A deadly hysteria - Bachmann’s vaccine lunacy

New York Post ^ | September 14, 2011 | ROBERT GOLDBERG, vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest

[Apogee]

As I previously stated, I am not dismissing you or your positions.
I seem to recall seeing your name in older threads (can’t find any due to your abundant posting of late) which have struck a chord.

I think however, we have several issues going on here.
1 - Is Perry suitable for the position?
2 - Is the HPV vaccine as safe and efficacious as it is touted to be?
3 - Did Perry “mandate” the vaccine?
and others.

1 - he may be, certainly I like a lot of his statements and style better than those of several other front runners. If he were to get the nomination and choose Romney for a vp, I may retract that.
2 - I quoted reasonable questions from the New England Journal of Medicine on another thread, but did not elicit a response until you felt dismissed or attacked.
I would say that there are enough questions regarding it to make it unwise to mandate the vaccine, and I would be leery of hitching Perry to the vaccination wagon. Scientific understanding and consensus are subject to change, and what one day may seem like the latest in knowledge may another become evidence of how little one knows.
3 - It appears that the “mandate” was not as much of one as I at first believed, if the opt out is readily available (?) and not overly intrusive, and if the purpose was merely to get insurance companies to pay for it, as some have posited.
I am not sure that the EO was the best way to reach that end, or that the bureaucracy involved in opting out is as easy or unintrusive as advertised (noted that Perry supposedly ordered more available).
Some may have issues with making insurance pay for it - Health care in general still needs a good looking into. Big government, big pharma, and big insurance are none of our friends.
I am no more interested in an oligarchy of corporations than I am one of professors, and would like to see a candidate with real solutions for both.

[Apogee]

Many see little difference, and object to that one, too.
At least it is not currently developed off of aborted fetal cell lines, as is Hep - A, along with a host of others vaccines.

[aruanan]

“The ‘pene’ in penectomy refers to penis. Last I checked, women don’t have those.”

I guess this just underscores your general ignorance about what's involved with genital warts and who's affected. There are probably some instances of clitorectomy from genital warts also (the clitoris is the female equivalent of the penis). How do you think that women get the virus? It's not from toilet seats.

[Domalais]

I think you misread my snark. I was dismissing that it was a female-only disease. It is generally more dangerous to women than men, but affects both.

[aruanan]

I think you misread my snark. I was dismissing that it was a female-only disease. It is generally more dangerous to women than men, but affects both.

Probably because I was responding to a quote in another post, so it's likely that I didn't see the whole thing.

When I was asking the doctor about the necessity of the vaccination for the 13 year old, he said, "I'll sum it up with one word: penectomy." Of course, a reference to the appearance of cauliflower would have been just about as effective.

[Domalais]

I can give you another, even better example. In some HPV cases in males, the warts appear inside the urethra. The solution is to go in there with a laser and burn them all out. Afterward, to prevent scar tissue from blocking the urethra, you have to insert a dilation device into it three times daily until the healing process is done.

Good times, am I right?

[aruanan]

Afterward, to prevent scar tissue from blocking the urethra, you have to insert a dilation device into it three times daily until the healing process is done. Good times, am I right?

It would probably feel like peeing lava.

[LadyDoc]

I am simply pointing out that we don’t know who this group represents, the number of people who belong to it, or where they get their funding. And I am suspicious of a group who uses the name that confuses people in this way.

and no, it is not the same as the American Academy of Pediatrics. That group, albeit being a lefty type organization, does represent most pediatricians, who unlike other docs tend to be lefties.

The only “problem” with the HPV vaccine is that the company spent a lot of money hyping the vaccine before they actually proved it worked as good as they claimed. So Perry could be criticized for being bribed, and for not going through the legislature.

But later studies showed it worked pretty good (not 100 percent) and that later versions of the vaccine would catch the rarer type viruses that caused these cancers.

I mean, anti vaccine hysteria is a form of paranoia, and Michelle Bachman just lost the vote of most of us over her stupidity here.

When patients asked me if I though the vaccine was safe, I would point out that every thing had a small risk, even driving a car to my office. That didn’t mean we should go back to horse and buggies...

[aruanan]

But later studies showed it worked pretty good (not 100 percent) and that later versions of the vaccine would catch the rarer type viruses that caused these cancers.

And when you consider that a lot of medications that are considered to be very effective have a much lower rate of effectiveness depending on the age, gender, and other factors in the patient, the effectiveness of this HPV vaccine makes it a valuable tool in disease prevention.

[Just mythoughts]

If someone can tell me the difference between the Government mandating a Hep B vaccine vs. a Guardasil vaccine, please inform me. I don’t see the difference. They are both transmitted by sexual contact. Right now, many states adminster the Hep B vaccine before a newborn leaves the hospital and children are required to have it before going to school.

Government at what ever level, local, state, or federal that passes any legislation that requires a financial transaction by we the people is a tax/mandate. Setting a speed limit is a mandate on two fronts. Taxpayers fund the function of law enforcement that monitors the streets, roads, and highways. There is a fine/penalty IF the speed limit is exceeded IF 'caught'. Now in 'hard' times 'speed' traps can be an outside incentive to earn extra money above what is allocated in a given year. Somebody has to cover that cost of hike in gasoline prices etc.

Mandates/taxes were/are to originate from the legislative body, not the executive or judicial branch. That was Governor Perry's BIG mistake. He took matters into his own hands and ordered a tax increase to the customers of private health insurance.

There seems to be a misconception that insurance companies went to their personal cash stash and willingly wrote the checks to the government or the drug company to pay for these vaccines. That is NOT how private sector businesses work. Any increased mandated cost to their operation automatically is pass off to the consumers... that purchase the service/product. Most usually the increase cost is averaged out to all the customer base, NOT just specifically to the customers who will get the vaccine.

This practice has become so rampant that 'we the people' see 'red' when prices go up but ignore who is usually first in line that mandated the increase. SOCIAL SECURITY/MEDICARE/MEDICAID taxes are collected directly by government whereas other taxes like the GAS tax is collected by the private sector business, or like I keep mentioning the algore tax that never went through Congress is collected for government by telephone companies.

What is striking to me is all this and that about TEA PARTY, but completely ignoring what cause that first dumping of government TEA. IT was taxation/mandates without representation.

I am all for taking the 'fraud' out of the social security system... but that same system is the model used to tax, tax, tax, and tax US into being into generational DEBT. That is enslavement. NOW is our 'we the people's' opportunity to say to the ruling class enough is enough, else this nation is NOT going to continue to exist as we have known it.

So while the 'feeling' is about prevention of cancer, the reality is that government is US and we are BROKE.

[Domalais]

Yes, that’s exactly what it feels like.

[Nextrush]

Profits are great in a free market without government mandates to generate them.

This Guardasil thing was small potatoes for Merck but George W. Bush decided to use our tax dollars and the national debt to provide revenue for pharma companies.

A multibillion dollar bonanza for pharma companies came from Medicare Part D.

And speaking of taxpayers and the national debt creating profits wasn’t TARP the biggest boondoggle of all??????

[Nextrush]

I’m fully aware that new pharma products have to go through an expensive approval process.

The Food and Drug Administration was created in the infamous “Progressive Era” around a hundred years ago.

For some cervical cancer is a real threat and the vaccine may be an option, but no pharma product is 100 percent perfect.

To mandate Guardasil was wrong because it was assuming that cervical cancer is a threat to every young girl who’s 11 or 12 years old.

Back to beating on the pharmaceutical companies.

We all know the liberals and the left hit the industry hard in recent decades over the cost of its products, especially for the elderly.

What happened as a result of the attacks was Medicare Part D.

Now the taxpayers and the national debt subsidize the cost of pharma products. That was wrong, too.

We need freedom and free markets without government propping up any business, no matter how noble their products are??????

[DB]

I find it interesting that people want their favorite drugs to cost less and therefore like it when government requires insurance companies (or the government) to cover the cost and that some how makes it less expensive...

Requiring the buyer to buy it is hardly an incentive to the manufacturer to lower the cost...

The truth is, the cost is not lowered, it is simply spread around to everyone who pays taxes and/or buys insurance. Only the individual consuming it gets the “lower cost” of that particular item...

When you multiply that philosophy across the board it creates an economic disaster as there is no end to it.

Davy Crockett wasn’t wrong:
http://www.juntosociety.com/patriotism/inytg.html

[Apogee]

Good points, some of them.
I should have noted the name was different, which points to your issue about name similarity.
OTOH, groups often do so, not to confuse outsiders, but to identify with insiders who want a change.
PCUS vs PCA (Presbyterian Church US now USA, vs ... of America)
ACLU vs ACLJ

Generally a reactionary group is smaller, otherwise it would have simply imposed its view upon the other group, or been the dominant group all along.
American Heritage Girls comes to mind. They are smaller, and have a way to go in some scouting areas, but are growing significantly as more and more people find their consciences unable to stay aligned with Girl Scouts USA.

Most of us would argue that size is not a factor in determining whether a group can have credibility. I can understand the notion of medical consensus, versus quackery, but if the dominant group tends to be made of “lefties” one has to ask if consensus is a scientific or cultural criterion. All the arguing about man made global warming is a perfect example, for instance.

I am more concerned with whether the positions of any group pass the tests of reason and conformity to specific revelation (say scripture), regulation (say constitution), or observation (scientific or otherwise) - to the best of my ability to understand these things.

I admit it gets miry in some areas: are certain conditions genetic, environmental, or perhaps the result of specific environmental triggers combined with specific genetic traits? Are our genes fixed, or more elastic - changing over time due to environmental or even behavioral factors.

I could ask similar questions in areas of jurisprudence or doctrine or even of physical sciences, but pick these as they relate perhaps to looking at positions taken by various mainstream psychological, psychiatric, or pediatric organizations - such as this one:
http://www.aap.org/publiced/BR_GayTeen.htm
“Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. All of the major medical organizations, including The American Psychiatric Association, The American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics agree that homosexuality is not an illness or disorder, but a form of sexual expression.”
note that this time I have the American *Academy* of Pediatrics.

“All the major medical organizations” are subject to infiltration, misdirection, or the entirely human problem of interpreting their observations in a manner consistent with their predetermined or political beliefs, that is to say, of being wrong.

Back to the “hard” sciences: Kepler formed an organization of one, explaining the observed phenomena of the movement of Mars through the understanding of Copernicus. All the major Aristotelian physics organizations (including the Church) were in agreement, but they were still wrong.

Now, regarding the original post - without having extensively looked into the group as I should, and shall, eventually - the position of the ACP on mandating the HPV vaccine seems in accord with reason, and many of the issues raised in their position paper may be found in the New England Journal of Medicine’s pages over a several year period (links in other posts of mine).
While I am glad that longer studies seem to resolve some of the safety concerns raised in the initially quick introduction, I am willing to wait it out for a while, until we have much more information.

Interesting side note - I found a pdf comparing AAP to ACP, which states that a position paper can only be published if 75% of the members agree to the position. With an unknown number of members, but presumably at least 47, that means that at least 36 of them have to concur. Seems like an interesting way of doing things.

Nice talking to you. Sorry I am not a more instant communicator.