10 Reasons Why HPV Vaccine is ‘Murky’ Issue! (Part One)

10 Reasons Why HPV Vaccine is ‘Murky’ Issue! (Part Two)

The word “cancer” triggers emotions ranging from fear to empathy to panic. But we cannot let our emotions cause us to spend money or create mandates without careful research. We need to evaluate claims of drugmakers, lobbyists and lawmakers when they seek money for cancer prevention efforts.

Here are 10 reasons why we are skeptical about efforts to mandate for school girls the HPV vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus.

10. Merck and Co. (the manufacturer of the vaccine) has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.

9. Sen. Connie Lawson, the General Assembly’s No. 1 advocate for the vaccine, is a member of Women in Government.

8. A top official from Merck’s vaccine division sits on Women in Government’s business council.

7. Women in Government President Susan Crosby, a former Indiana state legislator, said the vaccine could “eliminate a cancer.” Yet Gardasil, is NOT a cancer vaccine. It is a vaccine for a virus; specifically for four of the more than 100 types of HPV, two of which cause 70 percent of cervical cancer in women, and two that cause 90 percent of genital warts.

6. Merck could generate billions in sales if Gardasil — at $360 for the three-shot regimen — were made mandatory across the country. Depending on how many girls are Medicaid-eligible in each state, much of that money could come from Medicaid dollars — even if the vaccine is recommended, not mandated.

5. The top 10 leading killers of women in the U.S. are heart disease, stroke, lung cancer (more than 70,000 deaths of women per year), respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, diabetes, accidents, flu/pneumonia and colon cancer. About 3,700 U.S. women die of cervical cancer each year; that is about 1/8th of the number of women who die from colon cancer, the No. 10 killer of U.S. women.

4. Because the vaccine was only studied for 3 1/2 years, the long-term effectiveness and safety of this vaccine has yet to be determined. It took years for thalidomide and Vioxx (also a Merck product) to demonstrate their most negative side effects.

3. Pap smears have dramatically reduced cervical cancer deaths in the U.S. But Gardasil does not protect against all cancers of the cervix. If the number of Pap smears go down because of women’s false sense of security, the number of cervical cancer deaths could go UP!

2. Scarce health care dollars should be spent in the most effective way possible. We believe an investment of billions could be better spent in efforts to battle the top 10 killers of women. (See No. 6 and No. 5.)

1. With an issue as “murky” as this, our little girls should not be guinea pigs.

Note: for more HPV-related articles go to: http://www.fwdailynews.com/online_features/hpv_vaccine

©2007 GRACE HOUSHOLDER. See www.fwfamily.com for more articles regarding your family's health.

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Part Two: HPV -- Public health vs. private wealth

Why mandate a new, expensive vaccine that has not been thoroughly tested?

One reason only: Money. Millions, potentially billions of dollars of new revenue for the maker of the vaccine.

Through a multi-million dollar marketing campaign that includes television advertising aimed at young girls and generous donations to legislators through Women in Government, Merck and Co. is trying to create a demand and a legal mandate for its new vaccine, Gardasil.

Gardasil protects against some of the forms of human papillomavirus (HPV) which sometimes, over a period of years, can lead to cervical cancer. However, with regular pap tests cervical cancer can almost always be caught when it is curable. And even Merck emphasizes that vaccinated women must continue to get pap tests because Gardasil does not prevent all the problems and cancers that pap tests detect. Cervical cancer is a leading cause of death only in nations without regular pap test screening. Therefore, Gardasil seems like a good vaccine for women in Third World countries who don’t get pap tests.

One brave researcher — Dr. Diane Harper — spoke up. She believes Gardasil, the vaccine that she helped develop, is a good vaccine when it is administered correctly. She deplores the way it is being marketed. And she believes mandating it is “foolish.”

After speaking out through our special assignment editor Cindy Bevington, Harper faced a professional backlash.

But now the Journal of the American Medical Association is vindicating every word that Harper shared with the world through Bevington’s reportage.

Harper told Bevington in March it is unknown how soon a booster would be needed. Maybe the vaccine would wear off before the girl became sexually active. And Harper said she feared that Merck’s marketing of Gardasil as a cancer-prevention vaccine might cause some women to cut back on pap smears. Without regular pap smears even women who have had Gardasil stand a risk of developing cervical cancer.

The new JAMA article states:

• Given that the overall prevalence of HPV types associated with cervical cancer is relatively low (3.4 percent) and that the long-term effects of the vaccine are unknown, it is unwise to require a young girl with a very low lifetime risk of cervical cancer to be vaccinated without her assent and her parents’ consent.

• If the vaccine were mandatory and found to cause harm how would victims be compensated?

• Consider the information a clinician can honestly provide to a 12-year-old girl to obtain her assent: “The three injections will probably protect you from an infection that you can only get from sexual contact, but research has not shown how long the protection will last or whether it might have bad effects on your health.”

Most importantly, the authors of the JAMA article lambaste Merck for its lobbying effort to make Gardasil mandatory. “Since the manufacturer stands to profit from widespread vaccine administration, it is inappropriate for the company to finance efforts to persuade states and public officials to make HPV vaccinations mandatory, particularly so soon after the product was licensed. Private wealth should never trump public health.”

Once again we thank Harper for her brave stand... a stand which jeopardized funding for her research. She has saved our nation millions of dollars. And possibly saved lives.

We hope our legislators who have benefited from the drug companies’ donations to Women in Government will realize how Merck manipulated them.

Putting private wealth ahead of public health will cause our healthcare costs to continue to soar — and our confidence in public institutions and drug manufacturers to continue to plummet.

We are close to hitting rock bottom.

©2007 Grace Householder

GRACE HOUSHOLDER is the editor of Greater Fort Wayne Family Magazine www.fwfamily.com and has been a newspaper journalist for more than ten years. She is the mom of five awesome kids.