‎Steve Hinks‎ speaks for the UK Association of HPV Vaccine Injured Daughters, and he attended a conference in Dublin in April organised by the the International Federation for Injured Children and Adults. The conference was also attended by Anna Cannon of REGRET and Dr Jesper Mehlsen.

The conference program claimed a speaker from the HSE 'TBC', however a spokesperson for the HSE told the Irish Times “The HSE will not be attending."

REGRET have claimed on their GoFundMe page that 200 of the girls that they 'represent' are on 24-hour-suicide watch. I have talked to the Irish Prison Service, and to sources familiar with suicide prevention within psychiatric hospitals, and it is clear that this number is far and away more than the total number of suicide watch places (sometimes called special observation places) in all Irish prisons and psychiatric hospitals combined.

Hundreds of millions of people have received the HPV vaccine. The World Health Organisation have reported there is no evidence of any link between the HPV vaccination and the conditions claimed by anti-vaccine activists. By contrast, the Thalidomide scandal in the 1950s and 1960s affected 10,000 pregnant women.

In the podcast we discussed the Ontario Grade 8 HPV Vaccine Cohort Study. Steve said that this study was 'flawed', however the study has not attracted even a single criticism on PubPeer, the website for tracking suspected errors in scientific papers.

This is the text that Steve sent me, from Gardasil 9 safety document. I have confirmed that the document is genuine, and the highlighting is Steve's:

It is clear from the text that there is no suggestion whatsoever that 2.3 per cent of the recipients of the vaccine had an adverse reaction to the vaccine. There were five serious reactions determined to be caused by the vaccine among 13,309. These were pyrexia (high temperature), allergy to the vaccine, asthma attack, headache and tonsillitis.

Of the 13,309 girls in the study, 305 of them had an adverse event from any cause - this is all negative health events, all illnesses and accidents.

Steve's assertion that cervical cancer rates have increased is not based on reliable science. The study he referred to was published under a false name, and the author - whoever they were - lied about their academic institution. Mainstream studies show that the rates of cervical cancer in Australia, which introduced the vaccine in 2006, have halved.

Steve also sent me a large volume of other documents which I have made available here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

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Before I play this interview, I want to explain a bit about where I'm going in the podcast.

Most people are aware of the Irish anti-Gardasil vaccine group Regret. The Gardasil vaccine protects girls against strains of the HPV virus which cause cervical cancer. Regret have claimed that they represent 450 girls who, according to them, became extremely ill because of the vaccine, and they claim that 200 of them are so ill that they are on 24-hour suicide watch. Regret has raised considerable amounts of money on the back of this claim, although it’s not a registered charity, and it has refused requests to publish any form of accounts.

I’ve covered Regret’s claims before; I’ve invited their spokesperson to participate in the podcast on numerous occasions, and they have refused. I’ve sent written questions to Regret, and received no response.

I'm also aware that Regret have refused to engage with journalists from a number of newspapers and threatened to sue them, and RTÉ’s Prime Time who covered the story, and they’ve made vague threats of legal action against me.

Recently another group has been set up, it’s got the rather grand name of the International Federation for Injured Children and Adults, and it’s based in a business park in Drumshanbo, County Leitrim. One of the founders is a guy called Seán Wynne, he’s a primary schoolteacher in Leitrim who convinced the annual conference of his union, the Teachers Union of Ireland to pass a motion questioning the administration of the vaccine in schools.

This organisation held a conference in Dublin in April, which was attended by several speakers including Anna Cannon, a leading spokesperson for Regret. Their website claimed that there would be a speaker from the Health Service Executive at the conference, although the HSE said that they would not send anybody. I contacted Seán Wynne to ask him to do an interview, and he initially seemed positive, then said that he wanted to see a list of questions before he would do an interview, then he stopped answering my emails.

You can imagine that it’s a bit frustrating to have organisations supposedly looking for publicity who refuse to supply a speaker for an interview. All the more so when it was reported that, at the conference, speakers condemned the lack of coverage in the media, to loud applause from the audience.

However, I want to extend sincere thanks to Steve Hinks, you’ll hear his interview in a moment, he runs a similar anti-Gardasil vaccine organisation in the UK, and he was at the conference in Dublin, but he was good enough to agree to an interview, and actually do it, even if you can hear his dog scampering around in the background at points.

However this is a complex and technical issue. In science, it’s not the case that everyone’s opinion is equally valid. If we’re debating which is better, the Wire or the Sopranos, then every opinion is counts. If we’re debating whether a vaccine causes an illness… not so much. Either it does or it doesn’t. The opinion of an immunologist with years of training and decades of experience is not of equal value of someone who has watched a few YouTube videos on the topic.

Scientists have developed detailed protocols for testing evidence. Scientific journals are an important part of this. When a scientist makes a breakthrough, they don’t just put it on their blog or tweet it out, or send out a press release. They submit it to a scientific journal – a magazine for nerds, basically – and the journal only prints it after they get other scientists expert in that field to check the work. The scientist sets out the procedures followed, explains the line of reasoning and the calculations, and declares any potential conflicts of interests.

So, if you read about a new wonder drug, it matters where you are reading about it. If it’s the front page of the Daily Mail, and it says that the drug will cure cancer, stop immigration and increase the value of your house, don’t get too excited. But if it’s in a scientific journal, then that’s a different matter.

That doesn’t mean that everything in a scientific journal is right, humans can still make mistakes, and if a mistake is spotted, either by the author by other scientists, the author will typically amend the paper, or withdraw it, in part or whole. If the author refuses to do this, other scientists can write a rebuttal, and if it’s valid, this can lead to the scientific journal to withdraw the paper, even if the author doesn’t agree.

The whole point of this process is that it is out in the open. Anyone can comment, anyone who spots a mistake can point it out. There are even specialist websites where anyone who thinks they spot an error can note it against the scientific paper, and anyone else can see that and expand on the point or investigate further. Nobody can say ‘I’m a famous, important scientist so you should believe what I say’. No matter how renowned you are, if you're wrong, you're wrong.

I'm mentioning this because, renown has no place in deciding what’s true, and neither does emotion. In this interview, Steve talks about his daughter being ill, and I have no reason to doubt him. I'm sure that has been difficult for his family, but that doesn’t mean that there is a lower standard of evidence for believing what he says about science, compared to anyone else.

I’ve gone through the claims that he’s made very carefully, and taken advice on them. You will hear that I break into the interview to clarify some mistakes that both he and I made during the recording, because I think that it’s very important that incorrect statements are not allowed to stand.

Obviously this has been a lot of work for me, I’ve put a huge amount of research into the podcast and this is what I’d like to keep doing on loads of other topics. That’s why I set up a Patreon account. Patreon, if you don’t know it, is a website that allows people to make small donations to a creator each time they upload a podcast or whatever work they are doing. I want to say thanks to Justin Shorten who very generously who signed up as a patron since the last podcast.

My goal is to get to a point where I can do a high-quality current affairs show that is independent of RTÉ and [redacted] and do it at least fortnightly, if not more. So if you think that is worthwhile, please go to my Patreon account to support the podcast. There are some other support options here as well, and also it helps hugely if you share the podcast on social media or in real life.

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