HHS Study Documents CDC Conflicts of Interest, Puts Swine Flu and HPV Vaccine Decisions Into Doubt

by Heidi Stevenson

20 December 2009

The mass HPV vaccination of girls and the H1N1 vaccination protocol in the US were recommended by a committee that was contaminated by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advisors with conflicts of interest. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a report entitled "CDC's Ethics Program for Special Governmental Employees on Federal Advisory Committees", whichdocuments an inbred culture of deceit within the CDC.

Nearly all advisors for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) didn't even bother to fully fill out their financial disclosure forms. A full 97% were not complete. But it's even worse than that. Potential conflicts of interest were unresolved in 64% of cases. 26% who had known and unresolved conflicts of interest also had others that were not identified.

Though one must wonder if there's any value whatsoever in ethics training in such a climate, even the simple matter of going through ethics training was skipped by 41% of the CDCs advisors.

On being presented with these findings, the CDC's Inspector General's office responded, saying that it concurred with the HHS's recommendations and that it is implementing controls to prevent future abuses. However, it balked at the idea of verifying that conflict of interest forms be complete. They claimed that it's "impractical", saying that they are accomplishing the equivalent with a "comprehensive review of supplementary documents, such as the curricula vitae".

Really? If that's true, then how is it that they've missed so many conflicts of interest? It seems that the CDC's real interest is in supporting a cozy relationship with the industry it's supposed to oversee.

The investigation collected and reviewed data from:

• Advisors' financial disclosure files, their curricula vitae, their official correspondence with the CDC, HHS, and designated federal officials, their ethics agreements, and ethics training certificates.
• Minutes of committee meetings.
• Committee charters.

A total of 212 advisors' disclosure forms were examined.

All data analysis was done on the basis of the financial disclosure forms and other documents provided by the advisors. The study did not do any investigations into the advisors' lives to attempt to find conflicts of interest. All problems found were based on disclosed information.

If an expert didn't provide any information about a conflict of interest, it was not investigated and the HHS's study didn't find it. In other words, as bad as the study's findings are, they could be only the tip of the iceberg.

The CDC relies on the suggestions of its advisors to determine what the nation's vaccination programs will be. The HHS's study brings into question the validity of the nation's massive programs of injecting girls with the HPV (so-called cancer) vaccine and the entire population with H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine. The CDC is using advisors with conflicts of interest that they've disclosed. No study has been done to identify how much isn't being disclosed.

If it's necessary to use people who stand to profit from their recommendations, just how dangerous are these vaccinations? If they were safe and effective, why would they use compromised people to advise them?