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Expert Guts Claims That HPV Vaccine Reduces Cancer Risk

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 3, 2026

Public health policy should rest on solid, transparent evidence — not slogans, not marketing and not selective readings of scientific reviews, biochemist Lucija Tomljenović, Ph.D., said recently.

In a wide-ranging interview on the “Slobodni Podcast,” Tomljenović challenged the evidence base for HPV vaccination programs.

She told host Andrija Klarić that safety and efficacy claims are unsubstantiated, and the benefits of the vaccine do not outweigh the risks.

The widely circulated claim that the HPV vaccine dramatically reduces cervical cancer risk — by as much as 80% if administered before age 16 — collapses under closer examination.

Tomljenović has published more than a dozen papers on the HPV vaccine. She was also an expert witness in litigation against Merck, maker of the Gardasil HPV vaccine. In that role, she presented a systematic critique of the claims that the HPV vaccine prevents cancer.

She also delivered an overview of the science on the adverse events associated with the shot, and she presented evidence that Merck manipulated regulators and legislators to grow the market for its vaccine.

Claims that HPV vaccine reduces cancer risk based on flawed Cochrane reviews

Tomljenović explained for “Slobodni” listeners why the 2025 Cochrane reviews on HPV vaccines — widely cited by health authorities and the media to support the claim that the vaccine reduces cervical cancer incidence by up to 80% — are flawed.

She said the reviews’ own data undermine their conclusions.

The Cochrane Library is often regarded as the gold standard of systematic reviews, she said. Mainstream health institutions often base recommendations on findings from Cochrane.

However, systematic reviews are only as reliable as the studies they include, she said.

According to Tomljenović’s analysis of the 300-plus-page review, the majority of epidemiological studies cited to show the vaccine’s effects — including its ability to stop invasive cervical cancer — had serious or critical risk of bias, according to the ratings of Cochrane’s own reviewers.

A systematic review is a “study of studies,” a high-level research method that reviews, synthesizes and critically appraises the available body of evidence for a given disease or health topic in a standardized and systematic way.

Risk-of-bias assessments in those reviews evaluate whether methodological flaws — in design, analysis or reporting — are likely to invalidate results. A “serious” or “critical” rating signals substantial flaws that make conclusions highly questionable.

Yet despite this, Tomljenović said the Cochrane review concluded there was “moderate certainty evidence” that HPV vaccines reduce cervical cancer incidence.

She said that when the studies included in a systematic review are predominantly rated as low quality by the reviewers themselves, it is not justified to conclude the studies provide “moderate certainty evidence” for any outcome.

“Garbage in equals garbage out,” she said.

“If the majority of your studies are of such poor quality — by your own assessment — you cannot claim moderate certainty evidence,” she says. “That is just misinformation.”

Cervical cancer rates were in decline before HPV vaccine introduced

If HPV vaccination dramatically reduces cervical cancer, it follows that there would be a clear population-level decline of the disease following widespread vaccination.

Tomljenović presented national cervical cancer statistics from the U.K., Australia, and the U.S. showing that cervical cancer rates had been declining — and in some age groups were already near zero — before HPV vaccines were introduced into immunization schedules.

“The rate of cervical cancers in the U.K. have been rapidly declining and they have reached their lowest point long before HPV vaccines were introduced,” she said.

In Australia, despite very high vaccination rates, she said there has been no corresponding dramatic improvement when it comes to cancer rates.

She shared those statistics in her presentation slides. “You want me to believe something,” she says. “Show me the data.”

Clinical trials didn’t test for cancer prevention

Health officials and vaccine makers claim the HPV vaccine prevents cancer. However, neither the clinical trials nor the studies included in the Cochrane reviews actually studied whether the vaccines prevented cancer.

Randomized controlled trials for HPV vaccines did not use invasive cervical cancer as an endpoint. Instead, they measured reductions in precancerous lesions such as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 (CIN2) as a surrogate marker for cancer.

However, CIN2 lesions often resolve without becoming cancerous.

Even if one assumed that CIN2 was a valid surrogate, Gardasil 9 demonstrated roughly 60% efficacy against CIN2 or worse over 3.5 years in those trials, Tomljenović said.

This can’t logically translate into claims of 90% lifetime cervical cancer prevention — especially when cervical cancer develops over decades and trials followed participants for only about three years.

“High efficacy against lower-grade precancerous lesions does not necessarily translate to high vaccine efficacy against … cervical cancer,” she said.

Tomljenović said her conclusion is shared by several independent research groups, including a group of German physicians and a group led by Dr. Peter Gøtzsche, writing in peer-reviewed literature.

HPV vaccines associated with many serious side effects

Tomljenović said that many known adverse events associated with the HPV vaccines are not disclosed in official vaccine product information.

Those side effects, which are documented in case reports and adverse event reporting systems, include cardiac arrhythmias, neurological conditions such as acute hemorrhagic encephalomyelitis, autonomic nervous system disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome, premature ovarian failure, and permanent disability.

Other studies have identified similar adverse events.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also recognized serious adverse events. For example, a judge awarded compensation to the family of Christina Tarsell, a young woman who died following Gardasil vaccination.

Tomljenović said serious and life-threatening injuries may be rare, but people should be properly informed about the risks.

Financial interests, not science, driving vaccine policy

Tomljenović said she does not dismiss research purely based on funding sources. However, when methodological weaknesses align with extensive pharmaceutical lobbying and financial relationships, legitimate concerns arise that financial interests rather than evidence-based science are driving vaccine policy.

A 2012 article in the American Journal of Public Health documented Merck’s role in drafting and promoting legislation that mandated the HPV vaccine for school attendance in the U.S.

The researchers found that Merck served as “an information resource, lobbying legislators, drafting legislation, mobilizing female legislators and physician organizations, conducting consumer marketing campaigns, and filling gaps in access to the vaccine.”

She also said there is a “revolving door” between Merck and regulatory agencies. Dr. Julie Gerberding, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, became president of Merck’s vaccine division when she left the agency.

During her tenure at Merck, she accumulated over $100 million in personal wealth.

Tomljenović also invoked the Vioxx scandal — another Merck product later withdrawn from the market after killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people — as a cautionary tale about regulatory failures.

Researchers have suggested that Merck pushed Gardasil to compensate for its financial losses from Vioxx.

Pap screenings are the best way to prevent cervical cancer

Tomljenović concluded that regular Pap screenings remain a proven, risk-free alternative to HPV vaccination for cervical cancer prevention.

She said that “exposing healthy children to long-term, unpredictable and incompletely understood vaccine risks for no proven substantial benefits … is utterly unscientific, unreasonable, immoral and plain reckless.”

Pap screenings, she argues, carry no risk of autoimmune complications or neurological injury and have already driven substantial declines in mortality.

Watch the [English language] interview here:

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This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

March 12, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | HPV vaccine, Merck