Wednesday, February 21, 2007

The Mandatory Vaccine

"Close to 4,000 women die of cervical cancer every year, a 10th of them in Texas. The human papillomavirus - which will infect more than half of sexually active people at some point in their lives - is the leading cause of the disease. A new vaccine, Merck's Gardasil, prevents almost all of the strains of HPV responsible for 70 percent of these cancer cases..."

(from this link)

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/nation/16747520.htm

This seems to be a fairly well-balanced, but still pro-vaccine editorial.

I haven't researched the author's figures. However, according to her calculations, there are 400 deaths per year in Texas, from cervical cancer. This vaccine can prevent 70% of them. That comes to 280 cases a year. OK. According to Wikipedia's article about Texas, we have a population (2005) of approximately twenty-three and a half million people (23,500,000 and change)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas#Demographics

I can't find a breakdown of just how many are girls in the age-range Governor Perry wants to vaccinate, but I'm guessing it's multiple millions.

At $360 a pop.

Insurance companies will have to cover it somehow.

Merck gets their money.

280 deaths a year are prevented.

Why is he willing to mandate this, and STILL won't allow proper sex education and distribution of condoms to teens?

I get it. I wonder if Our Governor makes anything from Merck on this deal.

3 comments:

  1. Apparently, someone who used to be a big-wig on Perry's staff is now a lobbyist for Merk. I haven't heard whether or not Perry himself gets anything out of the deal. Maybe he owns stock or something.

    I think this is totally outrageous!

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  2. It sure makes one wonder why the contradiction in actions. The vaccine protects sexually active individuals against cervical cancer, yet why not also fund sex ed and free condoms?

    You'd think the education, access to protection AND the vaccine would go hand in hand.

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  3. People who have lost family members to cancer tend to support this, and there are a lot of them.

    ReplyDelete