Posted on 01/31/2007 8:36:26 AM PST by Graybeard58
AUSTIN, Texas -- Merck & Co. is helping bankroll efforts to pass state laws requiring girls as young as 11 or 12 to receive the drugmaker's new vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus.
Some conservatives and parents'-rights groups say such a requirement would encourage premarital sex and interfere with the way they raise their children, and they say Merck's push for such laws is underhanded. But the company said its lobbying efforts have been aboveboard.
With at least 18 states debating whether to require Merck's Gardasil vaccine for schoolgirls, Merck has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.
A top official from Merck's vaccine division sits on Women in Government's business council, and many of the bills around the country have been introduced by members of Women in Government.
Connecticut state Rep. DebraLee Hovey, R-Monroe, has introduced a bill that would require all girls in Connecticut to receive an HPV shot.
Hovey said Tuesday that she favors the vaccine because it will save lives, not because of Merck. She said other companies are awaiting approval for their HPV vaccines. She also said she has never received a campaign contribution from Merck.
"I look at this as an opportunity to protect my constituents," said Hovey, a breast cancer survivor in her third term in the legislature. "I find it really distressing that there's this tendency to be so cynical about all of this."
Merck spokeswoman Janet Skidmore would not say how much the company is spending on lobbyists or how much it has donated to Women in Government. Crosby also declined to specify how much the drug company gave.
The New Jersey-based drug company could generate billions in sales if Gardasil -- at $360 for the three-shot regimen -- were made mandatory across the country. Most insurance companies now cover the vaccine.
which has been shown to have no serious side effects.
Cathie Adams, president of the conservative watchdog group Texas Eagle Forum, said the relationship between Merck and Women in Government is too cozy.
"What it does is benefit the pharmaceutical companies, and I don't want pharmaceutical companies taking precedence over the authorities of parents," she said.
Adams said Merck's method of lobbying quietly through groups like Women in Government in addition to meeting directly with legislators are common in state government but still should raise eyebrows. "It's corrupt as far as I'm concerned," she said.
A mandatory vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease could be a tough sell in the Lone Star State and other conservative strongholds, where schools preach abstinence and parents' rights are sacrosanct.
But Merck has doubled its spending on lobbyists in Texas this year, to between $150,000 and $250,000, as lawmakers consider the vaccine bill for girls entering the sixth grade.
Also, the drugmaker has hired one of the state's most powerful lobbyists, Mike Toomey, who once served as Republican Gov. Rick Perry's chief of staff and can influence conservatives who see him as one of their own.
"What we support are approaches that achieve high immunization rates," said Skidmore, the Merck spokeswoman. "We're talking about cervical cancer here, the second-leading cancer among women worldwide."
The legislation already has the enthusiastic support of the conservative governor.
"I look at this no different than vaccinating our children for polio," Perry said. "If there are diseases in our society that are going to cost us large amounts of money, it just makes good economic sense, not to mention the health and well being of these individuals to have those vaccines available."
Proposals for mandates have popped up from California to Connecticut since the first piece of legislation was introduced in September in Michigan. Michigan's bill was narrowly defeated last month. Lawmakers said the requirement would intrude on families' privacy, even though, as in most states' proposals, parents could opt out.
Even with such opt-out provisions, mandates take away parents' rights to make medical decisions for their children, said Linda Klepacki of the Colorado-based evangelical organization Focus on the Family. The group contends the vaccine should be available for parents who want it, but not forced on those who don't.
But Texas Rep. Jessica Farrar said her proposal is aimed at protecting children whose parents are less informed about or less interested in preventive care.
"Not everybody has equal sets of parents," said Farrar, a Houston Democrat who had precancerous cells removed from her cervix several years ago. "I think this is a public health issue and to not want to eradicate cervical cancer is irresponsible."
Drug-industry analyst Steve Brozak of W.B.B. Securities has projected Gardasil sales of at least $1 billion per year -- and billions more if states start requiring the vaccine. "I could not think of a bigger boost," he said.
"Connect the dots" "Follow the money" "Good business plan (Which I guess it is)" etc...
These are the same schools that encourage homosexual experimentation. They don't care about preventing STDs.
They claim cancer is prevented (with no side effects). A medical birth control claims it clears up acne. Condoms in schools didn't end STD but it did end the argument over whether kids SHOULD be having sex and shifted the focus to "when".
The Sex Positive Agenda marches on.
Have you noticed how this is said in the commercials--fast and it seems to me in a softer voice. Like they were trying to gloss over a very important fact.
I have noticed. Just like announcers bark out the 'fine print' or 'possible side effects' as fast as they can.
How about car deals or dealers?
The microscopic unreadable fine print that literally flashes at the end of a car commercial when they announce the next to free rates for puchase.
Imagine if disclamers had to be said in the same rate as the slowest other spoken part of the commercial. Or there was a time to read requirement.
The fine print also says the the vaccine only protects against SOME TYPES of HPV, so annual paps and followup treatment will still be necessary. Annual paps and followup treatment already have a virtual 100% success rate in preventing death from this disease, so basically all we've gained here is a lot of $$$$ for Merck. As a Merck shareholder, I applaud their aggressiveness in pursuing the bottom line, but as a mother, I will pass on this vaccine for my daughter.
I went to Merck's site to read about the study. Nowhere did it state how many in the placebo group got cancer. Nowhere did it state that the control group was clear, only that the study indicated the drug as "100% effective" in preventing types 16 and 18, and "maybe" two other types of HPV.
I saw a commercial in which a female researcher says she lost her dad to [insert disease] and that's why her work is so important to her. Faux altruism apparently sells.
Merk is free to hire lobbyists to push their product and we are free to expose the fact that the main push for this unneeded sex disease vaccine is from the maker of the sex disease vaccine.
I'm conservative. All three of my kids grew up to be conseratives.
My youngest daughter, who has three children, was recently diagnosed with cervical cancer. Thank Got it was found early. Amazingly, though she had been on the patch and had regular Pap tests, the original precancerous lesions were discovered during her 6 week checkup after her last child was born. Several visits and procedures later, the precancerous cells not only continued coming back but have turned into full blown cancer. She's scheduled for surgery in mid-February.
Needless to say a child, even a grown one, with a potentially deadly disease is every parent's nightmare and tanscends mere ideology.
The announcement that a vaccine might have prevented her condition came too late for her.
Don't support mandetory vaccination - what good is that going to do for a girl who grow up to become a nun?? But allow your daughers to KNOW about it, and then continue to preach abstinance. There is NO REASON why your daughters can't be made aware of the vaccine, so they can CHOOSE to have it before they marry. The show can't prevent all type of cancer, just the type induced by the virus....but getting rid of one type of threat can only be a good thing.
The cancer is not invasive yet, but everyone who experiences this automatically reaches the point of wondering will they get it all? Will it come back? None of us want to go through this, especialy if it's not preventable.
I hope we don't allow our position on this one to become dogmatized by the media to the point where some young women don't get the shot and wind up suffering from cervical cancer as a result.
I'd like to know how long they wait after their studies before allowing the stuff on the market without knowing the consequences and long-term effects.
Is the FDA really doing their job? How Kosher is it to sign up people for study-related expenses to be their guinea pigs? Look what happened with Phenphen and Celebrex...
You may not remember thalidomide--what a disaster that proved to be.
At the time there was a woman who was head of the FDA--she had seen some early reports from Europe re: profound defects occurring in the babies of women who took the drug. The drug maker was pushing the FDA hard to approve the drug--the director would not move and stayed with her initial decision. Unfortunately, there were a good number of cases of defects here in the US because women brought the drug back from Europe. The UK had a very large number of babies born without limbs or only portions thereof--tragic.
I did a report years ago about diethystilbestrol and the fact that daughters of women who take it are often infertile.
I don't support mandatory vaccination against this either, just dissemination of the facts.
Isn't HPV one of those that can make a woman sterile? Years ago a married friend of mine got an STD - from her abusive, philandering husband. She divorced him and sought medical treatment, but was left unable to bear children. Real shame too, she loves children and grieves the loss. For a while she and her second hubby served as foster parents, trying several times to adopt before getting fed up with the heartbreak.
Sure, as long as they teach about all other vaccines in health class.
And what if, down the road, it turns out it is defective? Who takes responsibility?
I know two women who are DES daughters. Both are infertile. Both have gone through gynecological hell for decades. Now they've been told they are at a greatly increased risk for breast cancer. DES was FDA approved and supposedly completely safe with only minor, if any, side effects. Baloney.
I'm very cynical where these new drugs and vaccines are concerned. I've seen and heard of too many cases where the "cure" was worse than the disease. Whatever happened to, "First, do no harm?"
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