$5,000 contribution in 2006 was just one in a series of donations, along with expanded lobbying from Merck in Texas

http://washingtonindependent.com/111559/perry-understates-mercks-campaign-don...

Key California legislators passing an anti-parent bill grabbed campaign financing from the gigantic Merck conglomerate, a CalWatchDog.com investigation revealed. The legislation is AB 499 by Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. In the bill’s language, it “authorizes a minor, who is 12 years of age or older, to consent to medical care related to the prevention of a sexually transmitted disease.”

Current law allows such care only with a parent’s permission. AB 499 passed both houses of the Legislature and awaits a decision by Gov. Jerry Brown.

AB 499 commonly is called the “Gardasil Bill” because the major drug to be administered to 12-year-old girls — without their parents’ consent — is Gardasil, manufactured by Merck. According to Merck’s Gardasil Web site:

GARDASIL is the only human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine that helps protect against 4 types of HPV. In girls and young women ages 9 to 26, GARDASIL helps protect against 2 types of HPV that cause about 75% of cervical cancer cases, and 2 more types that cause 90% of genital warts cases. In boys and young men ages 9 to 26, GARDASIL helps protect against 90% of genital warts cases.

GARDASIL also helps protect girls and young women ages 9 to 26 against 70% of vaginal cancer cases and up to 50% of vulvar cancer cases.

But the drug is not without risk. The Web site itself cautions:

The side effects include pain, swelling, itching, bruising, and redness at the injection site, headache, fever, nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and fainting. Fainting can happen after getting GARDASIL. Sometimes people who faint can fall and hurt themselves. For this reason, your health care professional may ask you to sit or lie down for 15 minutes after you get GARDASIL. Some people who faint might shake or become stiff. This may require evaluation or treatment by your health care professional.

So, your lovely little girl comes home from school, faints, shakes and becomes stiff. And you have no idea why.

Merck Contributions

I cross-matched the votes for AB 499 in the Legislature with Merck Corporate PAC Contributions in 2010 and came up with this list:

Senate:

Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles, $2,000
Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, $2,500
Elaine Alquist, D-San Jose, $1,000
Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, $1,500
Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista, $3,500
Alex Padilla, D-San Fernando Valley, $300
Curren Price, D-Los Angeles, $1,700
Roderick D. Wright, D-Inglewood, $1,500
Lois Wolk, D-Vacaville, $2,000
Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, $1,500

Assembly:

Ben Hueso, D-Chula Vista, $1,000
Bob Blumenfield, D-Van Nuys, $1,500
V. Manuel Perez, D-Indio, $1,500
Richard Pan, D-East Sacramento, $1,000
Bill Monning, D-Santa Cruz, $1,500
Felipe Fuentes, D-Arleta, $1,500
Holly J. Mitchell, D-Culver City, $2,500
Speaker John A. Perez, D-Los Angeles, $1,500
Ricardo Lara, D-South Gate, $1,000
Mary Hayashi, D-Hayward, $1,500
Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, $1,000
Nancy Skinner, D-Oakland, $2,500
Jose Solorio, D-Santa Ana, $1,500
Steven Bradford, D-Inglewood, $1,500
Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, $1,000

Total that Merck donated to legislators voting yea on AB 499: $39,500

True, some Merck money went to those who voted against the bill. But an overwhelming amount went to those who backed it. For Merck, which stands to make tens of millions of dollars off the bill, it was an investment that paid off big time.

Who Pays?

The bill’s fiscal analysis is unclear. “The bill says parents are not financially liable, so taxpayers will have to pay for it,” Paulo Sibaja, director of legislation at the Capitol Resource Institute, told me. “We’re still trying to calculate the cost. But the cost will be 50 percent from the state, 50 percent from the federal government.”

He said there be other consequences, such as “who will be legally liable for medical liability, the state or the parents? The bill undermines the parents, who are totally out of the decision affecting their child.”

Texas’ Experiment

A similar program was imposed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2007, then repealed by the Texas Legislature later that year. Perry, currently the Republican front runner for the 2012 presidential race, still defends his decision. Before his action, he received a $6,000 campaign donation from Merck.

And Merck, according to Wikipedia, hired “former Perry Chief of Staff Mike Toomey to handle its Texas lobbying work” and Perry’s “current chief of staff’s mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi [as] state director for Women in Government”.^[106][109]

Reported USA Today in 2007:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is so enthusiastic about Gardasil that a week ago, he ordered all girls in the state to be immunized before entering sixth grade, as of September 2008. (Parents can opt out for religious and other reasons.) Prompted in part by a vigorous lobbying campaign by Merck, which stands to earn billions of dollars if the vaccine is required, legislators in 23 other states and the District of Columbia have proposed mandating vaccination against HPV for girls as young as 11.

In California, the Gardasil injection — or other injection — is not mandatory. But neither is there a religious opt-out because parents just won’t know what’s happening to their precious child. Only government will.

Dead Girls

A year ago, the Washington Examiner reported:

Documents from the Food & Drug Administration obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Gardasil, a cervical cancer vaccine manufactured by Merck that FDA officials fast-tracked for approval in 2006, may not be not as safe as its industry and government backers assured the public it was.

FDA records show that 16 new deaths (including four suicides) and 3,589 “adverse reactions” tied to Gardasil were reported in the 16 months between May 2009 and September 2010. The adverse reactions included 213 cases of permanent disability. The FDA also received 25 reports of paralyzing Guillian Barre Syndrome in young girls and women who had received the vaccine.

Here’s a horror story in the Judicial Watch report:

One mother of a 13-year old girl who died 37 days after receiving the vaccination noted in a report: “I first declined getting her the vaccination but her doctor ensured me that it was safe…” After her daughter complained of a severe headache, no feeling in her foot and a tingling feeling in her leg, a doctor’s appointment was set for October 23, 2009. “My daughter never made it to Oct[ober] 23rd, which is also her birthday,” the mother noted. “She passed on Oct[ober] 17th, I found her cold unresponsive in her room at 7 am….”

Because there will be no parental notification in California, girls could start dropping dead and their grieving parents won’t even know why.

http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/09/06/merck-funded-anti-parent-bill/

Texas Governor Rick Perry received at least $23,500 in campaign contributions from drug-maker Merck & Co., including $5,000 in 2006, the year before he ordered girls throughout the state to take a new Merck vaccine.

The total is greater than the $5,000 that Perry, seeking the Republican presidential nomination, acknowledged receiving from the company during a debate last night in Florida.

The drug-maker also has donated about $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association, a group which Perry chaired twice and has been among his most generous campaign donors.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-13/perry-s-merck-donations-greater-than...

As the Republican presidential field continues to attack Texas Gov. Rick Perry's executive order mandating the HPV vaccine for young girls, health advocates are growing worried that the vaccine itself is being stigmatized.

In the two most recent presidential debates, Perry has had to repeatedly explain and defend the executive order, which he says he signed in order to help prevent girls from developing cervical cancer as a result of the sexually transmitted virus. But his fellow Republican candidates have seized the opportunity to attack him over the issue, at times using some alarming and misleading rhetoric about the vaccine.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) blasted Perry for the vaccine mandate on Monday, calling it a "government injection" of a "potentially dangerous drug." Then Tuesday morning, she insinuated to NBC's "Today Show" that the vaccine can cause mental retardation.

"I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate," Bachmann said. "She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter."

Santorum also painted an alarming picture of the vaccine mandate during Monday night's debate, describing it as "having little girls inoculated at the force and compulsion of the government."

Health care advocates are worried that all the negative rhetoric could cause the public to sour on the HPV vaccine itself, which has been proven to dramatically reduce the risk of contracting the particular strains of the virus that cause cervical cancer.

"The HPV vaccine has been shown to be safe and well-tolerated based on multiple medical reports that have been submitted through government databases," Dr. Renata Arrington-Sanders, a professor at Johns Hopkins University medical school, told HuffPost. "It's unfortunate that this particular vaccine is surrounded by a lot of controversy just because it's been labeled as an STD-prevention vaccine. We have similar vaccines, such as one for hepatitis B, that are also used in a mandated approach and have shown very successful rates with prevention."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cervical cancer is the second leading cancer killer of women in the world. Almost 70 percent of cervical cancer cases and 90 percent of cases of genital warts are linked to the four strains of HPV that can be prevented with Merck's Gardasil vaccine or GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix.

The CDC recommends that girls receive the vaccine at the age of 11 or 12, in order to increase the likelihood that they will be vaccinated before having sexua| contact. It consists of a series of three injections over a six-month period. Similarly, the hepatitis B vaccine is a 3-shot series that prevents a disease that can be transmitted through blood and sexua| fluids. It is is administered at birth, or within a 2 month time frame, and in most states it's required for entrance into school system.

Perry's 2007 executive order, which was quickly overturned by the state legislature, would have required all sixth grade girls in the state to receive the vaccine unless their parents opted out.

While Perry has taken a heaping of political criticism for his decision, few have mentioned the fact that Virginia -- which is currently run by a Republican governor -- has a nearly identical law on the books that the state legislature declined to overturn earlier this year.

"I think for decades we have hoped for a vaccine against cancer, and this is the first time we have that situation," said state Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple (D), who voted to uphold the vaccine mandate in Virginia. "Im satisfied with the Virginia system, by which parents can opt out easily if they choose to."

The Texas law would not have been a pure mandate either, as Perry noted in Monday night's debate. As in Virginia, parents would not have been required to have their daughters vaccinated. The law would have just made the vaccine available and affordable to all girls, insured and uninsured, through the state vaccination program.

"Given the high cost of the vaccine, it's critical to make sure it's accessible for the uninsured," said Jessica Honke, policy director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia. "If the immunization wasn't required for girls entering sixth grade, there would be no incentive for the health department to make it available and accessible."

According to the Virginia Department of Health, over 8,000 girls have accessed the HPV vaccine through the state vaccination program in the four years since the law was enacted.

To be clear, there are legitimate political concerns that surround what Rick Perry did. His closest advisor works at Merck, the company that makes the Gardasil vaccine -- and his campaign has received more than $30,000 from the pharmaceutical giant since 2000. Further, Perry circumvented the state legislature to get the mandate on the books. Given that he has frequently castigated government interference in people's lives, Perry's decision to intervene in the health care decisions parents make for their children seems incongruous to many conservatives.

That said, the fact that virtually all the political discussion around this particular issue has focused on the role he played in mandating the vaccine as opposed to the merits of the policy underscores the flaws in the electoral system, some supporters of the vaccine observe.

"Here is an opportunity for society to protect young girls from developing cancer in their future," said Whipple. "I think there is a portion of the GOP that is very opposed to mandates of any sort, and it extends to things like this that are protective of women's health."

Honke worries that a discussion of the actual merits of the vaccine, its safety statistics and the economic benefits of preventing cancer as opposed to treating it down the road has gotten lost in the mad rush to score campaign points.

"This is not a political issue -- it's a public safety issue," Honke said. "It comes down to the fact that the HPV vaccination is the best way to decrease the number of young men and women who would otherwise get the HPV disease."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/rick-perry-hpv-vaccine_n_961159.html

Gardasil may have played a role in two fatal cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, according to researchers from the ALS Center at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.  According to WebMD, the researchers looking into the cases can't confirm a connection, but are hoping that by raising awareness, they will learn of any other incidents of ALS that have followed Gardasil vaccination.

Gardasil prevents four strains of HPV, two of which cause 70 percent of all cervical cancers. The other two HPV strains are responsible for about 90 percent of genital warts. However, Gardasil has been the subject of controversy ever since it was approved in 2006. As of June 2009, 15 million girls had received Gardasil, with more than 14,000 recipients reporting adverse reactions. The complaints included reports of dizziness numbness, and blood clots. Health regulators are also looking at 43 reports of fatalities that occurred following Gardasil administration.

http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/17144