a beta-test for the horrific acts committed upon our soldiers with the COVID vaccines.
This troubling trend isn’t new; it can even be traced back to the smallpox vaccines, which were poorly tested and often caused outbreaks, prompting stricter mandates. Yet, when public pushback led to the reversal of these mandates, it resulted in an innovative approach that ultimately eliminated smallpox.
Today, we're at a pivotal crossroads. The pharmaceutical industry's greed has spiraled out of control, but public sentiment is shifting against these insane practices. There's a growing movement — Making America Healthy Again — that shows people are ready to reclaim their health.
Consider this recent exchange where the co-chair of Trump's transition told a hostile CNN host RFK Jr. had sold him on the dangers of vaccines and that they intend to have RFK Jr. fix this and make our children healthy again:
After years of watching the pharmaceutical industry's abuses, I once thought change was impossible and never once imagined an exchange like this could occur on national television. Now, I see a unique opportunity tomorrow to challenge the status quo. That hope fuels my dedication to this cause, and I'm incredibly grateful for what everyone's doing to at last fix this dysfunctional paradigm.
Author's Note: This is an abridged version of a longer article about the dangers of Gardasil (e.g., it includes a European television program about its victims) that covers many other forgotten facets of that tragedy that parallel the COVID-19 vaccine disaster. That article and its additional references can be read here.
A Note from Dr. Mercola About the Author
A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician from the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate AMD's exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and am grateful to share it. I also respect AMD’s desire to remain anonymous since AMD is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD's work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.
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You should add tinnitus to POTS sides effects
Thank you for bringing this public health information forward. It’s truly heartbreaking and eye opening!