My Happy Medium

Ran into a pretty good article about Gardasil, the new HPV vaccine from Merck; and its critics. (Just a fair warning, The Nation is quite liberal so be aware of any biases)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070326/houppert

The part I found most interesting is the unlikely alliance between hard line abstinence Christian fundies with anti-corporate consumer rights activists. In particular, I found it funny that a right wing Rep Governor of Texas Rick Perry in an act of completely dumbfounding his Christian fundie constituents actually made a f***ing logical argument to bring this vaccine to women:

“While I understand the concerns expressed by some, I stand firmly on the side of protecting life. The HPV vaccine does not promote sex, it protects women’s health.” -Gov. of Texas Rick Perry

Couldn’t have said it better Rick, too bad your motives were less than noble:

The press discovered Perry’s ties to Merck: Not only did his former chief of staff now work as a lobbyist for Merck but the Governor had accepted $6,000 in campaign contributions from Merck’s political action committee.

Now I can’t blame Merck for trying to make money off of their product, but this is just a bit underhanded:

A nonprofit called Women in Government, comprising female state legislators, has been behind the push to make the vaccine compulsory…turns out Merck–whoops!–was a big WIG donor.

An interesting article, and made me realize this was a lot more complicated than I originally thought. I am all for the vaccine, but if rolling out the vaccine now means Merck will corner the market and start price gouging people then I’d have to say I am against rolling it out now. This quote sums it up best:

“Because Merck itself has pushed so hard to make the vaccine mandatory, there’s a bit of skepticism about industry’s motives.”

So when will this vaccine come to Canada?

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