Merck Fighting Fraud Lawsuits in U.S. Courts on MMR and Gardasil Vaccines
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
Pharmaceutical giant, Merck, is facing charges of fraud in lawsuits filed in U.S. courts regarding their vaccine products.
This is important information for the public to know, given the fact that the ever-growing vaccine market is expected to exceed $70 billion within the next few years, and that many states are trying to pass legislation to mandate vaccines without informed consent, all in the name of "the greater good" for public health.
Federal government agencies tasked with protecting public health, along with the corporate "mainstream" media, which reportedly receives up to 70% of its advertising revenue from pharmaceutical companies, continue to censor any negative information regarding vaccines that could affect sales.
And since one cannot sue a pharmaceutical company for damages or deaths due to vaccines in the United States, where they enjoy legal immunity, it is rare that a pharmaceutical company faces a day in court related to corruption or fraud for bad vaccine products.
Therefore, one needs to turn to either the alternative media such as Health Impact News, or the foreign media outside the U.S., to learn about the dangers of vaccines, and the corruption behind many of them.
There are currently two major federal lawsuits against Merck that are being litigated in U.S. courts: a whistleblower lawsuit from former Merck scientists claiming fraud regarding the MMR vaccine, and a lawsuit against the Gardasil vaccine claiming fraud from a 16-year-old girl who allegedly suffered Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) after receiving the Gardasil vaccine.
8 Years of Litigation for MMR Vaccine Fraud
In a lawsuit against Merck that was originally filed in 2010, and continues to this day, Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, former Merck virologists, claim that they “witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the (MMR) vaccine’s efficacy findings.”
The former Merck scientists claim that Merck’s faulty MMR vaccine has caused the United States to pay “hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization.”
“As the largest single purchaser of childhood vaccines (accounting for more than 50 percent of all vaccine purchases), the United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck’s fraud,” according to the 2010 False Claims Act complaint.
“But the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection.
And while this is a disease that, according to the Centers for Disease Control (‘CDC’), was supposed to be eradicated by now, the failure in Merck’s vaccine has allowed this disease to linger, with significant outbreaks continuing to occur.” (Source.)
Merck has tried, unsuccessfully, to end this case for almost eight years now, in an attempt to hide it from the American public.
In 2012, they tried to get the case dismissed. The story did garner some mainstream news coverage back in 2012. Here is a report Forbes wrote on it back in 2012. Some quotes:
Anyone who falls on either side of the debate about vaccines’ alleged potential to cause harm is sure to have heard the big news this week — the unsealing of a whistleblower suit against Merck, filed back in 2010 by two former employees accusing the drugmaker of overstating the effectiveness of its mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine.
The scientists claim Merck defrauded the U.S. government by causing it to purchase an estimated four million doses of mislabeled and misbranded MMR vaccine per year for at least a decade, and helped ignite two recent mumps outbreaks that the allegedly ineffective vaccine was intended to prevent in the first place.
The Wall Street Journal also covered the story back in 2012, but according to a report by Dr. Mercola, the Wall Street Journal’s “elite” network of CFOs from the world’s top corporations met three days later (including executives from Merck), and the story was removed from their website.
On September 4, 2014, Judge Jones ruled that the case should proceed based on merit. (Source.)
Still trying to keep this case out of the eye of the public, Merck attorneys did not give up in their attempts to keep this out of the courts and the eye of the public. They filed a motion for "Summary Judgment," but on October 27, 2017, the court granted the whistle-blowers their "Motion to Stay," so that the case would proceed.
There are, as of the date of publication of this article, 164 entries into the court docket for this case during an eight year period, as the attorneys for Merck do their best to stall and try to end it. (Source.)
The significance of this case, of course, is enormous, beyond measure, as it does NOT primarily deal with the issue of vaccine safety, something the U.S. Government concedes with the federal vaccine court which has paid out billions of dollars in compensation (see quarterly reports from the DOJ here), but with the efficacy of the MMR vaccine.
If the vaccine does not even prevent the diseases it is supposed to, how can it be mandated by the CDC to be given to children?
Since this lawsuit was filed in 2010, another whistle-blower from within the CDC, a scientist that was one of the lead authors on a CDC published study in 2004 stating that the CDC withheld data from the public linking the MMR vaccine to a higher rate of autism among some children, specifically African American boys.
While this alleged fraud surrounding Merck's MMR vaccine would seem to spell doom for the company, their troubles appear to be just beginning.
HPV Gardasil Vaccine Fraud Stands Trial
Earlier this month (April, 2018) we reported on the case of 21-year-old Christina Richelle Tarsell who died after receiving the Merck Gardasil vaccine.
Christina's family fought a long 8-year legal battle with the government-run vaccine court, and the U.S. Government eventually conceded that the Gardasil vaccine killed 21-year-old Christina Richelle Tarsell. Christina Tarsell is believed to be the first victim of the Gardasil vaccine that the U.S. Government has conceded was a death resulting from the HPV vaccine.
However, the compensation received by Christina's family came out of the National Vaccine Compensation Program, funded by taxes collected from the sale of vaccines.
Merck suffered no consequences, because U.S. law protects them.
See:
Government Vaccine Court Concedes Death by Gardasil Vaccine Case After 8 Years
However, like the MMR whistle-blower lawsuit we just discussed above, if there was fraud committed in the development of the vaccine, then a lawsuit can be filed against the pharmaceutical company in U.S. courts.
Christina England recently wrote an article about another girl who suffered harm from the Merck Gardasil HPV vaccine. This 16-year-old girl (Jennifer Robi) allegedly received three injections of the Gardasil vaccine between 2010 and 2011, and then later received the diagnosis of Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).
POTS is a documented side effect of the Gardasil vaccines. See:
Cardiologist Comments on New Study Linking HPV Vaccines to POTS
Jennifer and her family, like 21-year-old Christina Richelle Tarsell, filed a claim with the U.S. Vaccine Court. The court awarded her $38,365.08 in damages. (Source.)
The family was apparently not satisfied with this settlement, however, and on July 27, 2016, they filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of The State of California, Los Angeles County.
The case was filed against the following defendants:
- Merck & Co., Inc.
- Merck, Sharpe & Dohme Corp.
- Kaiser Foundations Hospitals
- Southern California Permanente Medical Group
- Judith Garza, M.D.
- Claire Valencia Fuller, M.D.
- Robin B. Scanlon, M.D.
The complaint charged them with:
- Fraud and Deceit
- Negligent Misrepresentation
- Defective Product - Inadequate warnings & information
- Medical Malpractice
- Medical Battery
According to Christina England:
The complaint outlined the fact that the Plaintiff and her family believed that Merck had wrongfully and deceitfully failed to perform in the preapproval processing period and thereafter, the material scientific and medical investigations and studies relating to the safety, effectiveness and need for the Gardasil vaccine as required by and under the FDA directives and regulations.
The complaint written by the family’s attorney stated that:
“Upon approval by the FDA of the Gardasil vaccine, Defendants Merck, Does 1 through 25, and each of them commenced and engaged in highly extensive, and aggressive marketing practices, which were designed primarily, if not solely, to increase the sales and profits from Gardasil.
In doing so, Defendants Merck, Does 1 through 25, and each of them, in order to preclude any and all questions by consumers, patients and others, as to the effectiveness, safety and need for the administration of the Gardasil vaccination as well as the risks of serious adverse reaction related thereto, intentionally, wrongfully and deceitfully withheld, failed to provide and concealed from consumers, patients and others material facts and information with respect to the effectiveness, safety and need for the administration of the Gardasil vaccination, as well as the risks of serious adverse reaction related thereto and as in part hereafter set forth.” (own emphasis)
England also reports that perhaps for the first time ever, the evidence for the "science" behind the Gardasil vaccine will be weighed in court:
In an unusual step the Judge in this case, agreed to hold a "Science Day Hearing" to enable the court to could get a better understanding of the science behind the HPV vaccine. In advance of the scheduled science day presentation both parties submitted briefs that outlined their side's view of HPV vaccine science.
In other words, for the first time ever, both sides including the vaccines manufacturer Merck, were given the unique opportunity to present to the court, their up-to-date science and studies proving the safety and effectiveness of this vaccine. The information provided would prove once and for all, whether or not Gardasil was not only a safe vaccination but necessary in the fight against cancers caused by the HPV virus.
Merck's Legal Problems Surrounding the Gardasil Vaccine are Well-known Outside the U.S.
Merck's legal problems with the Gardasil vaccine are well-known outside the U.S., where they do not enjoy the same legal immunity that U.S. law provides them.
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Protests over the Gardasil HPV vaccine in the streets of Colombia. Story.[/caption]
Negative press regarding the Gardasil HPV vaccine and Merck's legal problems can be found in France, Spain, Japan, Ireland, Denmark, the UK, India, and many others.
In France, Dr. Dalbergue, a former pharmaceutical industry physician with Gardasil manufacturer, Merck, has stated :
I predict that Gardasil will become the greatest medical scandal of all times because at some point in time, the evidence will add up to prove that this vaccine, technical and scientific feat that it may be, has absolutely no effect on cervical cancer and that all the very many adverse effects which destroy lives and even kill, serve no other purpose than to generate profit for the manufacturers. (Source.)
As possibly a result of this negative press in France, the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety, which is part of the European Medicines Agency, which works hard to promote vaccines, participated in a study to examine whether or not the HPV vaccine had an "increased risk of autoimmune diseases."
The title of the study, published in August of 2017, was titled: Human papillomavirus vaccination and risk of autoimmune diseases: A large cohort study of over 2 million young girls in France.
As a pro-vaccine government agency, it is to be expected that the study would have a primary emphasis to do "damage control" to the negative public perceptions regarding the HPV vaccine and reassure the public that the vaccine was safe.
It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that the study raised any safety issues at all. They admitted that Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a crippling condition similar to polio, had a significantly higher rate among those vaccinated with the HPV vaccine compared to those who were not.
Another study published around the same time (July 2017) was conducted by doctors in Mexico at the National Institute of Cardiology.
The study pointed out several areas of concern and discrepancies, including a safety report by The European Medicines Agency.
The results of their study found:
- The lack of inert placebo in the vast majority of prelicensure HPV vaccine randomized studies
- Large randomized trials disclosed significantly more severe adverse events in the tested HPV vaccine cohort
- Pooled safety analysis found more post-immunization symptoms in bivalent HPV vaccine vs. hepatitis A vaccine
- Post-marketing HPV vaccine adverse events case series describe similar cluster of symptoms than those reported in pre-clinical trials
- The European Medicines Agency report on HPV vaccine safety looked at specific diagnoses and not at symptoms clusters
- In-depth analysis of some supportive post-marketing HPV vaccine safety studies discloses disquieting findings
International Study: An Honest Look at the Statistics Shows that the HPV Vaccine is Not Safe
Merck Vaccine Fraud Includes Government Vaccine Fraud
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Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding sold 38,368 shares of Merck Stock for $2.3 Million. Story.[/caption]
When discussing Merck vaccine fraud, it must also be mentioned that the U.S. government has a huge conflict of interest, as it profits from the sale of vaccines, and Gardasil in particular.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is tasked with vaccine safety, and yet it is also the largest purchaser of vaccines, spending over $4 billion annually to purchase vaccines.
Julie Gerberding was in charge of the CDC from 2002 to 2009, which includes the years the FDA approved the Merck Gardasil vaccine.
Soon after she took over the CDC, she reportedly completely overhauled the agency’s organizational structure, and many of the CDC’s senior scientists and leaders either left or announced plans to leave. Some have claimed that almost all of the replacements Julie Gerberding appointed had ties to the vaccine industry.
Gerberding resigned from the CDC on January 20, 2009, and took over as the president of Merck’s Vaccine division, a 5 billion dollar a year operation, and the supplier of the largest number of vaccines the CDC recommends (article here).
It was reported in 2015 that Dr. Gerberding, now the executive vice president of pharmaceutical giant, Merck, sold 38,368 of her shares in Merck stock for $2,340,064.32. She still holds 31,985 shares of the company’s stock, valued at about $2 million.
Besides examples like this showing a clear conflict of interest between government agencies tasked with overseeing public health and vaccine safety and pharmaceutical companies, the National Institute of Health also holds patents on vaccines such as Gardasil, and earns royalties from the sale of vaccines.
Dr. Eric Suba tried to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out how much money the National Institute of Health (NIH) earned from the sale of Gardasil, but they refused to report the amount of revenue the government earns from this vaccine (although not denying they do earn royalties).
Conclusion: Will Merck be Held Accountable for Their Crimes?
With the U.S. government complicit in Merck's fraudulent vaccine products, is there any reason to expect that Merck will be held accountable for their alleged crimes?
We see how they have already dragged out the MMR vaccine whistle-blower case for eight years, as their products continue to be injected into America's children and teens.
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Young women whose lives were destroyed by the HPV vaccine.[/caption]