“HPV Vaccine Maker’s Study Proves Natural HPV Infection Beneficial, Not Deadly.”
Way back in 2014, my old pal “holistic” psychiatrist Dr. Kelly Brogan wrote an article with Sayer Ji, the founder of the pseudoscience site GreenMedInfo, that helped me realize the depravity of anti-vaxxers, who didn’t just lie about vaccines, but actively encouraged infections with dangerous viruses.
Their article was titled HPV Vaccine Maker’s Study Proves Natural HPV Infection Beneficial, Not Deadly. Its core argument was that HPV infections were beneficial because they protected against HPV infections. The sheer stupidity of this argument made a big impact on me at the time and prepared me well for future events. The We Want Them Infected movement did not begin in 2020.
Their article began by saying:
Behind every vaccine is an assumption. That HPV causes cervical cancer, that cervical cancer causes death, and that a vaccine can effectively interfere with this linear relationship is the assumption to be examined in this article.
That’s gobbledygook, and it can be done with anything. Behind every car is an assumption. That wheels go around, that steering wheels will change their direction, and that brakes will stop them.
However, our plucky duo claimed to have discovered something that had eluded every expert in virology, oncology, infectious diseases, and vaccinology. With nothing but an internet connection, they alone had discovered the real truth.
They discussed a study titled Risk of Newly Detected Infections and Cervical Abnormalities in Women Seropositive for Naturally Acquired Human Papillomavirus Type 16/18 Antibodies: Analysis of the Control Arm of PATRICIA. It found:
Naturally acquired antibodies to HPV-16, and to a lesser extent HPV-18, are associated with some reduced risk of subsequent infection and cervical abnormalities associated with the same HPV type.
That a virus leads to “some reduced risk of subsequent infection” is obviously not a reason to embrace that virus, especially when there is an effective vaccine against it. Indeed, the original PATRICIA study, a phase III randomized, double-blind, controlled trial of the HPV vaccine concluded:
PATRICIA end-of-study results show excellent vaccine efficacy against cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 3+ and adenocarcinoma in situ irrespective of HPV DNA in the lesion. Population-based vaccination that incorporates the HPV-16/18 vaccine and high coverage of early adolescents might have the potential to substantially reduce the incidence of cervical cancer.
Dr. Brogan and Mr. Ji didn’t care about this at all, however. Rather than inform their readers of this important finding, they instead made some big assumptions of their own and wrote:
If, in fact, the HPV vaccines do not work as widely advertised, and natural HPV infectious exposures actually protect against the progression of HPV linked cervical changes to cancer, then taken together, both these findings challenge the most fundamental assumptions within vaccine science (aka vaccinology), and render highly dubious the oft repeated rhetoric that natural HPV infection is juggernaut –like deadly force the best defense against which are universal immunization campaigns…
Given the possibility that HPV infection itself confers protection against HPV reinfection and its more serious health implications (e.g. CIN1+), and that the HPV vaccine may not offer the same level of protection that our inborn adaptive immune responses to natural HPV infection does, we should pause to question the dominant HPV memes circulating out there – via the CDC, the pediatricians, the mainstream media – that proffer HPV is a ‘vaccine-preventable’ disease that we are morally and socially obligated to engage ‘preventively’ through vaccinating every susceptible adolescent on the planet. This fear-borne meme driving the herd to vaccinate against HPV—and everything else —is at least as infectious as the very virus they falsely promise their bivalent and quadrivalent vaccines will defeat.
Dr. Brogan and Mr. Ji concluded with a plea for science:
Perhaps it’s time for us to truly see how safe and effective they are by engaging in basic scientific methodology. We might find that everything we thought was true, is far from it.
Dr. David Gorski wrote a rebuttal at the time titled I Do Not Think That Study Shows What You Think It Shows. He had them figured out years ago. He wrote:
HPV is a vaccine-preventable disease. It makes sense in many populations to vaccinate against it. HPV vaccination itself is pretty crappy at preventing reinfection—according to the results of the very study that Ji and Brogan themselves try to use to claim that we shouldn’t vaccinated against HPV. Truly, in the antivaccine world of Brogan and Ji, up is down, left is right, right is wrong, and we have always been at war with Eastasia—and apparently a study looking at the correlation between antibody levels and reinfection tells us that vaccinating against a first infection is inferior to “natural infection.” Of course, if our immunity to a primary infection were so great, we wouldn’t need a vaccine in the first place. Either Ji and Brogan are incredibly ignorant, or they’re intentionally obfuscating. Take your pick. Neither possibility reflects well on them.
“Young Women Now Have ‘Close To Zero’ Risk Of Cervical Cancer Death After HPV Jab”
Enough time has passed that we can judge the predictions of Dr. Brogan and Mr. Ji. Were HPV infections beneficial after all? Well, here is a smattering of recent articles on the topic:
- Young Women Now Have ‘Close To Zero’ Risk Of Cervical Cancer Death After HPV Jab
- Australia On-Track To Be The First Country To Achieve Cervical Cancer Elimination
- New Research Highlights Strong Benefits Of HPV Vaccines Beyond Cervical Cancer
- Cervical Cancer Deaths Have Plummeted Thanks To HPV Vaccine
- New Evidence Review Affirms Strong Safety and Effectiveness of HPV Vaccines
- HPV Vaccine Safe And Reduces Risk Of Cervical Cancer, Anti-Misinformation Review Finds
- HPV Vaccines Protect Against Cervical Cancer After 18 Years
According to that last article:
Most cases of cervical cancer are caused by human papillomaviruses (HPV). When HPV vaccines were introduced twenty years ago, experts dared to dream of a world without cervical cancer.
There are 660,000 cases of the disease every year, and around 350,000 deaths. The HPV vaccine was added to national vaccine schedules once it had been thoroughly tested and approved by independent regulators – and it is widely supported by cancer patient advocates.
However, it was clear that the full impact of the vaccine would not be visible for decades. That is because the vaccine is given in early adolescence to protect against a virus that causes cancers later in life.
Now, data from multiple countries is mounting. All the evidence points in the same direction: HPV vaccines are safely protecting against cervical cancer. As a result, the prospect of eliminating the disease is coming into focus.
A major new study from Sweden, published in the BMJ, shows that HPV vaccines provide long-term protection against invasive cervical cancer. Researchers used data from 926,362 girls vaccinated between January 2006 and December 2023.
By following this group for eighteen years and tracking those who developed cancer, they were able to conclude two things: Not only did the vaccine reduce cervical cancer by 79% compared to those who had not been vaccinated, but it also offered sustained protection for years after vaccination.
The proof that the vaccine prevents HPV infection and protects against cancer backs up several studies from other countries. For example, this Danish paper showed far fewer girls tested positive for HPV after vaccination, while this large Dutch study also showed strong protection against cancer. Data from Scotland and a new study from the US pointed in the same direction.
That’s a big deal. Moving forward, no one should suffer or die from an HPV-related cancer because they missed a simple vaccine, and it’s tragic that so many already have.
“I will be critical of the FDA officials who missed this important signal.”
Circling back to my writing from last fall, when disgraced ex-FDA leader Dr. Vinay Prasad faked that the COVID vaccine killed at least 10 children, I wrote that I was open to his evidence. That was true. I also acknowledged that if indeed he had it, which he didn’t, that would have implicated his predecessors. I wrote:
I will be critical of the FDA officials who missed this important signal.
That was also true. I cared deeply about this issue because I’d written many articles advocating for the pediatric COVID vaccine. Though I am under no illusion they changed many parents’ minds, I nonetheless would have been miserable had I given advice that could have hurt a child, however remote the odds.
Dr. Brogan and Mr. Ji share no such compunctions, however, and their callous indifference reveals three core features of pseudoscience.
First, although Dr. Brogan and Mr. Ji claimed to have been motivated by “basic scientific methodology”, this was a performance, a slick marketing gimmick to trick their marks. The data about the HPV vaccine was already clear in 2014, and it’s even clearer today. Yet, the research I posted above won’t matter to them at all. Not one bit.
Second, people like Dr. Brogan and Mr. Ji will never admit error, nor will they survey the scientific literature in 2026 and make the affirmative case they were right in 2014. They’ll act like they never promoted HPV infections, though that’s exactly what they did. They told people an oncogenic virus was beneficial, when there was a safe and effective vaccine against it, and they shouldn’t be allowed to forget it.
Third and most damningly, they won’t care about the consequences of their words. The people hurt by their anti-vaccine disinformation don’t matter to them at all. They’ve moved on to other things. Today, Dr. Brogan is busy extolling the glories of Dr. Brogan and pushing her monetized content. Mr. Ji meanwhile is a sycophant for our government and current medical establishment, trying to make MAHA global.
I would feel deep and profound shame if I had said a cancer-causing virus was beneficial. I would apologize, vanish from public commentary forever, and spend the rest of my days losing sleep, wondering exactly who I had hurt. Pseudoscience, however, requires apathy about its victims, and that’s the most grotesque part about it.