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.
You already answered the question. He's the most evil of monsters... a *MAN*; specifically, a WHITE MAN.
Run for your life!!!
"Additionally, some schools, daycare facilities and colleges are saying they don't have to accept the exemption. This is wrong - the law grants parents this right and the schools and daycares can't take this right away. For your convenience, we've posted links to the state statutes directly below. "
If Perry truly believed that this vaccination would halt the spread of HPV, then why didn’t he require teenage boys to get it too?
Teenage boys are spreading the virus. A teenage girl will usually have fewer partners then a boy. So while a girl may spread it to a couple of boys, a boy carrying the HPV virus may spread it to a dozen girls. And yes, they have proven it works on males. So I ask again, if Perry truly believed that this vaccination would halt the spread of HPV, then why didn’t he require teenage boys to get it too?
Forget the charges of campaign payoffs, instead ask him if he would again make the same misogynistic choice not to require of males that which he would require of females.
You forgot gun owners.
>> Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.
Overnight, it seems, she turned from a solid conservative ideologue (though an inexperienced executive) to a flailing madwoman rivaling Ron Paul in nuttiness.
I’m glad it’s coming out now, when she’s at six percent support. We really don’t need a CinC like this. It seems the nation dodged a bullet with Michelle self-destructing.
Let Merck profit, if it wants, by putting its product on the free, opt-in market.
Does truth have an expiration date?
???
LOL, so we would have had McCain?
I think some of these anti-vaccine people have the same zealotry of environmentalist who want me to light my home with candles. Yes candles use no electricity but they are also likely to burn down my house. Yes, there are risks with vaccines but there are BIGGER risks not doing them.
Joe Wilson got beat by a write-in candidate most conservatives desipise. Could she even carry Alaska?
Oh gosh, she cares about things that every mother would care about. That means she’d be a lousy President. QED
ROTFLMAO Were you actually serious when you said that?
As a view of the operation of government, it's hard to argue that there isn't some crony capitalism going on there. How much, if any of it attaches to Perry, personally, is a slightly different issue.
[Gardacil only protects against 4 strains of HPV]
Gardasil provides immunity to 4 strains, 2 which are the high risk strains that causes 75% of all cervical cancers.
But if voting makes you feel good, by all means, DO IT!
Frankly the whole world deserves hell. God is refraining from that for the time being. But there is less grace shown through Obama than would be through John McCain. And Sarah Palin would be coming up in 2012 — McCain was old enough that he only planned to serve one term.
The only time a completely meritorious person will have the government on his shoulders, it won’t happen through a vote.
That was almost 5 years ago.
More recently:
July 2011 - A Vaccine May Shield Boys Too Until recently, Gardasil was a girls-only proposition. Approved for young women ages 9 to 26, the vaccine promised a great benefit: protection against four strains of sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), including two that can lead to cancer of the cervix, vagina and vulva.
Yet the vaccine has been a tough sell. It requires three shots, often painful, over the course of seven months. So far, only one in four teenage girls younger than 18 have completed all three shots.
Now, in the wake of new research suggesting that the vaccine protects against other cancers, Gardasil is increasingly marketed as an important vaccine for boys, too. The Food and Drug Administration has approved it for young men ages 9 to 26, expanding the list of indications just last December. ....."
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