"Merck Suspends Lobbying for Vaccine"

Remember this? Gardasil is the HPV vaccine that Rick Perry passed an executive order on two weeks ago. The EO said that 6th Grade girls in Texas would have to have the vaccine to continue on in school. Like Polio or Measels or what have you.

Well Merck, the splendid company that makes Gardasil and stands to make a fortune from the most expensive vaccine to date, has stopped lobbying for the vaccine to be mandated in schools.

Some parents' groups and doctors particularly objected because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted disease, human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer. Vaccines mandated for school attendance usually are for diseases easily spread through casual contact, such as measles and mumps.

Bowing to pressure, Merck said Tuesday that it is immediately suspending its controversial campaign, which it had funded through a third party.

"Our goal is about cervical cancer prevention, and we want to reach as many females as possible with Gardasil," Dr. Richard M. Haupt, Merck's medical director for
vaccines, told The Associated Press.

"We're concerned that our role in supporting school requirements is a distraction from that goal, and as such have suspended our lobbying efforts," Haupt said, adding the company will continue providing information about the vaccine if requested by government officials.

I'm wondering though ... if it has more to do with this report ... that I found this morning. Or with the fact that as more controversy arises, so does more education. Last night I heard on Fox (local) that a big side effect (big as in consequences, not necessarily the amount of times it occured) was paralysis. The report (posted by PR wire) confirms what I heard last night.

The National VaccineInformation Center (NVIC) today released a new analysis of the federalVaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports of serious healthproblems following HPV vaccination (Merck's GARDASIL) during the last sixmonths of 2006. Out of the 385 individual GARDASIL adverse event reports made to VAERS, two-thirds required additional medical care and aboutone-third of all reports were for children 16-years-old and under, withnearly 25 percent of those
children having received simultaneously one ormore of the 18 vaccines that Merck did not study in combination withGARDASIL. NVIC is calling on the FDA and CDC to warn parents and doctorsthat GARDASIL should not be combined with other vaccines and that young girls should be monitored for at least 24 hours for syncopal(collapse/fainting) episodes that can be accompanied by seizure activity,as well as symptoms of tingling, numbness and loss of sensation in the fingers and limbs, all of which should be reported to VAERS immediately.

"Because Merck only studied GARDASIL in fewer than 1200 girls under age16 in pre-licensure trials, it is critical that doctors and parents be madeaware of the nature of the initial adverse event reports coming into VAERSand that they report serious health problems after vaccination when they occur," said NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher. "There are twice as many children collapsing and four times as many children experiencing tingling,numbness and loss of sensation after getting a GARDASIL vaccination compared to those getting a Tdap (tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis)vaccination. There have been reports of facial paralysis and
Guillain-BarreSyndrome. And doctors who give GARDASIL in combination with other vaccinesare basically conducting an experiment on their young patients
becauseMerck has not published any safety data for simultaneous vaccination
withany vaccine except hepatitis B vaccine."

I expect a rescinding of the executive order. I also do not think the two of these incidents - Merck's stopping of the campaign and these results - are mutually exclusive. And he needs to get his head out of his deep lobbying friends pockets and concentrate on the needs of his constituents and the children of this state.