[thinkmilitant]

No offense intended, but you could say this about anything.

-I often see the opinion on HN that opposing vaccination is anti-science. I know this article is not about vaccines, but can we really say with confidence that the scientific research done on vaccination hasn't been influenced in the same way?-

[frgtpsswrdlame]

I'm not so sure. His claim is coming from the fact that the research was obviously funded or written by an ill-intentioned party. Andrew Wakefield received loads of money from lawyers who wanted to sue vaccine manufacturers. In this case, Monsanto paid money to academics for them to put their names on papers Monsanto had written. In this way, the pro-gmo position is more similar to the anti-vax position than pro-vax.

[gregwtmtno]

I think that's a fair point and it's why we need much more stringent conflict of interest rules and enforcement in science.

[AnimalMuppet]

Well, Monsanto does GMOs, and this article is about Monsanto hiding the scientific evidence in a blizzard of PR. So saying we should question GMOs based on this article is reasonable. But, so far as I know, Monsanto doesn't do vaccines.

[dragonwriter]

There's no evidence here of Monsanto hiding scientific evidence relating to GMOs; there is evidence of Monsanto and allies in government to hiding scientific evidence relating to chemicals, which face a different regulatory regime.

Now, this might reasonably lead one to want to close regulatory gaps that provide insufficient oversight to prevent similar actions relating to GMOs, but none of the evidence here directly implicates the safety of GMOs as such. (It does implicate the safety of an herbicide whose use is a major motivation for the use of some of Monsanto's flagship GMO traits, but it's the herbicide, not the GMO, whose safety is implicated.)

[stagbeetle]

But there is still the association of: "if they hide scientific evidence for X, what's stopping them from hiding scientific evidence for Y?"

In layman's example, it's like having a friend that steals other people's things, what's stopping him from stealing your things when you're not looking?

[maxerickson]

Depends on the vaccine.

The story is pretty well in on smallpox and polio.

Harder to say about HPV.

[jfarlow]

No it is not harder to say about HPV. The HPV vaccine is one of the sturdiest linkages between atomic-level scientific understanding and social policy.

HPV produces a protein called E6, which inhibits the protein called p53 in your cell. P53 is the centralized monitor of the health of the cell's DNA. When HPV inhibits the ability for the cell to monitor its DNA, it cannot respond to ordinary damage like UV, etc. This DNA damage builds up and triggers cancerous mutations that would otherwise have been repaired were the HPV E6 protein not inhibiting the p53 protein.

By getting a vaccine, HPV cannot infect you, thus it cannot produce the E3 protein, thus your p53 protein is functional, thus when you get ordinary DNA damage you repair it rather than accumulating cancer-causing damage. If you do not get a vaccine and you get infected with HPV you now have lost a significant checkpoint in preventing cancer.

p53, E6 & HPV: https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/p53/

[maxerickson]

My meaning was more that we don't have blatant long term evidence to compare to the research used to justify HPV vaccines.

[jfarlow]

Fortunately there are a number of different ways to justify the efficacy of particular technology prior to its implementation that do not require millions of people to prematurely contract cancer. If you have a hypothesis about a particular long-term consequence that could arise, by all means let's design a system to investigate it.

[maxerickson]

I get that it is problematic to even vaguely cast doubt on something that is a big public health win, but you are ignoring the context I commented in, where someone said:

but can we really say with confidence that the scientific research done on vaccination hasn't been influenced in the same way

Do we know for certain that HPV vaccine research has not been influenced by the companies selling the vaccines?

Rephrasing, I wasn't doubting the effectiveness of the HPV vaccines, I was pointing out that there are vaccines that we can be pretty much absolutely certain about.