"In 2009 and 2012, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Gates’s partners GSK and Merck, on 23,000 girls 11–14 years old in remote provinces of India. ... At least 1,200 of the girls in Gates’s study—1 in 20—suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died—about 10x the US death rates for cervical cancer, which almost never kills the young. India’s Federal Ministry of Health suspended the trials and appointed an expert parliamentary committee to investigate the scandal. Indian government investigators found that Gates-funded researchers at PATH committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying illiterate parents, and forging consent forms. Gates provided health insurance for his PATH staff but not to any participants in the trials, and refused medical care to the hundreds of injured girls. The PATH researchers targeted girls at ashram paathshalas (boarding schools for tribal children), to dodge the need to seek parental consent for the shots. They gave the girls “HPV Immunization Cards” that were printed in English, which the girls couldn’t read. They did not tell the girls that they were part of a clinical trial and instead hoodwinked them with the lie that these were “wellness shots” that would guarantee “lifelong protection” against cancer. That was not true. PATH conducted the trials in impoverished rural areas that lacked mechanisms for tracking the adverse effects and had no system for recording major adverse reactions to the vaccines, something legally mandated for large-scale clinical trials...."