Both Merck and Glaxo disclosed in their Shareholders Reports that profitable performances by their flagship HPV vaccines were top indicators of shareholder value. Gardasil has been a top seller for Merck, earning total global sales of $1.2 billion in 2011,163 a windfall for the company floundering to recover from a $7 billion court settlement related to criminal charges that the company had knowingly killed between 100,000 and 500,000 Americans by defrauding customers about the safety of its blockbuster pain pill, Vioxx.164 Merck’s executives nicknamed the HPV vaccine “Help Pay for Vioxx” and fast-tracked it to market after shoddy safety tests under pressure from Wall Street analysts itching to downgrade Merck’s “buy” recommendations.
At least 1,200 of the girls in Gates’s study—1 in 20—suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders.165 Seven died—about 10x the US death rates for cervical cancer, which almost never kills the young. India’s Federal Ministry of Health suspended the trials and appointed an expert parliamentary committee to investigate the scandal. Indian government investigators found that Gates-funded researchers at PATH committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying illiterate parents, and forging consent forms. Gates provided health insurance for his PATH staff but not to any participants in the trials, and refused medical care to the hundreds of injured girls.166
The PATH researchers targeted girls at ashram paathshalas (boarding schools for tribal children), to dodge the need to seek parental consent for the shots.167 They gave the girls “HPV Immunization Cards” that were printed in English, which the girls couldn’t read. They did not tell the girls that they were part of a clinical trial and instead hoodwinked them with the lie that these were “wellness shots” that would guarantee “lifelong protection” against cancer. That was not true. PATH conducted the trials in impoverished rural areas that lacked mechanisms for tracking the adverse effects and had no system for recording major adverse reactions to the vaccines, something legally mandated for large-scale clinical trials.168
In 2010, the Indian Council of Medical Ethics found that the Gates group had violated India’s ethical protocols. In August 2013, a special parliamentary committee excoriated PATH, stating that the NGO’s “sole aim has been to promote the commercial interests of HPV vaccine manufacturers who would have reaped windfall profits had PATH been successful in getting the HPV vaccine included in the UIP [universal immunization program] of the Country.”169 According to Dr. Colin Gonsalves, senior counsel of the Supreme Court of India,
The Indian Parliament formed a committee, and it was to be a rather surprising move, because you generally don’t often have such a high level inquiry into matters affecting poor people. And that was such an extraordinary report. I don’t think the Indian Parliament has ever come out with such a scathing report. And the government officials came out and said, “We shouldn’t have authorized this, were sorry, and we’re not going to allow them again”—and now they are back, doing their same old tricks again.170
In 2013, two separate groups of health activists and human rights advocates filed public interest litigation (PIL) petitions calling on India’s Supreme Court to investigate the HPV trials and determine whether PATH and other stakeholders responsible for the trial should be held liable for financial damages in relation to the families of the seven deceased girls.171
One of the lead petitioners, Amar Jesani, a physician who directs the Centre for Studies in Ethics and Rights in Mumbai, told Professor McGoey that he regrets that he did not add the Gates Foundation as a defendant. “The ethical guidelines of the Indian Council for Medical Research talks about totality of responsibility. It defines the totality of responsibility in terms of everybody—that means sponsor . . . involved,” Jesani said. “Under that principle, everyone should be held responsible. There is also no evidence at the moment that the Gates Foundation took any steps to discipline PATH for the research it carried out in India. . . . I think, to some extent, the Gates Foundation thinks PATH has done nothing wrong. And that is a concern. One needs to get a spotlight on the Gates Foundation.”172 The case is now before the country’s Supreme Court.
CDC cited Merck’s and Gates’s cheery assessments of the grotesque Indian experiments to help justify its expanded recommendation for the Gardasil vaccine. Prior to COVID-19, Gardasil was the most dangerous vaccine ever licensed, accounting for some 22 percent of cumulative injuries from all adverse events reported to the US Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). During clinical trials, Merck was unable to show that Gardasil was effective against cervical cancers.173 Instead, the studies showed the vaccine actually increases cervical cancer by 46.3 percent in women exposed to HPV prior to vaccination—perhaps one-third of all women.174 According to Merck’s clinical trial reports, the vaccine was associated with autoimmune diseases in one out of every thirty-nine women.175 Since introduction of that vaccine in 2006, thousands of girls have reported debilitating autoimmune diseases, and cancer rates have skyrocketed in young women.176
HPV Vaccines and Fertility
Gates’s strong patronage of HPV vaccines (Gardasil and Cervarix) deepened suspicions that he was weaponizing vaccination against human fertility. Merck’s clinical trials showed strong signals for reproductive harm from Gardasil.177, 178 People in the study suffered reproductive problems including premature ovarian failure at ten times background rates. Female fertility has dropped precipitously beginning in 2006 in the United States, coterminous with Gardasil uptake.179, 180 Historical drops in fecundity have occurred in every nation with high Gardasil uptake.181
Hepatitis B
The conspiracy by GAVI, WHO, and UNICEF to force India to mandate hepatitis B vaccines is yet another illustration of how, under Bill Gates’s hegemony, vaccine industry profits trump public health. The WHO initially recommended hepatitis B vaccination only in countries with high incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the species of liver cancer that the vaccine promises to abolish. Since HCC is rare in India, the country did not qualify under WHO’s initial criteria, which recommended the vaccine only in nations with significant HCC. WHO’s policy meant the vaccine manufacturers would lose a market of 1.3 billion people.
Notwithstanding such concerns about the high costs and meager benefits of the vaccine, Gates, through his surrogates at GAVI, PATH, and WHO successfully arm-twisted the Indian government in 2007–8 into introducing the hepatitis B vaccines.