Researcher blasts HPV vaccine marketing

[mhatrw]

http://www.kpcnews.com/articles/2007/03/14/online_features/hpv_vaccine/hpv01.txt

A lead researcher who spent 20 years developing the vaccine for humanpapilloma virus says the HPV vaccine is not for younger girls, and that it is "silly" for states to be mandating it for them.

Not only that, she says it's not been tested for effectiveness in younger girls, and administering the vaccine to girls as young as 9 may not even protect them at all. And, in the worst-case scenario, instead of serving to reduce the numbers of cervical cancers within 25 years, such a vaccination crusade actually could cause the numbers to go up.

"Giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment," said Diane M. Harper, who is a scientist, physician, professor and the director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire.

"It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11- to 12-year-old girls There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue."

[ThomCat]

1. Ha! And so many people here were saying that this should

be mandated, and that it was ridiculous not to get a daughter vaccinated.

[mzmolly]

23. Yep, TC. Many here were called ridiculous, neglectful, selfish, anit-science, right wing etc....

Tsk tsk. I wonder how many apologies we'll get? ;)

[mzmolly]

27. .

:kick:

[rinsd]

29. Many here are ridiculous, anti-science and post rw BS

Not all certainly. Though this thread has 2 of the worst offenders.

[mzmolly]

31. Given I quote "science" and or "scientists" when I argue a point,

I'll assume I'm an "offender."

What about the OP, any comments on the concerns?

[rinsd]

33. Not you, Molly

We disagree on this issue but you haven't been posting RW BS.

[mzmolly]

34. Okey dokey then.

:hi:

[still_one]

2. Let me ask you if you are against the use of the vaccine in any age group?

or just 11 to 12 year olds?

I am not referring to making mandating it, which I am against, I am just asking if you are against the vaccine itself?

[mhatrw]

6. If you are informed, over 15 and you want it -- I'm all for it.

Merck should provide it on a sliding scale to any low income people who want. That is, if Merck actually has any concern for women's health.

[still_one]

9. we are on the same page

Actually, the government should subsidise it for low income people who want it. There will be more companies coming out with an HPV vaccine in the coming months to years, so competition should cause the price to come down

For those that have health insurance, not all of them will cover it, and I think that is wrong, of course I am for a national healthcare plan for everyone, but that is another discussion

[mhatrw]

10. We are on the same page here as well.

I was just taking a shot at Big Pharma that would be totally gratuitous if we had universal healthcare.

[ShortnFiery]

3. I knew that something was wrong ... it was touted as "a panacea"

I wonder what people are heavily invested in this vaccine ... sort of like Rummy is making a killing in his investment in Tami-Flu. :eyes:

Check this out!

"All of her trials have been with subjects ages 15 to 25. In her own practice, Harper believes the ideal way of administering the new vaccine is to offer it to women ages 18 and up. At the time of their first inoculation, they should be tested for the presence of HPV in their system."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Hmm, from another source...

"So, why give a child as young as nine a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease? Dr. Diane Harper conducted clinical trials at Dartmouth Medical Center.

"This is a really huge deal," said Dr. Diane Harper, HPV Researcher, Dartmouth Medical Center. "This vaccine has the potential of saving so many women's lives in the future as it's applied to women not yet infected with HPV."

Dr. Harper says the vaccine is most effective in females before they're sexually active. She and other doctors are hoping Gardisil will open the door for parents to talk to their daughters about the birds and the bees. "

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=health&id=4788464

[ShortnFiery]

5. If it takes prematurely getting this shot and increasing the risk of

immune systemic side effects in order to talk "birds and bees" with daughter, then, I submit that one is not a good parent to begin with. :thumbsdown:

This was NOT tested with young girls. The interactions with other immunizations that they have at young ages 9-11 can greatly increase the chance of side effects. :(

So far more than 40 cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome - a dangerous immune disorder that causes tingling, numbness and even paralysis of the muscles have been reported in girls who have received the HPV vaccine in combination with the meningitis vaccine. Scientists already know that sometimes a vaccine can trigger the syndrome in a subject. "With the HPV vaccine, it is a small number but higher than is expected, and we don't know if it's the combination of the two, or the meningitis alone," Harper said.

[mhatrw]

7. So, are you disputing the OP article based on a cherry picked quote

that doesn't logically conflict with it?

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070213/LIFE11/702130337/1006/LIFE

Dartmouth doctor Diane Harper, an investigator in clinical trials of Gardasil and Glaxo's not-yet-approved HPV vaccine, says she worries that mandating immunization will create a false sense of security that may cause women to skip Pap smears. "The vaccine is not a silver bullet, is not a shield against cancer."

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=health&id=5076707

But previous studies have shown that some girls even younger than 14 are infected with HPV. Dr. Diane Harper, a gynecologist at Dartmouth Medical School reports, "There is no one age at which all females are not infected with HPV."

And in the current study, at least one of the four HPV types in the vaccine was detected in 6.2 percent of females ages 14 to 19 years.

Vaccine Is No Substitute for Pap Smear

Harper says vaccination against HPV does not provide 100 percent protection against cervical cancer, and women still need to have regular Pap smears as recommended by their doctor to allow for early detection of changes in the cervix. "Vaccination is not a substitute or a replacement for Pap testing," she says. "Vaccination without Pap testing will lead to an increase in cervical cancers in the U.S."

Dr. Steven Goldstein, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the New York University School of Medicine, agrees. "The Pap smear is the greatest triumph epidemiologically in modern medicine, and this whole HPV vaccine threatens to undermine that."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. I'm disputing the article based on...

their own cherry picked quotes, argument from authority, strawmen, and all around bullshit.

The vaccine's been approved and recommended for girls 9 and up.

[mhatrw]

11. The article is filled with at least 10 DIRECT quotations.

"Giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment. It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11- to 12-year-old girls. There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue."

Do you dispute that this is a direct quote from Dr. Harper?

"This vaccine should not be mandated for 11-year-old girls. It's not been tested in little girls for efficacy. At 11, these girls don't get cervical cancer - they won't know for 25 years if they will get cervical cancer. Also, the public needs to know that with vainated women and women who still get Pap smears (which test for abnormal cells that can lead to cancer), some of them will still get cervical cancer."

Do you dispute that Dr. Harper said this as well?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. And it contradicts with other things she's said.

:shrug:

[mhatrw]

17. It doesn't contradict anything she said. She thinks it's a good vaccine.

She is just against mandating it for preteens and the way it is being marketed.

More direct quotes from Dr. Harper:

http://www.kpcnews.com/articles/2007/03/14/features/columnists/cindy_bevington/doc45f7fd0f5a229535548238.txt

“I think the coziness they have with the lobbyists (for this vaccine) has been what’s affecting them to push for the mandates. The Merck employee who is the lobbyist on this WIG panel is very, very good at her job. What these women are hearing is the excitement of, ‘We have a vaccine, and it’s effective.’

“And when you get people excited about something like that, the first thing they think is, ‘Well, let’s get rid of (cervical cancer).’ This lobbyist has been able to raise the excitement and initiatives of these legislators to do what they’re doing. Now their motions are already filed, and if they back out now, they as legislators are going to look really silly if they say, ‘This isn’t what should be,’ because there has to be some face-saving value for them. So they’re just continuing on.” ...

“They have done what they believed was right,” Harper said. “They just didn’t realize the advantage was to Merck’s benefit, not little girls’.”

[rinsd]

30. But you have claimed this vaccine is dangerous.

So were you full of shit the whole time or is Dr. Harper only right when she's backing you up?

[mhatrw]

39. I have claimed, just like Dr. Harper, that we don't have enough evidence

about this vaccine's potential long term negative effects especially when combined with the vaccine load we already recommend for preteens.

I agree with everything Dr. Harper said and I have been endeavoring to make many of the exact same points that she did in this article.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

18. make Merck rich while using our daughters as guinea pigs

Obey the Big Pharmaceutical Companies.

Fall for the hype.

Let them guilt you into experimenting on an entire generation
of daughters.

Obey Rick Perry and all the nice Pharma paid politicians.

[mzmolly]

24. Note Ms. Harper refers to "women?" She's obviously been taken out of context to suit

Merck.

[Morgana LaFey]

25. Misuse of the quote from her, simple as that

Also, what she's quoted as saying here in no way contradicts her comments in the OP.

[Richard Steele]

12. Posted by the guy who claims to "teach at a medical school" & says STDs "aren't infectious"...

There are some fine arguements to be made about this.
YOU are hardly the one to make them. You have ZERO credibility.
None. Nada. Zilch.

[mhatrw]

13. Typical "shoot the messenger" nonsense from the pro-Merck crowd.

I am not the one stating the undeniable truth about GARDASIL in the OP. Please shoot Dr. Diane Harper, a scientist and physician who has been working on developing a vaccine for HPV for 20 years.

http://www.kpcnews.com/articles/2007/03/14/features/columnists/cindy_bevington/doc45f7fd0f5a229535548238.txt

A fair question, then, would be what’s the rush to mandate? And, if she’s tried to tell them this isn’t the thing to do, why are they so head-strong in going ahead with the mandates? The answer, Harper believes, lies with drug company lobbyists who fill WIG’s sponsor lists and sit on the organization’s policy-making boards. The HPV vaccine lobbyists are representatives and executives of Merck, Glaxo and Digene, the manufacturer of the test for HPV. All three companies at some point in the past few years have sat on WIG’s Business Council, or are still there. ...

“I think the coziness they have with the lobbyists (for this vaccine) has been what’s affecting them to push for the mandates. The Merck employee who is the lobbyist on this WIG panel is very, very good at her job. What these women are hearing is the excitement of, ‘We have a vaccine, and it’s effective.’

“And when you get people excited about something like that, the first thing they think is, ‘Well, let’s get rid of (cervical cancer).’ This lobbyist has been able to raise the excitement and initiatives of these legislators to do what they’re doing. Now their motions are already filed, and if they back out now, they as legislators are going to look really silly if they say, ‘This isn’t what should be,’ because there has to be some face-saving value for them. So they’re just continuing on.” ...

“They have done what they believed was right,” Harper said. “They just didn’t realize the advantage was to Merck’s benefit, not little girls’.”

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mhatrw]

19. Yes, I am the subject of this debate. I am the issue only here.

:eyes:

This isn't Fox News. Do you really think you are doing anything but exposing your own inadequacies with your transparent "argumentative" sophistry?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

20. thank you for not joining with the Make Merck Rich Quick Group

I am so glad that you are a guy who IS NOT trying to force this
insane vaccine on an entire generation of girls.

ITs insane - this vaccine is way to new to mandate.

There should be NO law that is crafted specifically at the request
of a pharmaceutical company.

[rinsd]

28. And yet she also feels the vaccine is safe and worth it.

Which kind of kills your other BS.

So when was this posted on Schafly's website?

[mzmolly]

32. Here are her words:

"Harper believes the ideal way of administering the new vaccine is to offer it to women ages 18 and up. At the time of their first inoculation, they should be tested for the presence of HPV in their system.

If the test comes back negative, then schedule the follow-up series of the three-part shots. But if it comes back positive?

"Then we don't know squat, because medically we don't know how to respond to that,"

Many of us have stated that the vaccine should be available to adults, that a test for HPV should be administered prior to vaccination, (given FDA concerns I noted in a previous post) and that in the long term we don't really know "squat" about Gardasil.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

36. that makes much more sense

It still would be good to have more open-ness and testing of this
vaccine - so that we know its benefits outweigh the risks to any
age group.

Then it still should be the person's choice.

Merck is in desperate financial straights, as they were prior to VIOXX.

They put everything they had on VIOX, and since it was pretty much
all they had, they weren't willing to admit to problems with the drug.

Now, after many lawsuits and settlements later, they have a new CEO
and still the VIOX lawsuits are piling on.

So, the new salvation for Merck is Gardasil, but they have to beat out
the competitor who also is introducing a gential wart vaccine soon.

Mandating the vaccine further protects Merck from civil and criminal liability,
which would help protect them from VIOX like lawsuits.

[mzmolly]

37. Your first point is why I think the vaccine should be available to "adults."

I agree with your assertions. :hi:

[mhatrw]

40. Stop putting words in her mouth and read what she actually says. n/t

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

41. She says "Giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment,"

Here is more about what the researcher did say, and
a live link where the article is archived:

For months, Harper said, she's been trying to convince major television and print media to listen to her and tell the facts about the usefulness and effectiveness of this vaccine. "But no one will print it," she said.

According to Harper, the facts about the HPV vaccine are:

. It is not a cancer vaccine or cure. It is a prophylactic - preventative -vaccine for a virus that can cause cancer. "Merck has proven it has zero percent effectiveness for curing cancer," Harper said. "But it is a very, very good vaccine that prevents types of HPV responsible for half of the high-grade cervical lesions that cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers. For the U.S. what that means is the vaccine will prevent about half of high-grade precursors of cancer but half will still occur, so hundreds of thousands of women who are vaccinated with Gardasil and get yearly Pap testing will still get a high-grade dysplasia (cell abnormality).

http://www.kpcnews.com/articles/2007/03/14/online_features/hpv_vaccine/hpv01.txt

also at http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/hpv-vaccine-researcher-blasts-marketing.html

[rec_report]

14. K&R. n/t

[mikelgb]

21. yeah I smelled something fishy from the start of the ad campaigns

(pun sort of intended, after the fact)

the ads have gotten bad...

first the play the scare tactic ad:

a CANCER from a VIRUS!?!?!?!?!

almost EVERYBODY gets INFECTED!!!!!!!!!!

then they play the gaurdasil ads a few commercials later...

ask you doctor to shoot you up with our drugs, hell ask for two!

the next step is going to be a guilt-trip ad for men carrying the virus:

DO IT FOR THE ONES YOU LOVE!

it'll have some old guy crying that he gave his wife the virus and now she is DEAD, do you hear men? DEAD!!!! from CANCER!!!!

:eyes:

[mzmolly]

22. "a scientist, physician, professor and the director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research

Group?" Ya don't say? And here I thought it was "anti-science" to speak in rational terms about Gardasil?

All of her trials have been with subjects ages 15 to 25. In her own practice, Harper believes the ideal way of administering the new vaccine is to offer it to women ages 18 and up. At the time of their first inoculation, they should be tested for the presence of HPV in their system.

If the test comes back negative, then schedule the follow-up series of the three-part shots. But if it comes back positive?

"Then we don't know squat, because medically we don't know how to respond to that," Harper said.

Gee she sounds just like one of them "luddite, mislead, right-wing, don't understand the science" DU-ers we keep hearin' about?

:beer:

K and R.

[antigop]

26. Thanks. Keep questioning, mhatrw! n/t

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

35. QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HPV VACCINE TO ANSWER BEFORE IT BECOMES MANDATORY

The blogger "Progressive Review" asks DC City Counsel:
"Why must African people, women, people of color and other marginalized groups of people, our bodies, be made guinea pigs for the benefit and advancement of science?"

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HPV VACCINE TO ANSWER BEFORE IT BECOMES MANDATORY



ASANTEWAA NKRUMAH-TURE - I am not personally advocating against the HPV vaccine; I'm strongly advocating that we all ask questions and demand all of our questions and concerns be addressed to our satisfaction. . . The following questions must be asked:

- Does the vaccine Gardasil prevent all types of cervical cancer? If not, which ones will it prevent? Does the vaccine protect against the most common types of cervical cancer here in the USA? If the leading killer of women in the USA is heart disease and not breast or cervical cancer, why is this vaccine being made "mandatory"?

- New Jersey-based Merck Co. makes this vaccine and its questionable ties to politicians and others has now come to light. For example, Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry received $6,000 from the drug company's political action committee during his re-election campaign. . . Billions of dollars can be made by the drug company; the three required doses cost $360, and of course, the drug company is aggressively pushing for the vaccine to be "mandatory."

- Who is held liable in the case of mild or severe adverse effects or allergic reactions? . . . How many years of study on possible adverse effects has been done and documented?


More here at the link...

http://prorev.com/2007/02/questions-about-hpv-vaccine-to-answer.htm

[cyberpj]

38. I'd like to see the major stockholders names. This reminds me of the Tamiflu push that Rumsfeld

made millions on!

Stock up now... we're all going to have Avian Flu in a year!!!

[mzmolly]

42. Kicking. I think you need a journal mhatrw?

Amazing how little response from the "give Gardasil to toddlers or they'll die" fanatics.

[mzmolly]

43. kick as apparently many "missed" this thread?

:kick: