Perry took a six thousand dollar campaign contribution from the pharma company behind Guardasil sent through a group called “Women In Politics.”
As governor, Perry proposed requiring 11 year and 12 year old girls to be injected with Guardasil. The drug is a vaccine against the sexually transmitted HPV virus.
Then the grassroots got angry that he would make a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease mandatory for young girls (assume they are all going to have sex?????) and he backed off.
But don't dismiss this vaccine because your daughters are chaste. Someday they may marry, but not marry a chaste man. Do you know a lot of men that come to their marriages virgin? Men carry HPV also. There is also some encouraging research about this being effective against some herpes viruses.
HPV is a virus and cannot be treated with antibiotics. You may be thinking that it's like the clap. HPV is permanent.
I'm not talking up mandatory vaccination here. But don't throw out a possibly good vaccine with your indignation with how it was managed. I happen to think that there should be an effort to get more men to take the vaccine.
Spare me the Diogenesis rhetoric. There are actually some of us who have brains of our own and don’t need validation or you to clarify our perspective for us.
You are correct in that Perry recieved a campaign donation from Merck. But that isn’t unusual in Texas as much of the political donations come from companies, etc as that is the law in Texas. A four figure donation isn’t that huge when compared to others.
Now with regards to Perry backing off. He didn’t back off per se from his EO of Feb. 07. But rather the legislature got to work and passed a law stopping his EO and had it in place by early May 07. In effect the people’s voice was heard by the legislature and the legislature acted accordingly. This is one item Perry will have to deal with if he runs and it becomes questionable if it will have a large impact on the voting public at large.