Posted on 09/13/2011 8:09:37 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Earlier today, I noted that Michele Bachmann finally scored points on Rick Perry by hitting him on his ties to Merck and linking that to the Gardasil mandate Perry imposed through executive order in Texas. This is a fair point on Perry’s record, even given his apology for pursuing the mandate through EO instead of through the legislature, and it’s not surprising that Bachmann was the candidate to first take advantage of the opening. (Mitt Romney passed a mandate on health insurance for all citizens of Massachusetts, which pretty much puts this issue out of reach for him.) However, Bachmann took a winning argument about the method and the wisdom of mandating a vaccination for a limited-spread virus and turned it into an anti-vaccination argument, especially in this post-debate argument on Fox with Greta van Susteren.
>>>"There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine."<<<
Huh? “Mental retardation” typically takes place in a pre- or neo-natal event. Autism becomes apparent in the first couple of years of life — and primarily affects boys. Gardasil vaccinations take place among girls between 9-12 years of age. Even assuming that this anecdote is arguably true, it wouldn’t be either “mental retardation” or autism, but brain damage.
The FDA has received no reports of brain damage as a result of HPV vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix. Among the reports that correlate seriously adverse reactions to either, the FDA lists blood clots, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and 68 deaths during the entire run of the drugs. The FDA found no causal connection to any of these serious adverse events and found plenty of contributing factors to all — and all of the events are exceedingly rare.
The “mental retardation” argument is a rehash of the thoroughly discredited notion that vaccines containing thimerasol caused a rapid increase in diagnosed autism cases. That started with a badly-botched report in Lancet that allowed one researcher to manipulate a ridiculously small sample of twelve cases in order to reach far-sweeping conclusions about thimerasol. That preservative hasn’t been included in vaccines for years, at least not in the US, and the rate of autism diagnoses remain unchanged.
The most charitable analysis that can be offered in this case for Bachmann is that she got duped into repeating a vaccine-scare urban legend on national television. It looks more like Bachmann sensed that she had won a point and wanted to go in for the kill, didn’t bother to check the facts, and didn’t care that she was stoking an anti-vaccination paranoid conspiracy theory, either. Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.
Rick Santorum took the correct position on the Gardasil issue. We mandate certain vaccines in children because we mandate children be gathered for educational purposes for many years (in private or public schools), and certain diseases are easily communicable in those settings. By mandating vaccinations against whooping cough, measles, and mumps, we are protecting children who would otherwise get exposed without any action on their part except compliance with the law. That’s not true with HPV, and parents should decide for themselves whether to inoculate their sons and daughters with Gardasil or Cervarix. If Perry wanted to make those inoculations more accessible, he could have crafted an opt-in system rather than forcing parents to opt out.
Until there are multi-generational studies, I’m leaving the decision to my daughters.
I personally don’t care at all what others think because for just as many Pro-vaccine articles, there are Anti-vaccine articles.
I did the Rotovirus vaccine. I nearly died when it was pulled off the market. Never again.
Not one shot was given to young Texas girls under this policy.
I repeat..........It Never Went Into Effect!!!!
ROTFLMAO!
All the diseases for which immunization is required are contagious in the general population. HPV and cervical cancer are acquired solely through promiscuous sex, not casual contact. Nice try.
Yup, cause the TX legislature got its sixgun and shot it down. Yeehaw.
This is exactly what takes the steam out of a good candidate - a mouth that runs ahead of the brain. Bachmann has a lot going for her - and she is one of the most “conservative” of the bunch. But when he mouth runs ahead of the brain (and facts) - it costs you (and can cost you an election).
Yeah, those lawyers are equally as scurrelous as drug companies peddling their wares to Governors to push on unsuspecting female citizens by executive order.
I guess they realized, like Perry, that this was a mistake.
The fact is Bachmann lied, and she should have known better. There was always a choice, and Perry signed the very loose vaccination opt-out into law.
Since when are “conservatives” open to allowing the government to force us to “opt-out” of anything?
In Perry's defense, the story I heard was that it needed to be opt-out in order to be covered by insurance for those making the default opt-in choice. Of course, making it opt-out does discriminate against the cognitively impaired and the lazy.
This case is another example of how over-use of insurance distorts the health care industry. How much would it cost in total to get your lawn mowed if you had an employer-provided, tax-deductible yard-care plan?
If you really think that $6000 in campaign contributions is the only way Merck could help Slick Rick Perry, then you are hopelessly naive. Some of us are sick and tired of your constant attempt to sell this man, a career hack politician who supported liberals like Al Gore and Rudy Giuliani, a man who claims credit for job growth despite never running a business himself, a man who hasn’t a clue about foreign policy, a man who panders to La Raza and CAIR, as a conservative.
Oh. And Cincinnatus is spelled with 3 Ns.
You may be mixing Scientology with the Christian Science Church. They are emphatically not the same!
Scientologists are nuts, IMO, but they don't have anything against vaccinations.
Yeah, those evil drug companies that leftists always talk about, peddling their evil vaccinations. We should listen to the real experts like Jenny McCarthy.
Gee whiz, it’s like people are trying to tell time by watching the second hand of the clock. Does this moment or that moment or the other moment spell doom for the candidate?
It’s a long time till the convention.
I think it would be interesting to see if anyone knows someone who had a negative outcome from this vaccine. I don’t think the gov or the drug company would necessarily do everything to get this info out there.
I know a 22 year old girl who was healthy as a horse who within 2 weeks of this vaccination is basically a quad for the last several years.
Anyone else know anyone?
How much did she ingest then?
“Exactly.
I am extremely disappointed with the easy comfort many here appear to have with govt coercion, when it’s their guy doing it.
People will rationalize anything.”
BRAVO!!!
Gardasil isn’t PEZ
Monday, 26 October 2009
(Note the Date. Perry had Plenty of time to Find Out.)
“The reported rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/642/103/
“Dr. Diane Harper, the lead researcher in the development of two human papilloma virus vaccines, Merck’s Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix, injected sobering facts about these much promoted vaccines. Indeed, Dr. Harper, who analyzed the data, raised serious doubts about the medical justification for use of the HPV vaccines in Western-industrialized countries where current screening has all but wiped out the death rate from cervical cancer:
Speaking at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination (Oct. 2-4) Dr. Harper explained that:
“70 percent of all HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment within a year. Within two years, the number climbs to 90 percent. Of the remaining 10 percent of HPV infections, only half will develop into cervical cancer, which leaves little need for the vaccine.”
She went on to surprise the audience by stating that the incidence of cervical cancer in the U.S. is already so low that “even if we get the vaccine and continue PAP screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the US.”
Dr. Harper, who also serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization, further undercut the case for mass vaccination in industrialized countries by saying that “four out of five women with cervical cancer are in developing countries.”
Furthermore, she said, there have been no efficacy trials in children under the age of 15: “It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11 to 12 year old girls. There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue.”
To date, 15,037 girls have officially reported adverse side effects from Gardasil to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). These adverse reactions include Guilliane Barre, lupus, seizures, paralysis, blood clots, brain inflammation and many others. The CDC acknowledges that there have been 44 reported deaths.
In Britain, the government began administering the vaccine to school-aged girls last year, more than 2,000 patients reported some kind of adverse reaction including nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, convulsions, seizures and hyperventilation. Several reported multiple reactions, with 4,602 suspected side-effects recorded in total. The most tragic case involved a 14 year-old girl who dropped dead in the corridor of her school an hour after receiving the vaccination.
Bottom line: “The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”
So why are public health agencies in the US and the UK promoting the vaccines for young girls when the risk / benefit ratio is clearly tilted against its use????
This is but another example of aggressive marketing skewing public health policy, overriding good medical practice and the dictum, “First, do no harm.” The case lends further support for increased public distrust.
Posted by Vera Sharav”
& a further clarification
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/643/9/
“”The REPORTED rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”
That is entirely an assumption on your part. I was only trying to clarify the facts. There is an opt-out, like its form or not, so it is not mandatory.
Should mention she is the daughter of a neighbor of mine.
Rush just said that there is NO proof from any study that Gardisil causes mental retardation and that Bachman should have verified the claim before she went on national tv with the accusation.
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