The Guardian of the UK reports:
"A campaign fronted by doctors and celebrities to persuade European governments, including the UK, to vaccinate all young girls against cervical cancer is being entirely funded by the drug company that markets the vaccine.Posted by schwitz at April 12, 2007 07:08 AM | TrackBackSanofi Pasteur MSD, which markets Gardasil in Europe on behalf of the drug giant Merck, spent millions on what was billed as the "first global summit against cervical cancer", held in Paris on Thursday with doctors and patient organisations from across Europe.
The revelation comes as public health experts express disquiet about the promotion of a vaccine that is only effective in young girls - possibly at the expense of screening programmes that are essential to protect adults. They also worry that the long-term effects of the vaccine are not known. The vaccine protects against the most common strains of the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer.
Diane Harper, a professor at Dartmouth medical school in New Hampshire, who led two vaccine trials, said the vaccine would not protect against all strains of the virus, and that nobody knows whether vaccinated 10-year-old girls would still be protected in 10 years' time, when they are sexually active and at risk. Mass vaccination programmes, she said, would be "a great big public health experiment".
Celebrities, doctors and journalists were shipped in from across Europe and the United States by PR agencies working for Sanofi. The summit, which resembled a political rally, called for country-wide vaccination programmes.