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They're trying to make mandatory vaccinations for cervical cancer that only works on a small percentage of cancers which do not automatically happen in a woman's life. They want to make the vaccinations mandatory for BOYS and GIRLS. All of this is based on giving a big profit to the company making the vaccine...not public health. Already a small mountain of horrible side effects are showing up because the vaccine isn't as safe as they tried to claim it was, but the push to make it mandatory isn't slowing.
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Um... ok, it doesn't work on all cancers. So? It works on enough to be a significant public health benefit. Yes, there are some side effects in a small number of cases, but the benefits far outweigh the risks. Does the pharmaceutical company want to make money? Yes, of course. But there is also a significant public health benefit to mass vaccination. You may as well call for people to reject food because the push for everyone to eat doesn't come out of a desire to feed the population, but because the farmers want a big profit.
The Human Papilloma Virus vaccine story is a good example of a pharmaceutical company using political power to try to ram through a mandate that every one buy their product. The first mandate for it came from out of the blue, from the Texas Governor that had financial connections to the Merck company that makes the vaccine. The normal process would be for public health associations to study the new product and develop risk-benefit studies, and get medical scientists on board. That was not done.
The idea of a HPV vaccine is very good ... for males and females. HPV causes penile cancer in men as well as cervical cancer in women. And inoculating both genders is a good way to break the transmission of a disease that is spread venereally. Human Papilloma Virus does not 'automatically' cause these cancers, just like Hepatitis B does not 'automatically' cause liver cancer ... but it definitely increases the risk greatly, and controlling those viruses would automatically reduce the incidence of related cancers.
Someday, a vaccine like that probably should be widely administered. But the company that makes it (like many other pharmaceutical companies) put profit above science in the way they promoted it. It may be highly effective (not enough research), it may be quite safe (not enough research) ... but the decision for HPV vaccines was not made primarily by the medical and public health communities ... it was a political decision paved with contributions from the company that had a financial interest in it.
25 Jul 2009, 12:40 am
