Posted on 09/13/2011 8:09:37 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Earlier today, I noted that Michele Bachmann finally scored points on Rick Perry by hitting him on his ties to Merck and linking that to the Gardasil mandate Perry imposed through executive order in Texas. This is a fair point on Perry’s record, even given his apology for pursuing the mandate through EO instead of through the legislature, and it’s not surprising that Bachmann was the candidate to first take advantage of the opening. (Mitt Romney passed a mandate on health insurance for all citizens of Massachusetts, which pretty much puts this issue out of reach for him.) However, Bachmann took a winning argument about the method and the wisdom of mandating a vaccination for a limited-spread virus and turned it into an anti-vaccination argument, especially in this post-debate argument on Fox with Greta van Susteren.
>>>"There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine."<<<
Huh? “Mental retardation” typically takes place in a pre- or neo-natal event. Autism becomes apparent in the first couple of years of life — and primarily affects boys. Gardasil vaccinations take place among girls between 9-12 years of age. Even assuming that this anecdote is arguably true, it wouldn’t be either “mental retardation” or autism, but brain damage.
The FDA has received no reports of brain damage as a result of HPV vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix. Among the reports that correlate seriously adverse reactions to either, the FDA lists blood clots, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and 68 deaths during the entire run of the drugs. The FDA found no causal connection to any of these serious adverse events and found plenty of contributing factors to all — and all of the events are exceedingly rare.
The “mental retardation” argument is a rehash of the thoroughly discredited notion that vaccines containing thimerasol caused a rapid increase in diagnosed autism cases. That started with a badly-botched report in Lancet that allowed one researcher to manipulate a ridiculously small sample of twelve cases in order to reach far-sweeping conclusions about thimerasol. That preservative hasn’t been included in vaccines for years, at least not in the US, and the rate of autism diagnoses remain unchanged.
The most charitable analysis that can be offered in this case for Bachmann is that she got duped into repeating a vaccine-scare urban legend on national television. It looks more like Bachmann sensed that she had won a point and wanted to go in for the kill, didn’t bother to check the facts, and didn’t care that she was stoking an anti-vaccination paranoid conspiracy theory, either. Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.
Rick Santorum took the correct position on the Gardasil issue. We mandate certain vaccines in children because we mandate children be gathered for educational purposes for many years (in private or public schools), and certain diseases are easily communicable in those settings. By mandating vaccinations against whooping cough, measles, and mumps, we are protecting children who would otherwise get exposed without any action on their part except compliance with the law. That’s not true with HPV, and parents should decide for themselves whether to inoculate their sons and daughters with Gardasil or Cervarix. If Perry wanted to make those inoculations more accessible, he could have crafted an opt-in system rather than forcing parents to opt out.
Texas. Retards. We’re just splitting hairs here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA2Yj8Pksmg
>>Does anyone think it’s amusing that people here are defending a position that even Perry admitted was wrong? Hilarious!<<
That’s exactly what I said at the top of this thread.
Perry SAID it was wrong.
Why are conservatives defending what is wrong?
Most intelligent people grasp that difference.
My niece’s daughter who is 18 has a heart problem. She makes trips to the hospital quite often with her daughter.
They have met families of girls who took this vaccine who have daughters that became almost non functional.
I am not saying this happens to the majority of girls that have taken Gardasil, but that is reason enough to not mandate it until it is known why it happens to some.
All a person has to do is Google to see the lawsuits regarding this drug. And those took Gardasil voluntarily.
OK, that sounds correct to me.
Well, I guess that means you will never like any presidential candidate ever, and by the same logic, you don’t like any past presidents either.
Her strength is her knowledge on taxes and the economy. She should focus on that. Don’t think her Gardasil attack in the overall scheme of things is going help her any.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, most polio doesn’t progress to the paralytic stage. Polio is basically an intestinal virus that developed the capability of infecting nerve tissues as well. It quite often doesn’t progress very far in that direction before the body overcomes it. But in a small minority of cases, tragedy of the kind you describe results.
Because he wrote the order in 2007.
I may be the only person on this board who thinks the opt-in, is not the way to go for this particular vaccine, beyond the insurance qualifications requirement of opt-out. It’s target is sexually active (or soon to be) teens. Does anyone think that parents who are either out of touch with or who condone their young children’s sexual activity are going to take the time to do an opt-in? Ain’t gonna happen.
I come here for news and to hear the opinions on various current events of people who often have more knowledge and better insights into different topics than I have.
I have learned more than I can say from posters here, though I think the quality of discourse has degraded over the years. If I was part of that I apologize.
But I have never liked the political gamesmanship during the primaries.
The last paragraph describing Santorum's position is spot on.
There is a good case to be made against opt-out mandatory HPV vaccination without crossing the line into anti-vax moonbattery....Santorum made that case, Bachmann appears to have at least put a toe across that line.
“Joe Wilson got beat by a write-in candidate most conservatives desipise. Could she even carry Alaska?”
his name is Joe Miller. Alaska is a GOP state but for establishment types like Gerald Ford.
The medical profession pushes this vaccine very heavily on teenage girls. I have a 17 year old who, in my opinion, can make her own decision about this vaccine when she is 21. Personally, I am not comfortable with it - I think there is more than meets the eye on this whole issue i.e. pandering to drug companies, etc.
Oops you’re right. His name is Joe Miller.
There are a whole lot of of people....and I mean, enough that it really stuns me....who have come to believe that children they know who suffer from autism, seizures, weird allergies, etc....all is connected to government-mandated vaccines.
Michele has tapped a large hidden reservoir of votes with this.
I didn’t see it. I just copied your post assuming that you saw or read that she did.
Because he wrote the order in 2007.
So Perry can't see into the future? Disqualified. < /sarc >
>> Darn it, Michelle Bachmann is acting like a mother.
Ah, there it is the second time you’ve advanced that meme.
It’s disingenuous, for at least two reasons.
1) It’s beyond obvious that Bachmann is grasping for a cudgel with which to beat Perry. “Acting like a mother” has nothing to do with it. You know it too, although I don’t expect you to admit it.
2) The thrust of the article was not so much that she is against the Gardasil mandate — but that she is against it (and other vaccines) in a hyperventilating, over-the-top, very unscientific (and unsupportable) way. That’s the origin of my earlier comment that she has become a flailing madwoman, rivaling Ron Paul in nuttiness. I stand by my opinion, and I bet we haven’t seen the last of the supporting evidence for my view.
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