"Our results clearly show that good-quality Pap screening can be implemented even in a rural setting of a developing country with reasonable investment, while HPV screening does not give any better detection of pre-cancerous cervical lesions, despite the higher investments."
    Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan MD 
    Head of Cancer Screening at the World Health Organization (WHO)

          and

    Surendra Shastri MD
    Principal Investigator of the Mumbai Experiment
            [writing in 2005 in the International Journal of Cancer]

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THE MUMBAI EXPERIMENT contributed to the preventable cervical cancer deaths of at least 500,000 Indian women because it delayed the implementation of Pap screening throughout India from 1997 until 2015.

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​However, if the moral imperative of Pap screening in lower-income countries is discredited, then the number of preventable cervical cancer deaths attributable to the Mumbai experiment drops to zero.
 

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THE COVER-UP of the Mumbai experiment has required publicizing the politically expedient falsehood that Pap screening is not feasible in lower-income countries.

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As documented in the video clip above, the principal investigator of the Mumbai experiment, Dr Surendra Shastri, has promoted that falsehood to the United Nations and to other influential groups. As noted at the top of this page, Dr Shastri himself, together with the Head of Cancer Screening at WHO, have both convincingly refuted that falsehood.
 

Nevertheless, that falsehood has been incorporated into WHO policy guidelines, which falsely state "In low- and middle-income countries, because of the high cost of setting up screening programmes based on Pap screening, coverage of screening is very low and alternative screening methods are needed.” 
 

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THE US NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH) funded the Mumbai experiment for 18 years. Perhaps by coincidence, NIH physicians refuse to endorse Pap screening for lower-income countries.

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NIH physician Mark Schiffman has acknowledged the success of Pap screening in Vietnam, yet persistently 
refuses to endorse Pap screening for other lower-income countries. Instead, since at least 2009, Dr Schiffman has promoted HPV screening for lower-income countries. Simultaneously, Dr Schiffman concedes that HPV screening is too expensive for routine implementation in lower-income countries. 

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NIH physicians also promote HPV vaccination for lower-income countries. As explained on the first page of this website, HPV vaccination does not prevent cervical cancer among most women in lower-income countries, and HPV vaccine expert Diane Harper observes “Combining cervical screening with HPV vaccination does not significantly lower the number of women getting cervical cancer every year.”
 

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PERHAPS BY COINCIDENCE, NIH shares profits from HPV vaccine sales with HPV vaccine manufacturers Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, both of which have pled guilty to criminal marketing policies and brushed off billions of dollars in fines. Merck has attempted to inappropriately influence US HPV vaccination policies. The clear conflicts of interest between NIH and HPV vaccine manufacturers are entirely legal, yet are difficult to manage, because terms of the profit-sharing arrangements among NIH, Merck, and GlaxoSmithKline are exempt from disclosure under the US Freedom of Information Act.

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It is correspondingly difficult to estimate how much income NIH stands to earn from global, perennial HPV vaccination.

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NIH scientist Phil Castle has acknowledged the success of Pap screening in Vietnam, yet warns that reports of successful Pap screening in lower-income countries “raise an important ethical concern” because such reports may reduce demand for HPV-based technologies.

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Because of the NIH-funded Mumbai experiment and its cover-up, one of the world's big, fixable problems is being fixed far too slowly -- with catastrophic, lethal consequences -- while income is transferred from lower-income countries to NIH and to corporations that market HPV vaccines and HPV tests.

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FURTHER HUMAN CATASTROPHE may be averted if Dr Schiffman tells the truth and formally acknowledges the 2005 determination by WHO that “good-quality Pap screening can be implemented even in a rural setting of a developing country with reasonable investment, while HPV screening does not give any better detection of pre-cancerous cervical lesions, despite the higher investments.”

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That acknowledgement will be an important step toward encouraging WHO and other organizations to change course and to promote the moral imperative of Pap screening for lower-income countries.