I noticed that the BadScience article you quote included a blurb on the aspect of Cervarix marketing which Dr. Harper is publically critical of. I include it below for the sake of completeness. I’ve tried to find more on Lucy Johnstone’s credentials but other than her past gig at The Big Issue and her current employ as the Health Editor of The Observer and The Daily Express nothing much came up. She does seem to be of an activist bent, to put it mildly.

…In a clear example of the extent to which academics are often independently-minded about the interventions they work on, Professor Harper is a critic of Gardasil, or more specifically of how it is marketed.

Briefly, her view (which has been published a long time ago) is that we do not yet know how long the protection from these vaccines will last, and this will affect the cost-benefit decisions. She is concerned that aggressive advertising aimed directly at the public – which is not permitted in Europe, with good reason – may lead people to falsely believe they are invincible to HPV, and so neglect other precautions. Lastly, she suspects from modelling data that for the specific and restricted group of women who are punctilious about attending every single one of their cervical cancer screening appointments, vaccination may have little impact on their risk of death from cancer; but even this group will still benefit from the reduction in reproductive problems caused by treating precancerous changes in cervical cells, and from avoiding the unpleasantness of screening and treatment.

Those with access to publicly-restricted medical journals >:[ can read Dr. Harper’s actual report here…

Preliminary HPV vaccine results for women older than 25 years

“I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a ‘controversial drug’. I did not ‘hit out’ – I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview. [...] Gardasil is not a ‘sister vaccine’ as the Express said, it is a different compound. I do not know of the side effects of Cervarix as it is not available in the US. [...] I fully support the HPV vaccines, I believe that in general they are safe in most women. I told the Express all of this.”

Dr Harper has lodged a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission. The Express have removed the article from their website and printed an apology in the print edition:

Last Sunday we incorrectly suggested that the cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix could be as deadly as cervical cancer and that the vaccine is ineffective.
We now accept that there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case and that Cervarix in fact provides protection against the viruses that cause 70% of cervical cancers.
We are happy to set the record straight and apologise for causing undue alarm to all those women and teenage girls considering vaccination against cervical cancer.”