Diane Harper
Diane M. Harper | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Being an author on a number of HPV vaccine clinical trials; questioning the vaccine's safety |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Virology, vaccine development, cancer prevention |
| Institutions | University of Missouri |
| Thesis | The determination of diagnostic probabilities for human papillomavirus testing in the evaluation of an abnormal screening Papanicolaou smear (1995) |
Diane M. Harper, MD, MPH, MS, is a professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City's department of Biomedical and Health Informatics. A graduate of the University of Kansas, she also completed undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her area of expertise is Human papillomavirus and the diseases associated with it, and she formerly helped design and carry out the clinical trials of Gardasil, a vaccine against HPV. She has since turned against the vaccine, stating that it could prove more dangerous than the cancer it is designed to protect against, and that these risks are of sufficient magnitude that patients should be informed of them. She has also argued that Gardasil may not prevent any cancers at all, only postpone them.
Research
She has co-authored a number of scientific trials of the HPV vaccine in the New England Journal of Medicine, among other prestigious journals.[1]
Opposition to Gardasil
Although, in 2008, she stated that Gardasil "is a good vaccine and...is generally safe,"[2] in recent years Harper has questioned the safety of Gardasil, and has appeared at conferences held by the National Vaccine Information Center, and has also appeared in The Greater Good.[3] As evidence that the vaccine may be unsafe, she points to research by Barbara Slade,[4] stating, "Gardasil has been associated with at least as many serious adverse events as there are deaths from cervical cancer developing each year. Indeed, the risks of vaccination are underreported in Slade's article, as they are based on a denominator of doses distributed from Merck's warehouse. Up to a third of those doses may be in refrigerators waiting to be dispensed as the autumn onslaught of vaccine messages is sent home to parents the first day of school. Should the denominator in Dr. Slade's work be adjusted to account for this, and then divided by three for the number of women who would receive all three doses, the incidence rate of serious adverse events increases up to five fold."[5] In an interview with the Huffington Post, Harper stated that pap smears alone prevent more cancer than vaccines alone.[6] She has also argued that HPV vaccination may be unnecessary because "Ninety-five percent of women who are infected with HPV never, ever get cervical cancer."[7]
References
- ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1056/NEJMoa061760, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with
|doi=10.1056/NEJMoa061760instead. - ^ Chustecka, Zosia (9 August 2008). "HPV Vaccine Deemed Safe and Effective, Despite Reports of Adverse Events". Medscape Today. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
- ^ Gorski, David (18 November 2011). "Anti-vaccine propaganda lands in New York City this weekend". ScienceBlogs. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
- ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1001/jama.2009.1201., please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with
|doi=10.1001/jama.2009.1201.instead. - ^ Attkisson, Sharyl (29 August 2009). "Gardasil researcher speaks out". CBS News. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
- ^ Yerman, Marcia (28 December 2009). "An Interview with Dr. Diane M. Harper, HPV Expert". Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
- ^ Knox, Richard (19 September 2011). "HPV Vaccine: The Science Behind the Controversy". NPR. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
External Links
