Merck suspends lobbying for vaccination

This moved on the AP financial wire yesterday afternoon:


TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Merck & Co. is immediately suspending its lobbying campaign to persuade state legislatures to mandate that adolescent girls get the company’s new vaccine against cervical cancer as a requirement for school attendance, the company said late Tuesday.

The drugmaker had been criticized by parents and doctors’ groups for quietly funding the campaign via a third party to require 11- and 12-year-old girls get the three-dose vaccine in order to attend school.

Some had objected because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted disease, human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer. Vaccines mandated for school attendance usually are for diseases easily spread through casual contact.

Oddly, I could find no reference to this on the Merck Web site. You can read more here and here if you wish.

What did Merck think would happen when word got out that it was mounting an aggressive lobbying campaign to require vaccinations in all 50 states? Maybe the folks really thought they had a good product that needed to be forced on people, but did they not understand the backlash that would develop? This is of those ideas that looks so good on the surface but so bad when you start looking into it.

For one more link, try this one from Bernadine Healy. According to her bio, she is past Director of the National Institutes of Health, where she started the Women's Health Initiative. She is currently a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.