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.
Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for posting this.
Placemarker post 359
I remember when I first heard about this vaccine. My immediate reaction was “Thank Goodness! They may have found something here.” While it only applies to a particular type of cancer at this point...perhaps new research will find that other cancers may be prevented with vaccines!
But no.....what should be a discussion of this new horizon in medicine has been drowned out by this stupid argument. It makes me sick.
What year did they do that? Probably early in the 20th century. Much different era. Perhaps it's time to take back some of the delegated authority.
Thank you.
Oh, please.
That “conservative” politician allowed her teen daughter to go to a co-ed camp-out which included drugs and alcohol. I don’t know why you think that can’t be prevented. I guarantee my children have never been in any kind of situation like that.
Try doing a search for seizure disorders associated with the DPT shot.
That legislation was updated in 2007.
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB01059F.HTM
Some of the articles I've read about this vaccine describe really serious side effects. Perfectly healthy girls became chronically weak and some even died.
Read the link. Her church prior to her leaving it to run for President openly believed it. I understand most religions officially follow the view “be our religion or you are going to hell” (I know mine does) but to claim another religion is satanic and led by the antichrist is a little out there....
I haven't said anything about the dangers. That isn't my issue. My concern is the government telling parents how to raise their children.
And if you don't want to vaccinate your child, you can keep him home and away from the other school children.
Just before you fly off the handle, look around and think about how so many children did not make it to adulthood just a couple of generations ago.
There is an exploitation to the hysteria surrounding a lot of anti-vaccine attitudes. I had a friend who was convinced that pertussis vaccination caused his child to be autistic because of one journal article in the Lancet that later turned out to be sheer fraud. There was no reaching this friend and I didn't even try, because some emotion had taken ahold of him and he was so relieved to find someone to blame for the inexplicable affliction.
Sort of like having a witch in the village to blame everything on.
I've seen a few of these mass hysteria come and go. I remember a particularly awful episode in the Clinton years when suddenly there were daycare centers that practiced child abuse and satan worship--ya, ya, ya--and innocent people spent years in jail. I wonder if Janet Reno will get what's coming to herm...
Calm down, dear. I never said anything against vaccines for diseases that are communicable by casual means, such as polio.
I guess I do get worked up over that. A prolonged shortage of any vaccine could be catastrophic if enough people go without it. We have had many shortages of the tetanus vaccine.
And Gardisil is not a high priority. Do you know that Gardisil protects against some genital herpes?
It's not a BAD thing. Just a thing to approach with wisdom.
A lot of these vaccines don't work for everybody. Did you know that? What we depend on is the "firewall" of those around us who are successfully immune. The immune protect the non-immune. That's why I hate a hysterical approach to vaccines.
That any med has side effects is unavoidable.
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