So what was the rush to treat little girls like lab rats?

Posted on August 21, 2008

Recall the dust-up in 2006 and 2007 when more than 20 states had drafted legislation to make HPV mandatory for school girls as young as 9? Merck eventually suspended its lobbying efforts because it wasn’t going to be able to unload its stock at the expense of the taxpayer, after all.

Many of the big elephants of the Old/Left Media shouted in their editorial echo chambers that HPV vaccines must be administered right now to every girl (put those Polly Pockets down sweetie, it’s time to talk about genital warts because Big Brother has mandated it). One even declared with complete certainty that “Gardasil prevents cervical cancer.” Yes, “the undisputed effectiveness of the vaccine.”

Remember how those who opposed forced vaccinations for this sexually-transmitted disease were attacked as dominionists, accused of wanting women to get cancer (Of course some on the Left don’t think it’s a big deal if girls die from the vaccine — Check under “Talking Points”), loving cancer, concocting a bogeyman, pushing a “religious message,” yackity, yack, yack. After all, “the vaccine appears to be 100 percent effective at protecting against the most prevalent viruses that cause cervical cancer.” It is “miraculous.” Parents’ rights became “so-called parents’ rights.

Well, now we have this.

New York Times: Researchers Question Wide Use of HPV Vaccines

Two vaccines against cervical cancer are being widely used without sufficient evidence about whether they are worth their high cost or even whether they will effectively stop women from getting the disease, two articles in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine conclude.

Both vaccines target the human papillomavirus, a common sexually transmitted virus that usually causes no symptoms and is cleared by the immune system, but which can in very rare cases become chronic and cause cervical cancer.

The two vaccines, Gardasil by Merck Sharp & Dohme and Cervarix by GlaxoSmithKline, target two strains of the virus that together cause an estimated 70 percent of cervical cancers. Gardasil also prevents infection with two other strains that cause some proportion of genital warts. Both vaccines have become quick best sellers since they were licensed two years ago in the United States and Europe, given to tens of millions of girls and women.

“Despite great expectations and promising results of clinical trials, we still lack sufficient evidence of an effective vaccine against cervical cancer,” Dr. Charlotte J. Haug, editor of The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association, wrote in an editorial in Thursday’s issue of The New England Journal. “With so many essential questions still unanswered, there is good reason to be cautious.”

In her article, Dr. Haug points out the vaccines have been studied for a relatively short period — both were licensed in 2006 and have been studied in clinical trails for at most six and a half years. Researchers have not yet demonstrated how long the immunity will last, or whether eliminating some strains of cancer-causing virus will decrease the body’s natural immunity to other strains.

More to the point, because cervical cancer develops only after years of chronic infection with HPV, Dr. Haug said there was not yet absolute proof that protection against these two strains of the virus would ultimately reduce rates of cervical cancer — although in theory it should do so.

Guess it is not as “necessary” to stomp parental rights as the very same New York Times claimed just last year. In the context of all the accusations leveled against those with legitimate concerns about parental rights, the safety of the vaccine and the message sent to young girls by making these vaccines compulsory, we might ask why the Left was so unified in supporting this imposition on American parents and little girls with so few facts about what they were advocating.

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