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A License To Kill? Part 1: How A Public-Private Partnership Made The Government Merck's Gardasil Partner
“Based largely on technology developed at NIH...”
"...Gardasil is perhaps the leading example of a new form of unconstrained government self-dealing, in arrangements whereby DHHS can transfer technology to pharmaceutical partners, simultaneously both approve and protect their partners’ technology licenses while also taking a cut of the profits. Literally and figuratively, DHHS has the authority in such situations to allow its business partners to get away with murder for the greater good, effectively granting its private business partners a license to kill."
"How is disinterested vaccine safety governance even remotely possible when DHHS employees stand as heroes at the head of the parade when a new vaccine is invented within its walls, while agency leaders are leading the cheering section, approving the new product’s launch, making the market for the product with its recommendations and then turning around to cash multi-million dollar checks?"
"But when technology licensing takes place within federal agencies, Bayh-Dole creates an entirely different problem: an unprecedented web of conflict, one in which the same departments that are tasked with regulating the health and safety of medical products are also profiting from them. As Lowy and Schiller conceded in their review article disclosure, this conflict of interest came into play directly on Gardasil: both men are named inventors on the technology that makes Gardasil possible; NIH filed for and received patents on their invention of the VLP technology; DHHS is the owner of the patent family that protects the commercial rights to the invention; in order to bring the product to market, OTT (Office of Technology transfer) licensed the vaccine technology to Merck; and as Merck has generated billions in Gardasil revenue, OTT has received millions in Gardasil profits."
"But DHHS is also responsible for regulating Gardasil in numerous ways. The FDA reviewed the clinical trials in which Gardasil was tested in human populations and passed judgment on Gardasil’s safety. An Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided whether or not to recommend Gardasil for young women and children. The FDA and CDC together now conduct the surveillance to decide whether or not Gardasil is proving safe in larger populations. And as some families are now beginning to seek compensation based on claims that Gardasil caused injury in some of its recipients, the division of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that oversees the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) will soon sit in judgment as to whether, to whom, and how much compensation will be provided to Gardasil’s victims."
"...all of this activity is supervised in a single department by one Cabinet official, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The sole non-governmental agency involved in this commercial enterprise is Merck’s Vaccine Division."
"In effect, the Merck-DHHS partnership leaves the business side to Merck while DHHS is solely responsible for
- Creating the market for Gardasil by funding commercial research, supervising the conduct of clinical trials, judging the outcome of those trials and promoting a policy of universal vaccination;
- Collecting the license fees that result from Gardasil revenues from Merck and other vaccine manufacturers and then distributing these financial benefits to Federal employees; and
- Deciding whether or not to protect the policy decisions and profit streams of their sister DHHS agencies through postlicensure safety monitoring and vaccine injury compensation rulings."
"The NCI (National Cancer Institute) team was among the leaders in HPV technology, but the race to make a commercially viable HPV vaccine involved several other research teams from all over the world. Most notable among these were the University of Queensland in Australia, Georgetown University and the University of Rochester. In addition to NCI’s filings, each of these university-based research teams filed their own patents; eventually, Merck and GSK got into the act as well. Like many promising areas of technology, the HPV patent landscape became large and crowded in a short period of time."
A License To Kill? Part 2: Who Guards Gardasil's Guardians?
https://www.ageofautism.com/2010/05/a-license-to-kill-part-2-who-guards-gardasils-guardians.html
A License To Kill? Part 3: After Gardasil's Launch, More Victims, More Bad Safety Analysis And A Revolving Door Culture
QUOTES
"Gardasil would become the #1 royalty generator for NIH’s technology licensing group, completing the partnership circle."
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