Are Gardasil shots really the answer?

By A. JARGALMAA

The Government of Mongolia has a national cervical cancer strategy, which includes increasing and improving the quality of cervical cancer screening, treatment and prevention.

The Government applied to the Merck Gardasil Access Program to receive donated HPV vaccines and was notified in July 2011 that their application was successful. Merck agreed to donate 44,800 doses for a small introductory campaign.

On October 4, 2011, the Ministry of Health officially approved the use of the HPV vaccination in four sites, the Baganuur and Bayangol Districts of Ulaanbaatar and the Selenge and Umungovi Aimags reaching 14,491 eligible girls ages 11-15.

Gardasil, a human papillomavirus (HPV) prevention vaccine, was determined by the Ministry of Health to be the most cost effective vaccine in preventing up to the 70% of the viral strains which lead to cervical cancer in Mongolia.

But is it the case that the vaccine can really prevent girls from contracting HPV?

The end point of all the efficacy studies for Gardasil was not, in fact, prevention of cancer. Researchers couldn’t actually assess the development of cervical cancer following the vaccine because this process normally takes 20 to 40 years and their studies stopped after just five.

So instead, Merck’s scientists decided that the presence of atypical cervical cells was a valid “surrogate end point,” or substitute for cancer. They used this hypothesis despite the fact that there is no evidence that the types of cervical lesions they chose as their end point would eventually lead to cancer.

Merck has never acknowledged that their entire premise for the efficacy of Gardasil rests on pure speculation.

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