British tabloids endanger lives with bad reporting on cervical cancer vaccine

When a British girl -- who had an undiagnosed tumor -- died shortly after receiving the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine, the British tabloids jumped on the story as proof that vaccines are evil and pad and deadly and dangerous. They even quoted respected scientists who agreed with them. Except they misrepreented those scientists' views, got the science completely wrong, scared people away from potentially life-saving treatment, and failed to adequately own up to their mistakes. Ben Goldacre, the "bad science" columnist for the Guardian, has written a scathing indictment of the way the press handled the story.

The story seemed unlikely for three reasons. Firstly, Professor Harper is not a known member of the antivaccination community, which is vanishingly small. Secondly, it was on the front page of the Sunday Express, which is indeed cause for concern. Lastly, it was by specialist health journalist Lucy Johnston, whose previous work includes "Doctor's MMR fears", "Exclusive: Experts Cast Doubt On Claim For 'Wonder' Cancer Jabs", "Children 'Used As Guinea Pigs For Vaccines'", "Dangers Of Mmr Jab 'Covered Up'", "Teenage Girls Sue Over Cancer Jab", "Jab Makers Linked To Vaccine Programme", and so many more, including a rather memorable bad science story, the front page: " Suicides 'Linked To Phone Masts".
So I contacted Professor Harper. For avoidance of doubt, so that there can be no question of me misrepresenting her views, unlike the Express, I will explain Professor Harper's position on this issue in her own words. They are unambiguous.
"I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a 'controversial drug'. I did not 'hit out' - I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview."

Jabs "as bad as the cancer" (Thanks, Evidence Matters!)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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strangefriend

This reminds me of the big kerfuffle in Texas over the HPV vaccine. Gov. Rick Perry announced in 2007 that the HPV vaccine would be mandatory for 6th grade schoolgirls (11-12 years old.) The Religious Right-part of his ‘base’-sputtered this would lead to promiscuous sex by under aged females. The Texas Legislature very quickly shot his executive order down, especially when it turned out an ex-aide was working for Merck, which was the maker of the vaccine. No Texas newspapers, though, had front-page headlines like those in the Sunday Express.
Camp Freddie

The Mail, Express, Sun, Star and Mirror are very popular in the UK. People buy them for news and they do so seriously.

Many people think that only these papers are able to print the truth, because political-correctness-gone-mad has prevented the Times, Guradian, Independent and Telegraph from printing the stories.

They are the UK’s equivalent of Fox news. I’m sure a lot of Americans take Fox seriously and use it as their primary news source. You aren’t all Daily-Show-watching liberal elites and we aren’t all sat around reading a broadsheet with our breakfast tea.
Guesstimate Jones

Heh…if I actually believed that vaccines for HPV or HIV would result in widespread promiscuous behavior on the part of young women, I would change my mind, and come out in favor of them in a heartbeat…
Guesstimate Jones

Just the same, I think I’ll wait until the generic is available, at a discount, and there is an established safety record. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to continue practicing safe sex…sigh…
Guesstimate Jones

Moooooo…
Rob Beschizza

Ban this sick filth!
Matt J

I hope the PCC throws the book at The Express over this. Full front page correction wouldn’t be enough to undo the damage they’ve done.
bondjamesbond

“evil and pad”

I hate pad, pad is pad. pad pad.
CANTFIGHTTHEDITE

Based on the pictures in the “genital warts” wikipedia page, and the fact that they can spread to the non-genital areas of the body, although rare, I’ll be getting the HPV vaccine as soon as it’s approved for males in Canada.
Adam_Y

Today’s Sunday Express headline:

“Cory Doctorow throttles cancer-causing doctor”

The tabloids are either fictitious or very high satire. I prefer to think of them as the latter. They’re not pandering to the reactionary, ill-informed/highly opinionated mass, they are holding a mirror up to them and going, ‘look how dumb you are’.
gollux

Umm, don’t tarnish bad reporting by comparing it with sensationalist yellow journalism. There is a major difference.
spazzm

I’m torn about this.

On one hand, it’s irresponsible and deplorable.

On the other hand, if you believe a single word written in these tabloids, maybe the world is better off without you. I could be thought of as a public service.
- Brainspore
  
  …if you believe a single word written in these tabloids, maybe the world is better off without you.
  
  The people who believe this trash aren’t the ones who will pay the price for their gullibility, it’s their daughters that will.
Anonymous

“The other side effect:
NOT GETTING CERVICAL CANCER.”

Except you can still get cervical cancer… HPV is just one of the (possible) causes of this cancer.
Neill S Mitchell Esq.

I think they had already worked themselves into a lather from approaching the vaccination program as ‘HPV vaccine would encourage promiscuity’.

….So how does that work? It’s not IV Bacardi Breezers is it??
shadowfirebird

What Mr Wednesday said.

I can assure you that the word “tabloid” in this country is not often used to explain the format of a newspaper; it’s used as a put down to describe the content.

The Daily Mail and the Express have an especially bad reputation for being misleading. The Sun and the Star are assumed to print only soft porn.

(I assume that some of the many people who buy these comics would not agree with these notions.)
vaiodon

It is very questionable what purpose the UK tabloids serve, they are certainly not papers carrying news. I laughed inwardly, recently, when The Sun publicised their intent to discontinue support for Labour. So, Rupert doesn’t want to ride that train any longer……

Maybe it’s just to idealistic to think that newspapers could simply provide commentary and analysis without being partisan.

I picked up this interesting/fun application that catalogues the Daily Mail’s reporting (sic?) of health related stories and shows the continuous contradiction they demonstrate for the sake of filling their tawdry columns: http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com
thorn

spazzm makes an excellent point. which might serve as defense for the tabloids, when readers suffering irreparable damage from taking the tabloids’ published advice litigate heavily against them.
Guesstimate Jones

There are actually some good reasons to be skeptical, about this vaccine. It’s new…not that many people have received it, yet. And it is expensive. And it is administered in 3 doses…as I understand it, the girl didn’t get sick, until the third dose…maybe the freak, fast-growing tumor was caused by the first two doses…just sayin’…
- Anonymous
  
  Guesstimate, the cost of the vaccine is not a reason to be skeptical of its efficacy or safety.
  I don’t know about the variety being administered in the UK, but the quadrivalent one here in the states has been shown to be over 98% effective in preventing the 4 kinds of HPV it’s for.
  Additionally, these vaccines (unlike, say, flu shots) do not contain any actual virus- live or dead. They have bits of protein from the outside of the viral capsid… a bit like giving a piece of cloth to a bloodhound to smell so it can track.
  
  As for cost, I can tell you from personal experience that the price of the vaccine is quite a bit lower than that of having precancerous lesions biopsied and/or removed from one’s cervix. People could also skip the fear, discomfort, and pain.
  I wish they’d had this vaccine 10 or 15 years ago.
  
  As an interesting side note, I had a talk with a guy that works at Merck (the pharma that makes Gardasil) where he mentioned the difficulty of getting this vaccine approved for males. It makes perfect sense to vaccinate boys as well as girls if you’re trying to prevent the spread of HPV and decrease the disease burden of cervical cancer, but you can’t prove any benefit for the boys except immunity from several common types of genital warts. It’s tough to come up with data showing that vaccinating men decreases cancer cases in women.
annoyingmouse

I can’t help but think that this particular situation has arisen because of the whole way in which the original incident was mishandled. Why was this sort of thing released/available to the press before the post mortem on the girl was carried out? Who was responsible for telling the press that a girl who had (by coincidence) had the jab had died? If these details were kept private then the Express and other evil outlets wouldn’t have had the opportunity to scaremonger like this. In fact, “girl dies of undiagnosed tumour” probably wouldn’t have even been reported. I don’t know anything about the girl’s family but I really feel sorry for them when considering the sort of over the top and completely unnecessary intrusions they must have suffered in the last few weeks. As it is, how these tabloid people can sleep at night is beyond me. That being said, anybody who buys this or any of the other tabloids that litter this country probably should be ashamed of themselves.
bklynchris

Man Cory, what is it with you and vaccines. You really are starting to sound as loopy as the anti-vaccine camp. Yes, this is a dumb article, it is a tabloid. But your vociferousness is sending me down the, what’s his real agenda here? path.

If you are really so pro-vaccine, I have a couple of friends doing Phase III trials looking for volunteers…seriously. Of course, they would want you to have a lot of unprotected sex, hopefully with mulitple partners whose sexual hx is unk to you.

Otherwise, the rest of your submissions are kinda cool, even some of the steam punk…YAWWWWN.
- arkizzle / Moderator
  
  BklynChris,
  
  You don’t think there is a danger in spreading lies and misinformation, about potentially life-saving medicine, on the frontpage of a popular national paper?
CANTFIGHTTHEDITE

Two excellent articles on qHPV vaccine can be found here and here.

It is indeed sensationalism, and a bit of the ol’ correlation vs. causation fallacy, in the article and all of the fears surrounding the girl’s death.
Ilovechocolatemilk

@Adam_Y

“The tabloids are…very high satire.”

I truly doubt this is the case. If it were satire, it would be more intelligently constructed, with obvious irony written into the work. Consider something like the Onion, nearly every single piece has some sort of ironic contradictory claim. For example, on today’s issue of The Onion, one finds this headline: “Online Dating Helping Pathetic Women Get Their Hopes Crushed More Efficiently.” The point of ironic contradiction, that is claiming the exact opposite of what is expected, is to make it well-known to the reader that you’re not being serious. Take away the irony and all you have left is just a mere lie.

If it is satire, it is very poorly written satire, on par with internet trolling. In fact, I would put most internet trolls on a higher tier than most tabloids, since most trolls’ only purpose is to get a rise out of people while tabloids exist to trick people out of their money.
Zadaz

Stuff like this always has me split. My first thought is “There should be sever criminal punishment for being so irresponsibly stupid, etc etc etc”

But when I calm down and try not to be as emotional as the tabludites or as Cory I know want to live in a world with freedom of information and expression. And if I want that world I have to allow that some people want to be ignorant and willfully deluded. I don’t like that, but it gives me the freedoms to be properly informed myself. Any alternative that would prevent the former would also prevent the later.

But it should she be f-ing criminal.
Anonymous

“There should be sever criminal punishment for being so irresponsibly stupid, etc etc etc”

I like sever punishment… particularly severing of the head… why can’t we bring that back? Seemed to work rather well for the French…
VVelox

I think what I find most disturbing about this is how many people here are upset about this being wrong in a tabloid. So the Queen being Elvis’s goatse toy is fine, but this inaccuracy is some how over the top of every thing else?

If “tabloid” means the same thing there in the UK as it does in here in the US, I say any one taking advice from them deserves what ever they get and the population of the UK need to do some thing as to what went wrong that lead to that.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  British tabloids are widely regarded as newspapers. US tabloids are regarded more like Mad Magazine.
  - danlalan
    
    except usually not as creative or as funny.
  - MrWednesday
    
    British tabloids are widely regarded as newspapers.
    
    Except not in the U.K.
CANTFIGHTTHEDITE

When considering herd immunity, people should be forced to take vaccines, regardless of their beliefs or ignorances. While HPV isn’t the measles or polio, the implications of large numbers of non-vaccinated people are far too great to let this British Tabloid shit slide.
Anonymous

Here is a list of possible HPV vaccine side effects.

http://hpv.emedtv.com/hpv-vaccine/hpv-vaccine-side-effects.html

Like anything else in this life, you roll the dice and take your chances.
- Anonymous
  
  The other side effect:
  NOT GETTING CERVICAL CANCER.
arkizzle / Moderator

Spot on, Brain’.
Kieran O’Neill

On the topic of British science reporting, this coverage in the Independent on recent findings suggesting a link between a particular virus and chronic fatigue syndrome is possibly the best science reporting (apart from Dr. Goldacre’s) that I’ve seen.
gelos

I’m going to have to put my vote behind Cory on this. It’s a public health issue not an individual decision. See “herd immunity”

Get the vaccine, the odds are still on your side.