Back in 2018, the authors of a then-unpublished systematic review fired a spin- and error-laced salvo at the
Cochrane review of the HPV vaccines. The authors were
critical of the core of the Cochrane review’s methodology – reviewing only published articles about trials and leaving out unpublished clinical study reports (CSRs) in the first version. They did the opposite in their own review: they left out the published articles (except for a couple of follow-up studies). That was quite an experimental approach, and a risky one at that. Now that review has been published (
Jørgensen 2020).
Does the new review challenge the Cochrane review’s conclusion that the vaccine reduced the risk of precursors of cervical cancer? No.
The authors had criticized the Cochrane review for missing trials because they only searched for ones with published articles. Does the new review include all the trials? No, because CSRs were only available for about a half.
One of the authors, Peter Gøtzsche, has been sounding a safety alarm based on this review, for example
here and
here and
here, and
on German TV:
We did find serious harms with the HPV vaccines, so we were able to show that there are more serious neurological harms with HPV vaccines than in the control groups.
Does the review back up these strong claims? The answer to that is no, too.
