No apologies: Bachmann defends HPV remarks

CBS "News" ^ | 15 Sep 2011 | Sarah Huisenga

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

Michele Bachmann is on the defensive about comments she made earlier this week suggesting that a vaccine against a virus linked to cervical cancer poses a danger to young girls.

"During the debate, I didn't make any statements that would indicate that I'm a doctor, I'm a scientist or that I'm making any conclusions about the drug one way or another," the GOP presidential hopeful told reporters here who questioned her about the story she told suggesting that the vaccine had caused mental retardation. Asked whether she would apologize for comments that outraged medical experts say will discourage parents from getting their children immunized, Bachmann said: "Oh, I'm not going to answer that."

During the Republican debate Bachmann attacked her rival Rick Perry for mandating vaccinations against the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) for Texas school girls - a decision that the Texas legislature later overruled.

"To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong," she said during the debate.

After the debate, Bachmann took her critique a step further, describing in several television interviews how a tearful mother had approached her after the debate saying that her daughter "suffered mental retardation" as a result of the vaccine.

[South40]

Let me Google that for you

[muawiyah]

I have some injections for you.

Here's your problem ~ you see a situation and think there are only two answers ~ go this way, or go that way.

Here we have a situation where there are about lebenteenzillion answers, and it's really not all that clear.

You should spend some time reading through Merck's own report on its own live human tests. There are questions there and even Merck says to NOT USE THIS STUFF on certain people.

The problem with legislating a mandatory vaccination in all cases is that if the manufacturer even says DO NOT USE under certain conditions, that's going to be easily overlooked once the law is in place and you'll go around needlessly hurting innocent people.

[mazz44]

Try this one out, then. By the way, Dr. Mercola is not a quack. He gives tons of footnoted information and his site is free.

http://vaccineliberationarmy.com/dr-russell-blaylock-neurosurgeon-fluoride-is-deadly/

[Mase]

Sorry, but Dr. Mercola and Dr. Blaylock are very well respected and they footnote most everything they write.

Sorry, but these two are nothing more than internet charlatans who engage in the worst kind of fear mongering, chemicalphobia and toxic terrorism. They are pioneers only in the art of scaring people into buying their newsletters and books. They should be looked at for entertainment purposes only. They are nothing more than modern day snake oil salesmen.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

yesterday you were challenging the fact that the woman saying this to Bachmann even existed.

You sure about that? Because I don't remember doing that. Maybe this was something Justin Beiber told you when you were on that date with him?

[Mase]

Don’t look now, but I think your pants are on fire.....

[Rennes Templar]

I would advise you not to use HPV:

http://www.naturalnews.com/033585_Gardasil_contamination.html

[wardaddy]

yes..schools do generally require docs report and it will list shots and allergies or asthma etc

I have seen some folks like chiropractors kids and other holistic type “doctors” offspring avoid it...don’t know how though...

Summer camps like Alpine where my kids go on Lookout Mountain Alabama require the same things essentially.

It’s lawyer driven in that case.

Myself having grown up around polio etc as a kid and being the first to take that..in sugar cubes (training for me for my youth..lol) and smallpox scar vac...I think vaccinations are fine..in fact they are incredible really when you look at historical context

but state mandating vaccinations for behavioral issues does raise questions

[Eaker]

Frankly I actually like to see that at least one candidate in the race has the moral courage to stand by what she says.

Is it really courage if it is a pack of politically motivated lies?

Reminds me of Carter, Clinton and Odinga.

[muawiyah]

Merck itself didn't find it necessary to find a "causal link" to contraindicate use with certain "sensitive" people ~ whatever "sensitive" means.

So do I suddenly need to do more than Merck?

[mazz44]

Good for you!

[wardaddy]

they all do that...even Sarah Palin..just look at the bloody Anyone But Obama threads here for refresher..she parsed out after the hoopla over Romney

dig hard and you’ll find even Magnus waffled

on the King Holiday...he admitted he was metaphorically forced to sign it

it’s sort of human nature...a way to be wrong, know it and not grovel too hard

[driftdiver]

Ah so we should give up all freedoms that have a financial component.

yes that makes sense, after all its all or nothing

never mind 50% of the girls are gonna get the disease despite the vaccine

or that the cancer is quite rare, easily diagnosed, easily treated if caught early

yes its far easier to trump freedom and throw out $500,000 worth of hyperbole

[muawiyah]

As I just told your gumbah on this same thread Merck itself did not go ahead and find a causal linkage to decide that their vaccine should NOT be used with certain sensitive people.

Why do I need to make any discoveries at all if Merck itself thinks limited results in one direction are sufficient to indicate something OTHER THAN universal use!

It's anti-science to demand UNIVERSALITY with a substance that even the maker claims can cause harm to some.

[Cboldt]

-- Ah, ha. The old "look it up for yourself" defense. --

Well, sometimes that's prudent ... to at least try. Now you've gone and jumped to a conclusion (that there isn't evidence) and shown that to everybody who reads this thread.

Google: perry merck contributions
Perry Underestimated Merck Donations in Debate - National Review Online

When Rick Perry joked last night that the $5,000 he had received from Merck wasn't enough to buy him off, the line failed to charm the audience as he'd expected. Turns out, the line also significantly low-balled how much he'd received from Merck. "Merck PAC--the company's D.C.-based political action committee--has given Perry $28,500 since 2001, according to Texas Ethics Commission filings. The bulk of that money came prior to 2007," the Los Angeles Times reports today. Even so, that doesn't make Merck one of Perry's top donors: the LA Times notes that he's received over the years donations totaling more than six figures from over 200 sources.

Not that I think the donations are the end-all, or the necessary source of some sort of enhanced loyalty or affection. Simple friendship is a common "cause" of cronyism.

[aruanan]

Try this link to 894,000 Google results for hpv+vaccine+mental+retardation.

First of all, you should have searched "HPV vaccine" and "mental retardation" in order to weed out irrelevant hits. Second, most of the 333,000 that result are duplicates of the same story.

For something that would give you a better insight into any real (non-hysterical, fringe website) relationship between HPV vaccine and mental retardation, try searching PubMed using the same terms. This searches among 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. You'll get 0 results.

[driftdiver]

thats pretty cool

[TigersEye]

...how credible can Bachmann be when she appears determined to confuse autism with mental retardation - which are actually two very different things?

Yeah, there's a distinction that every couch potato in America is asking themselves about. /s

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

As I just told your gumbah on this same thread Merck itself did not go ahead and find a causal linkage to decide that their vaccine should NOT be used with certain sensitive people.

Why do I need to make any discoveries at all if Merck itself thinks limited results in one direction are sufficient to indicate something OTHER THAN universal use!

It's anti-science to demand UNIVERSALITY with a substance that even the maker claims can cause harm to some.

I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. I asked you for evidence that Gardasil causes mental retardation. Nothing more. You have yet to supply it.

[Mase]

Excellent. Now if only you could cut and paste the facts showing how much money Perry received from Merck as a quid pro quo for issuing his EO on Gardasil.

Thanks in advance.

I wonder what would happen if I googled "Dick Cheney started Iraq war for oil." Do you think I might get some hits? Would all those links offer factual information proving the claim? Like I said, being able to google and being able to provide "facts" are two very different things....as driftdiver has so abundantly proven.