The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a federally funded government agency whose mission “is to seek knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.” The NIH lists a number of goals:

* to foster fundamental creative discoveries, innovative research strategies, and their applications as a basis for ultimately protecting and improving health;

* to develop, maintain, and renew scientific human and physical resources that will ensure the Nation’s capability to prevent disease;

* to expand the knowledge base in medical and associated sciences in order to enhance the Nation’s economic well-being and ensure a continued high return on the public investment in research; and

* to exemplify and promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science.

What is of concern to many is that the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the NIH is such that the NIH’s ongoing research funding is from tax payer dollars, while the pharmaceutical industry benefits from the profits generated by the various vaccines developed through the NIH. Additionally, recruitment and employment between the NIH and pharmaceutical industry is an on going practice that fosters a conflict of interest that would not be allowed in other industries.

As an example, in 2012, Advanced Bioscience Laboratories received $1,052,178 from the NIH to develop “promising products when such products emerge from investigator-initiated research studies.” The same year the NIH gave $2,120,235 to the University of California San Diego to “discover, characterize, and support preclinical testing of new adjuvant candidates [for vaccines] based upon triggering of the human innate immune system.” In other words, the NIH funded research for vaccine adjuvants that have been implicated in autoimmune disease, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and Autism.

Almost immediately with the introduction of the HPV vaccine problems arose with thousands of adverse reactions being reported to the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS). Rather than stop the administration of a vaccine that did not undergo clinical trials prior to its release, the NIH sponsored additional research to try and convince the public that the vaccine was safe and effective.

The Texas SW Medical Center in Dallas was given a half million-dollar grant to try to “identify an optimal and feasible self- persuasion intervention strategy to promote adolescent HPV vaccination in safety-net clinics,” also known as sell more vaccines. This is also about the time when former Texas governor Rick Perry recommended state-wide inoculation of all 11 and 12-year-old girls with Merck’s Gardasil vaccine after his chief of staff left to work at Merck.

Additionally, the University of Texas El Paso received $422,716 from the NIH to do similar free marketing and “pilot test a future intervention to promote adoption of the HPV vaccine in the Latino community” while “considering cultural factors.”

In 2013 – 2014, Yale University received $390,389 from the NIH to “identify and describe barriers to HPV vaccination completion among lower income racial and ethnic minorities” and “generate ideas for future interventions that will be culturally relevant and have the greatest potential for impact.”

The NIH estimates that 2.4 women per 100,000 die from cervical cancer in the U.S. each year. The FDA’s VAERS statistics show however that 2.3 per 100 girls and women will develop an adverse reaction potentially resulting in an autoimmune or other disorder. This means that about 2,300 women and girls per year will develop a debilitating, life long disease because of the HPV vaccine! What is all the more puzzling here is that the NIH’s own statistics show a more than 60% decline in cervical cancer due to routine Pap smear screening. So why is there such an effort being made to push vaccines over Pap smears?

In 2015, Merck made $1.9 billion on its Gardasil vaccine, and so it is no secret that huge conflicts of interest exist between vaccine promoters and vaccine makers. By promoting the HPV vaccine with the help of the NIH, the pharmaceutical industry will continue to profit at the expense of the public health, not only from vaccine sales, but as well from the increased need for drug therapy from the autoimmune diseases they create.

Clearly the NIH is failing in its mission and goals to prevent disease and protect the public’s health as well as promoting the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility.