Don’t strip-mine our daughters

In North Carolina, Sens. Katie Dorsett and Janet Cowell have sponsored a bill that requires schools to distribute to all parents of children in grades 5 through 12 information on vaccines available to prevent cervical cancer. Merck’s Gardasil is the only vaccine addressing cervical cancer on the market.

Corporations exploit natural resources—the earth’s body—to make their profits. (Think strip-mining.) Drug companies exploit another resource—women’s bodies.

Drug maker Merck is capitalizing on women’s susceptibility to cervical cancer. Merck has lobbied state legislators nationwide to make Gardasil mandatory for girls entering sixth grade. Gardasil, one of the most expensive vaccines in history, provides protection against only two of the 19 types of human papillomavirus (HPV) that cause cervical cancer. How long will that protection last? The drug maker doesn’t know.

Merck recently stopped lobbying legislatures in response to objections from parents and medical groups. But the campaign has already made its mark. At least 34 state legislatures are considering bills to require, fund or educate the public about the vaccine.

We think of drug pushers as nasty characters lurking around playgrounds, trying to hook our children on buying their “product.” Do parents and taxpayers want our schools to become drug pushers for Merck?

Merck faces huge losses due to damage done by other drugs it has aggressively marketed: Fosamax, an osteoporosis drug that can cause bone decay, and Vioxx, the painkiller that has been shown to significantly increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Merck’s own clinical trials revealed Vioxx’s potentially lethal effects, yet the company kept selling its product and neglected to warn consumers.

What about vaccination as a mode of drug delivery? Vaccines are subject to contamination. In 2004, for example, the company manufacturing flu vaccine for the U.S. market discovered bacterial contamination in 10 percent of its doses.

Hopefully uncontaminated, Gardasil vaccine protects, for a limited time, against two of the 19 HPV types that cause cervical cancer. It does not protect against any other sexually transmitted disease. Even if a girl has been vaccinated with Gardasil, she needs to protect herself against the remaining types of cervical cancer plus other sexually transmitted diseases by insisting that a boy use a condom. Annual Pap tests are also recommended because even condoms offer only partial protection.

Ensuring that girls are strong and self-validating enough to insist that boys use condoms—that would require some education. Frankly, I’d rather invest in our girls’ strength of character than in bailing out Merck. Strong and self-validating girls know that their bodies are not “resources” for others to exploit. For additional information, see lisasarasohn.com/gardasil.