The state of Rhode Island is mandating that all children, boys and girls, entering 7th grade (11-12 years old) get a three shot series of a vaccine which is advertised to stop cervical cancer. Now seeing as Anglian Jolie famously had her otherwise healthy breasts chopped off in order to stave off possible breast cancer, (http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/03/13/angelina-jolie-surgery-ovaries-removed-cancer-double-mastectomy/ ) I can see where people might think, “you know, if Angelia Jolie can do that, this shot thing seems pretty simple.”
I’m not going to write about whether the shot is good or bad for you or your kid. I mean if you’re considering giving it to your kid, then you’re probably considering it for yourself as well, right? There is more than ample evidence online for you to draw your own conclusion. What I am concerned about is how the mandate got there in the first place.
ONE WORD: Merck
Naturally, a drug company would like to roll out its new wonder drug / vaccine, Gardasil, in an orderly fashion. There are step by step processes when introducing a new product to market. The marketing department usually has a nice binder full of color copies outlining how that will go.
Anyhow, for reasons unknown, BioMed giant Merck’s lobbying / sales team jumped the gun back in 2005-06. They instantly went for the jugular and got the largest school system in America to mandate this $400 per girl (at the time) “anti-cancer” series of shots. They had twenty states on their list and were waiting for just one to bite. Then, it was assumed, the others would fall in line. The cervical cancer shot would net about $5 Billion a year for Merck.
With the help of Merck funded Women in Government (http://www.womeningovernment.org/oncology/HPV) Governor Rick Perry (R) believed the Merck sales team and issued an executive order that all girls get the series of shots by sixth grade. Of course, this was about a year before the vaccine had actually gained approval by the FDA. Sure it was going to happen. They were just awaiting a piece of paper and you know how government regulations and paperwork can be and all that…
So Texas was among the first to start this series of shots. This was good news for Merck because Galaxo-Smith-Kline was chomping on the sales team’s heels. GSK was set to release their cervical anti-cancer vaccine any day. So everyone in the “industry” got busy widening the market. If the cancer was cased by a virus, namely the HPV virus related to genital warts, then it stood to reason that boys needed this vaccination too.
Eventually the good people of Texas stood up to the Governor and sighted the glaring fact that Perry’s former Chief of Staff was a lobbyist for Merck and the mandate was unanimously voted down. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/business/21merck.html
Fast forward to today and currently Texas is introducing new requirements, just like Rhode Island, for all school children 11 years old to get their HPV shots. See, it’s a different this time.
Find out how this affects Rhode Island in Part Two, next week!
