Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 10/12/2025; Author: Mladen Lakić
What is being claimed?
HPV vaccines cause cervical cancer, breast cancer, and infertility. Doctors promote them as protection, but in fact they sterilize girls and boys.
What are the facts?
HPV vaccines are an important tool for preventing cervical cancer. Approved vaccines are safe and effective.
On Facebook, on 24 November, 2025, a video was shared warning about the alleged dangers of the Gardasil vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV).
The video shows an interview with a woman whose daughter allegedly fell ill after receiving Gardasil and died of leukemia shortly after her 16th birthday. The video does not state when or where this happened.
In the description of this post, Gardasil was compared to Covid-19 vaccines, which the post also claims cause death.
You watch actors and others promote getting jabbed, and then you say goodbye to them after a few months, a year, two..
Come on, wake up the youth about what 💉 is in Serbia, what the healthcare system is like (with honorable exceptions), and how they “treated” people during the morona.
The video was also shared on 25 November, 2025 in a post claiming that doctors sterilize children with HPV vaccines, which cause cervical and breast cancer. It also claimed that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), was “rewarded” with his position because he killed or maimed more than a million girls with HPV vaccines in Africa:
HPV vaccines that you sellouts, black coats-Doctors promote as protection against cervical cancer are a lie, the truth is they carry out sterilization of girls and boys and cause cervical cancer and breast cancer!!!✍️ The current director of WHO – the World Health Organization – Tedros fled Africa because of crimes against humanity; one million two hundred thousand girls were killed and maimed with HPV vaccines; for that crime, the rulers of darkness rewarded him with the position of WHO director!!
These claims were also shared on other Facebook accounts (1, 2).
HPV Vaccines Do Not Threaten Fertility
There are more than 200 types of HPV, but nine stand out as the most common and most problematic, according to an article by the website Nauka govori, which summarizes eight facts about HPV and HPV vaccines. When it comes to high-risk HPV types, HPV 16 and HPV 18 stand out.
“Together, these two types cause cervical cancer in more than 70% of cases. They are high-risk HPV types, widespread and therefore very dangerous”, the article states.
An article on the European Vaccination Information Portal states that at least 14 HPV types can cause malignant diseases such as cervical cancer, which, after breast cancer, is the most common cancer affecting women in Europe aged 15 to 44. These HPV types can also cause anal and genital cancers, as well as certain head and neck cancers in both sexes.
Vaccines protect against the highest-risk HPV types. As of 2025, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are eight approved HPV vaccines. Five have received WHO prequalification and are globally available. All protect against high-risk HPV types 16 and 18, which cause about 76% of cervical cancer cases. WHO prequalification ensures that UN agencies can distribute safe vaccines in areas where they are needed. For this approval, the WHO uses international standards to thoroughly assess and determine whether vaccines are safe and effective. The five vaccines that have received WHO approval are Gardasil, Cervarix, Gardasil 9, Cecolin i Walvax.
In January 2024, Raskrinkavanje analyzed claims that HPV vaccines are ineffective and harmful. We then referred to several scientific studies that clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that these vaccines are safe and effective (1, 2, 3). The scientific evidence is therefore entirely clear. Approved HPV vaccines do not cause disease and are effective prevention of malignant diseases that develop as a consequence of HPV infection.
Regarding HPV vaccination in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the website of the Public Health Institution Institute of Public Health of Republika Srpska and the website of the Institute of Public Health of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina describe in detail who is recommended to receive it and at what age, as well as other immunization details. According to available information, Gardasil and Cervarix are used in BiH.
False claims that HPV vaccines affect fertility have circulated previously as well. They were addressed by Istinomer, a Serbian fact-checking platform, in an analysis from July 2025.
HPV vaccines are a “key tool in protecting health, including preserving fertility”, according to an article published by the website Vakcine in March 2025. The article explains in detail that, precisely “thanks to immunization, future generations of women can have a healthier reproductive system, a reduced risk of treatments that endanger pregnancy, and a greater chance of giving birth to a healthy baby in the future”. It also emphasizes that HPV infections in men can affect fertility, and that vaccination is therefore also a way for them to ensure reproductive capacity.
A “Conspiracy-Theory” Narrative About the WHO, the Covid-19 Pandemic and Vaccination
The WHO and its Director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, are frequent targets of health disinformation, especially during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. False claims that he was arrested for “crimes against humanity” have previously been addressed by the Associated Press, Reuters and others. These claims circulated in the context of Covid-19 vaccination and the conspiracy theory of a “planned pandemic”.
HPV vaccines are available in many African countries, and immunization rates have increased significantly since 2019, as stated in The Lancet in December 2025. However, this is still not close to WHO targets for eliminating cervical cancer by 2030. The rate of this disease in Africa is the highest in the world, making efforts to expand immunization even more important. These efforts are hindered by disinformation about HPV vaccines, including claims that the vaccines sterilize women and girls. Such claims build a conspiracy theory that the WHO is involved in a plan to limit population growth in Africa and globally. We have addressed similar claims in multiple analyses (1, 2, 3, 4).
Covid-19 vaccines were also a target of such claims, which built a conspiracy theory about a “planned pandemic” whose goal was to introduce vaccines that were supposedly deadly and a tool for depopulation. We have addressed such claims in numerous analyses (1, 2, 3, 4). The facts unequivocally confirm that the pandemic was real, that approved vaccines were safe, and that they did not cause any mass deaths, as was claimed in anti-vaccination circles.
Part of this narrative also includes manipulative claims about the deaths of celebrities who used their image to popularize Covid-19 immunization and who allegedly died after vaccination (1, 2, 3, 4). In one of these analyses, we addressed manipulative claims that Saša Popović, creative director and founder of Grand production, died because he was vaccinated against Covid-19.
Since these are previously circulating allegations, we rate the claims in the analyzed posts that HPV vaccines are not safe or that they cause cervical cancer, breast cancer, or sterility as fake news spreading. We assign the same assessment to the claim that Covid-19 vaccines killed public figures who promoted immunization. We rate the claim that doctors sterilize children with HPV vaccines as a conspiracy theory. We assign the same assessment to the claim that the WHO Director carried out sterilization of women and girls with HPV vaccines in Africa.
