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Furor on Rush to Require Cervical Cancer Vaccine |
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But a roaring backlash has some health experts worried that the proponents, including the vaccine’s maker, Merck, have pushed too far too fast, potentially undermining eventual prospects for the broadest possible immunization.
Groups wary of drug industry motives find themselves on the same side of the anti-vaccination debate with unexpected political allies: religious and cultural conservatives who oppose mandatory use of the vaccine because they say it would encourage sexual activity by young girls.
Even some who support use of the vaccine question the rush and the vaccine’s high cost — about $400 for the three-shot course. “The decision to make this mandatory this early has created a significant controversy over things that have nothing to do with the vaccine,” said Dr. Joseph A. Bocchini, chairman of the committee on infectious diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Like most other public health experts, Dr. Bocchini advocates the vaccine’s use. But many say the rush toward mandatory inoculation could prove counterproductive.
Most of the proposals call for vaccinating girls before they enter the 6th grade, a group that would include about two million girls nationwide annually if all states imposed the requirement.
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry recently issued an order that girls be vaccinated. But some legislators are trying to overturn the order, with some opponents complaining because the governor’s former chief of staff is now a lobbyist for Merck. State lawmakers are scheduled to hold a hearing Monday on a bill to rescind that order.
And in Illinois, a bill introduced by a legislator who had the virus the vaccine is intended to prevent prompted a conservative group’s blog to speculate that she had been promiscuous.
“I’m offended by their ignorance, but if I have to take a hit to educate people, I’m willing to do it,” said the bill’s sponsor, Debbie Halvorson, the Democratic majority leader in the Illinois Senate.
Ms. Halvorson is also a director of Women in Government, a national association of state legislators that has embraced the fight against cervical cancer and has received funding from Merck. The group has posted model mandatory vaccination legislation on its Web site, www.womeningovernment.org. The rush for mandatory inoculation — most of the state proposals have been introduced since the beginning of the year — is unusual. It was only last June that federal regulators approved the vaccine, called Gardasil.
Typically new vaccines, like the one for chicken pox in the mid-1990’s, have been rolled out gradually in this country, with public health officials endorsing mandatory use only after several years of experience have shown the new products to be generally safe and effective.
“Generally the mandates have been enacted over years,” said Dr. Janet R. Gilsdorf, the director of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Michigan.
An advisory panel of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended last summer that girls and women ages 11 to 26 be vaccinated with Gardasil. But members of the committee say that such a recommendation is not equivalent to calling for mandatory vaccination.
Even before the vaccine’s approval, though, Merck had begun laying the political foundation in state legislatures to promote widespread vaccination of young girls.
Gardasil and another vaccine under development by the drug maker GlaxoSmithKline are aimed at the human papilloma virus, or H.P.V., which is known to be the cause of cervical cancer. Analysts see a potential $5 billion a year market for H.P.V. vaccines, and some say that Merck is intent on inoculating as many girls as possible before the introduction of Glaxo’s product, which could become available this year.
Merck’s president for vaccines, Margaret McGlynn, acknowledged a sense of urgency. But she said it was motivated by the need to eradicate the disease.
“Each and every day that a female delays getting the vaccine there is a chance she is exposed to human papilloma virus,” Ms. McGlynn said.
The company, which said it had shipped two million doses of Gardasil by the end of 2006, has begun advertising in many parts of the country. Merck declined to disclose its lobbying and advertising budget for the vaccine.
Gardasil protects against two strains of H.P.V. that cause about 70 percent of the cases of cervical cancer as well as two other strains that cause genital warts. In approving the vaccine last June, the Food and Drug Administration said that in the United States each year there were an average of 9,710 new cases of cervical cancer and 3,700 deaths attributed to it.
The disease’s toll is higher in other parts of the world than it is in the United States, where most women get routine Pap smears to detect early precancerous changes in the cervix. Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second-most-common cancer in women. It causes more than 470,000 new cases and 233,000 deaths each year, according to the F.D.A.
Merck’s main partner in the vaccination campaign, Women in Government, also receives funding from Glaxo, as well as Digene, a company that makes a test to detect the presence of H.P.V. Over the last two years, Women in Government has been holding a series of luncheons and conferences nationwide to discuss its fight against cervical cancer, including the use of vaccines.
Opponents of mandatory inoculation include anti-vaccine activists, who argue that the vaccine has not been tested in enough young girls and who have listed various side effects reported among users, which have included dizziness, nausea and fever. Others include conservative Christian groups who oppose mandatory H.P.V. vaccination on moral grounds, and those who are generally distrustful of the pharmaceutical industry |
posted by Urip Widodo @
2:11 PM
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Reference Material on Cancer |
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ENCYCLOPEDIA:
cancer, in medicine, common term for neoplasms, or tumors, that are malignant. Like benign tumors, malignant tumors do not respond to body mechanisms that limit cell growth. Unlike benign tumors, malignant tumors consist of undifferentiated, or unspecialized, cells that show an atypical cell structure and do not function like the normal cells from the organ from which they derive. Cancer cells, unlike normal cells, lack contact inhibition; cancer cells growing in laboratory tissue culture do not stop growing when they touch each other on a glass or other solid surface but grow in masses several layers deep.
Loss of contact inhibition accounts for two other characteristics of cancer cells: invasiveness of surrounding tissues, and metastasis, or spreading via the lymph system or blood to other tissues and organs. Whereas normal cells have a limited lifespan controlled by the telomere gene, which signals the end of the cell line, cancer cells contain telomerase, an enzyme that alters the telomere gene and allows the cell to continue to divide. Cancer tissue, growing without limits, competes with normal tissue for nutrients, eventually killing normal cells by nutritional deprivation. Cancerous tissue can also cause secondary effects, in which the expanding malignant growth puts pressure on surrounding tissue or organs or the cancer cells metastasize and invade other organs |
| posted by Urip Widodo @
2:09 PM
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Cancer center contained learn about cancer. And in cancer center also contained information cancer medical treatment
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