Healthy Bytes

People protest – Merck backs down… a little

read time: 808 words, about 4 minutes

Merck announced that it would suspend lobbying states to require girls – as young as 11 – to submit to Gardasil, the HPV “vaccine”. Yes, Merck was actively lobbying States to require girls as young as 9 to buy their product.

Gov. Perry of Texas has already single handedly and against the wishes of the Texas Legislature and folks of Texas made the vaccine mandatory. Somewhere around 20 states are considering it.

What’s the rush, what’s the push?

Let’s exercise our minds a bit…

• HPV – Human Papilloma Virus – is primarily a sexually transmitted virus.
• There are more than 100 types of HPV, 15 are associated with cervical cancer. Gardasil protects against TWO (Types 16 & 18) that are associated with 70% of cervical cancer cases. And also two (Types 6 & 11) that are associated with genital warts.
• Most women clear the virus, but for some women with certain risk factors and weakened immune system, it can lead to infection.
  Chronic infection can – but is not guaranteed to - lead to cervical cancer IF undiagnosed and untreated.
• Death due to cervical cancer dropped 74% between 1955 and 1992. Why?… the pap smear.
• Cervical cancer is slow moving, thus if you regularly get a pap smear, you’ll likely catch any abnormalities early. Survival rate is 92% with early treatment.
• There are estimated to be 3,670 cervical cancer deaths a year.¹ This is in primarily older women (chronic infection, slow moving cancer).

Onto pharmaconomics…

• Gardasil was rushed, er, “fast tracked” by the FDA.
• Clinical trails were with 9 to 26 year olds… there is no study on effectiveness for anyone older.
• Sample size was a MERE 2,000 (1,200 under age 16).
• There were 102 SERIOUS adverse reactions, oh – including 17 deaths.²
• Research shows effectiveness for only 5 years.
• Gardasil came out in June, 2006. Through December, 2006 there were 385 adverse event reports made to Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Additionally, the number of reports per month has increased every month. (Reporting is voluntary and generally only a minority of cases are reported). ³
• Adverse reactions include: numbness and loss of sensation, facial paralysis or Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
• Merck is quoting costs of $360 for the vaccine. This of course does not include the Doctor visit. I’ve read Docs are charging more or not offering it because their reimbursement does not cover their cost.
• Ok, I hippidy hopped over to the 2000 census. Between the ages of 10 and 24 (Gardasil is being recommended for 9-26 year olds), there are 59,711,963 folks. ⁴ I’m going to assume half are female (because I don’t feel like hunting for the exact number). That makes 29,855,982 females. At $360 each… $10,748,153,340. Yup, $10.7 Billion.
  Ohhhh Butttttt, that’s just the U.S. You see because of pap smears, cervical cancer in the US is around 1%. But WORLDWIDE it’s MUCH higher - pap smears aren’t well used in developing countries. (worldwide deaths estimated at 273,500/year; diagnoses 493,000).⁵
• For the quarter ending 31.Dec.2006, Merck had sales of $155 Million for Gardasil alone.⁶
• The estimated number of cervical cancer deaths for 2007 is 3,670 in the US. HPV is associated with 70%… that makes 2,569.
  Gardisil acts against 2 of the 15 types of HPV associated with cervical cancer (13.3%). Therefore, assuming women had been receiving this “vaccine” every 5 years for the past 60 years, that would statistically have prevented 342 deaths. (I say every 5 years, because the vaccine is shown effective for only 5 years. I say 60 years because that would cover women who are currently 70 years old and started receiving the vaccine at age 10).
  Keep in mind that there was a 74% reduction in cervical cancer deaths attributed to pap smears. Oh yea, there aren’t any adverse side effects with pap smears. Oh yea, they don’t cost as much.

OK, let’s chain a few things together…

-> Cervical cancer is largely positively effected by pap smears.
-> Keeping a strong immune system through good nutrition and lifestyle choices dramatically decreases susceptibility to infections of all kinds as well as numerous diseases.
-> The trial sample group for Gardasil was tiny and short term. The REAL “experiment” is happening now with the people voluntarily taking it.
-> There were adverse effects in the trial and there are adverse effects being reported now “in the field”.
-> Whether or not you want (or want your daughter to) become part of Merck’s experiment is your choice. BUT, do inform yourself. I’ve seen the commercial for the product. It exaggerates the situation and then exploits fear.
-> WOMEN: get smeared regularly… maybe we should make pap smears mandatory.

For all those parents and concerned citizens that held up a big red STOP sign – I salute you. It pushed Merck back.

Here are a few more balanced resources:

• National Vaccine Information Center
• Kaiser Network
• National Cancer Institute

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1. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_1X_What_are_the_key_statistics_for_cervical_cancer_8.asp [↩]
2. http://www.909shot.com/PressReleases/pr62706gardasil.htm [↩]
3. http://www.909shot.com/Diseases/HPV/pr022107HPV.htm [↩]
4. http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs.html [↩]
5. http://www.nccc-online.org/ [↩]
6. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7B7B0D6192-6F1F-42F7-8883-5345514BD348%7D&dist=rss [↩]

This entry was posted on Fri, 23.Feb.2007 at 11:29 am and is filed under Health, Rant, Pharmaceuticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.