HHS bankrolls AI tool to combat supposed MISINFORMATION about HPV injections

08/26/2024 / By Ramon Tomey

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is reportedly bankrolling an initiative involving the use of artificial intelligence (AI) against so-called “misinformation” about vaccines.

The Defender reported that HHS has earmarked $4 million for the “Inoculate for HPV Vaccine” randomized clinical trial (RCT), citing grant documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) through a Freedom of Information Act request. The National Cancer Institute, part of the HHS, is facilitating funding for the RCT – which runs from April 2022 through March 2027. Funding for its third year was released in April, the Defender added.

University of Pennsylvania associate professor of nursing Melanie Kornides leads the RCT, where she is joined by experts in digital health communication and machine learning, software and program designers and social media analysts. They will help her run the study on 2,500 parents of children aged eight to 12.

Kornides’ team is collecting user data from YouTube, X, Facebook and Instagram – with their focus being on spaces where people talk about the human papillomavirus (HPV). They are also using natural language processing to train an AI tool to identify “HPV misinformation” or posts critical of vaccination, regardless of whether the information in them is true or false. (Related: HHS deploys AI robots to “inoculate” social media users against HPV vaccine “misinformation.”)

The AI tool will then be exposed to subjects in three study arms, making use of different types of messaging. The control group will get no particular messaging, while two experimental groups will be exposed either to messaging designed to inoculate viewers against content critical of HPV vaccines or content critical of anti-vaccine arguments. The experimental groups will get “booster” doses of messaging at three and six months after their first exposure.

According to the researchers, this approach against so-called “misinformation” can be used in “wide-scale social media campaigns” addressing pandemics, childhood vaccination and other health issues if it ends up being successful. They also wrote that misinformation about the HPV vaccine is a major cause of “vaccine hesitancy.” While such messages circulate widely among well-meaning people, these often come from “anti-vaccine organizations.”

“Misinformation” being cited as an excuse for medical censorship

According to the Defender, the researchers found that the AI tool deemed several posts on X with valid points as “misinformation.” These posts often centered on vaccine effectiveness and safety, adverse events related to these injections and their lack of safety monitoring. Posts with claims about Big Pharma profiteering and the government being in cahoots with it were also deemed as such.

Moreover, two posts on X verified by mainstream media outlets as legitimate were also dismissed as false. The first post involved Dr. Diane Harper, one of the lead researchers for the Gardasil HPV injection, criticizing her creation. The second post involved a 16-year-old Chicago teen being given the HPV injection without the knowledge or consent of her parents.

But for CHD President and General Counsel Mary Holland, the RCT led by Kornides appears to be “a sign of weakness.” She continued: “This just proves yet again that anything that deviates from the orthodoxy in public health is considered misinformation.”

“When you are censoring information, labeling it misinformation and smearing us, this is a sign that they’ve lost the science and are now in a verbal food right. It’s just a sign that they are going to lose.”

Watch Dr. Sheri Tenpenny elaborating on the various side effects of the HPV vaccine below.

This video is from The Truth About Cancer channel on Brighteon.com.