Letters to the Editor
AncientAssyrian
Published Letters: 753 Editor's Choice: 54
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Mandatory Vaccines...Why Not the Pneumonia Vaccine? Why Not the Meningitis Vaccine?
[Read the article: Texas governor orders mandatory HPV vaccination]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Had enough wrote: "...the efficacy and dangers are an absolute fact which can be determined, and the likelihood of such HAS been determined."
THIS is the crux of a problem with your argument.
You seem to believe that if Merck says something is an absolute fact, then it is so.
Do you really want to say that what this company says is absolute fact?
Why should anyone be willing to suspend any and all all disbelief to accept, without question, that Merck and the FDA are telling you the absolute truth, holding nothing back, fudging no figures, cooking no statistics?
Is Merck telling us the total truth about the vaccine? Does Merck deserve our trust and our faith that they are telling us and the FDA the truth?
Are you willing to stake the future health of America's young women on it?
When they're pointing out increased risks of autoimmune-type illnesses, given that autoimmune disease can take a long time to develop, are we looking at an epidemic in 20 years of rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmne illness among girls who got Gardisil?
They haven't tested it long enough to know, and only time will tell, right?
Some of us believe that it's naive, to say the least, to accept as absolute fact the information provided by a drug company that has BILLIONS of dollars a year to gain, and a track record of skirting the truth when it comes to a profitable drug in their recent history, in an industry where safety statistics and clinical trials are frequently exposed for having been manipulated in favor of the manufacturer, and where the FDA is also subject to financial pressure of major drugmakers.
And it seems especially naive when the product in question seems to be being marketed and pushed excessively, despite the condition not being epidemic, urgent, especially virulent, or particularly rampant.
If the often fatal and infectious mega-flu they worry about was finally on its way, and this vaccine promised even partial protection, I'd be understanding legislative overeagerness to pass mandatory vaccination plans, and frankly, I'd be first in line to get my vaccination, and have my children vaccinated too.
But here you have a vaccine that prevents only certain strains of a somewhat rare and usually benign virus, that only occasionally causes an even rarer cancer, a cancer that is in fact on the decline except in several at-risk populations, and a cancer that is avoidable with preventative gynecological checkupst that women are NOT getting, and will still NOT be getting even after millions of dollars are spent on just this vaccine. And it's a VERY expensive vaccine -- hundreds of dollars, as compared to just several dollars for a flu or pneumonia vaccine.
And you have a company that stands to make $2 billion dollars a year selling this vaccine.
And you have legislators falling over each other to enact mandatory vaccination programs.
And again, the question is, why THIS vaccine, when there are no mandatory pneumonia vaccination programs? A mandatory Pneumovax program would be WAY cheaper, and save four times as many people from death when compared to the HPV vaccine. And those people would be saved in the next year, not 10, 20 or 30 years from now, like the HPV vaccine.
Or if we want to focus on younger peoiple, what about the Meningococcal vaccines against meningitis? This vaccine protects more than 90 percent of those who get the vaccine against 4 types of meningococcal disease, including 2 of the 3 types most common in the United States. The incidence rate of meningitis is approximately 1 in 10,879 or 0.01%, or 25,000 people in the US. The fatality is as high as one in four. This vaccine costs less than $100. Why is THIS vaccine not being rushed into legislation as mandatory for all school age children and college students?
These are questions that cannot be answered.
But they raise the index of suspicion.
Why THIS vaccine, and not these other vaccines that stand to benefit more people, more quickly, or far less expensively?
Ultimately, why should we blindly trust Merck to be putting the public good above its profit motivation, when the company has been shown to at times do otherwise?
Why should we blindly trust the FDA officials who approve drugs to be putting the public good above its profit motivation, when the FDA has been shown to at times do otherwise?
Whether or not this vaccine is the greatest thing and will be utterly safe until kingdom come or not, the fact that there is a rush to make it mandatory makes me suspicious, and I believe rightfully so, especially when looked at in the context of other vaccines.
This vaccine should not be mandatory, and frankly, I believe there should be much more investigation into Merck's studies, the FDA approval, and a look at why this particular vaccine is being made mandatory when other vaccines are not.
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Molly was a Veritable Nostradamus
[Read the article: Molly Ivins: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She knew that Shrub was going to be a disaster, because he had so mangled everything else he'd touched before in his various incarnations in Texas. She called it years ago, and she always knew what Shrub was going to wreak on America.
"If you think his daddy had trouble with 'the vision thing,' wait'll you meet this one," she said about Shrub, back in 1999.
I'm beside myself that Molly is gone.
In fact, as Molly herself might have said,
"I'm beside myself, and not a pretty couple!!"
Molly, I hope you're putting your new incarnation to good use hauntin the Shrub from dusk till dawn!!
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Graduates of the Dick Cheney School of Driving...
[Read the article: Iraqi road rules]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]what a bunch of ***holes...