Well, now it is even a member of the panel that approved the drug coming out against mandating the Gardasil vaccine for all girls.

The chairman of the federal panel that recommended the new cervical-cancer vaccine for pre-teen girls says lawmakers should not make the inoculation mandatory, as the District and more than 20 states, including Virginia, are considering.

Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP), also said he and panel members told Merck & Co., the drug Gardasil's maker, not to lobby state lawmakers to require the vaccine for school attendance.

"I told Merck my personal opinion that it shouldn't be mandated," Dr. Abramson told The Washington Times. "And they heard it from other committee members."

Dr. Abramson said he opposes mandating Gardasil, which prevents the cervical-cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV), because the sexually transmitted HPV is not a contagious disease like measles and he is not sure states can afford to inoculate all students.

"The vaccines out there now are for very communicable diseases. A child in school is not at an increased risk for HPV like he is measles," Dr. Abramson said.

Gee, that argument sounds familiar to me. Where have I heard it before? Oh, yeah – that is the same argument I made against the vaccines on day one, only to be told how wrong-headed my position was. Anybody want to reconsider that criticism now?

Oh, and there is this minor consideration as well.

Middle-school girls inoculated with the breakthrough vaccine will be no older than 18 when they pass Gardasil's five-year window of proven effectiveness -- more than a decade before the typical cancer patient contracts HPV, The Washington Times reported last week.

Infectious disease specialists and cancer pathologists say the incubation period for HPV becoming cancer is 10 to 15 years -- meaning the average cervical cancer patient, who is 47, contracted the virus in her 30s and would not be protected by Gardasil taken as a teen.

Dr. Abramson said the panel thinks the vaccine will last for at least 10 years. Even if it provides 10 years of protection, it would still leave girls given the inoculation in the sixth grade vulnerable during their late 20s and early 30s, when most cervical-cancer patients contract HPV. At that point, another round of Gardasil would be necessary.

So it seems to me that folks like Rick Perry and others seeking to play doctor with the little girls of the nation are not merely engaged in bad politics, but in bad medicine as well.

Posted by: Greg at 11:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well, now it is even a member of the panel that approved the drug coming out against mandating the Gardasil vaccine for all girls.

The chairman of the federal panel that recommended the new cervical-cancer vaccine for pre-teen girls says lawmakers should not make the inoculation mandatory, as the District and more than 20 states, including Virginia, are considering.

Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP), also said he and panel members told Merck & Co., the drug Gardasil's maker, not to lobby state lawmakers to require the vaccine for school attendance.

"I told Merck my personal opinion that it shouldn't be mandated," Dr. Abramson told The Washington Times. "And they heard it from other committee members."

Dr. Abramson said he opposes mandating Gardasil, which prevents the cervical-cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV), because the sexually transmitted HPV is not a contagious disease like measles and he is not sure states can afford to inoculate all students.

"The vaccines out there now are for very communicable diseases. A child in school is not at an increased risk for HPV like he is measles," Dr. Abramson said.

Gee, that argument sounds familiar to me. Where have I heard it before? Oh, yeah – that is the same argument I made against the vaccines on day one, only to be told how wrong-headed my position was. Anybody want to reconsider that criticism now?

Oh, and there is this minor consideration as well.

Middle-school girls inoculated with the breakthrough vaccine will be no older than 18 when they pass Gardasil's five-year window of proven effectiveness -- more than a decade before the typical cancer patient contracts HPV, The Washington Times reported last week.

Infectious disease specialists and cancer pathologists say the incubation period for HPV becoming cancer is 10 to 15 years -- meaning the average cervical cancer patient, who is 47, contracted the virus in her 30s and would not be protected by Gardasil taken as a teen.

Dr. Abramson said the panel thinks the vaccine will last for at least 10 years. Even if it provides 10 years of protection, it would still leave girls given the inoculation in the sixth grade vulnerable during their late 20s and early 30s, when most cervical-cancer patients contract HPV. At that point, another round of Gardasil would be necessary.

So it seems to me that folks like Rick Perry and others seeking to play doctor with the little girls of the nation are not merely engaged in bad politics, but in bad medicine as well.

Posted by: Greg at 11:44 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I just love it when the NY Times publishes an editorial disguised as an article and hides the contradictory information at the end. In this case, it is the really relevant information about why Rick Perry's Gardasil power-grab is opposed by so many people -- and it has nothing to do with promiscuous nine-year-olds

Groups on both sides of the debate appear to have been energized by the executive order of Gov. Rick Perry on Feb. 2 mandating vaccination. Opponents have pounced on Gov. PerryÂ’s ties to Merck and Women in Government. His former chief of staff is a lobbyist for Merck in the state and his wife, a nurse who has worked to promote health, once spoke at a Women in Government conference on cervical cancer.

“I looked at all of this and said, someone is playing politics,” said Cathie Adams, president of the Texas Eagle Forum, a branch of Phyllis Schlafly’s national Eagle Forum, a conservative group that calls itself “pro-family.”

Citing various reasons, the Texas Medical Association is not currently supporting mandatory vaccination.

Dr. Carol Baker, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said that two other vaccines for adolescents that were approved in recent years — against meningitis and whooping cough — have not yet been mandated in Texas. “To mandate just one, in my view, is a little odd,” she said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is not advocating mandatory Gardasil vaccination, either. One source of opposition from pediatricians is cost. Buying enough H.P.V. vaccine for 100 girls would require a practice to lay out nearly $40,000 in advance. Many doctors say that the insurance reimbursement for giving the vaccine is not adequate to compensate them for administering it.

Dr. Bocchini of the American Academy of Pediatrics also said too much of the Gardasil focus was being placed on 11- and 12-year-olds, when legislatures should be focusing on trying to obtain funding to vaccinate girls and women in the 13-to-26 age group, many of whom are not covered by the federal vaccine programs aimed at children.

“A number of people are just not going to be able to get this vaccine,” he said.

Vaccines for serious illnesses that are more likely to be passed in classrooms are not required -- but Rick Perry is pushing the one that benefits his colleagues and contributors, and which his wife thinks is important. If he really gave a damn about public health, he would be trying to get the meningitis vaccine mandated through the legislative process. Instead, Perry is playing doctor with the little girls of Texas because of who it helps -- and I don't mean the little girls.

I will concede that I don't like the tactics and arguments of some of those on my side of this issue. Nor do I oppose the Gardasil vaccine, which I have repeatedly stated I would want any daughter of mine to have. But there is serious political corruption at work in Rick Perry's power grab, and there needs to be a greater discussion of the advisability of mandating this vaccine.

Posted by: Greg at 09:43 AM | Comments (51) | Add Comment
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This sounds like something out of science fiction, but may be on its way to becoming science fact.

Five soldiers at a military base in Texas are about to participate in a remarkable test to see whether they can regrow portions of fingers they lost in the war in Iraq.

Doctors plan to treat them with a fine powder called extracellular matrix, which is harvested from pig bladders. The material, found in all animals, is the scaffolding that cells latch onto as they divide and grow into tissue and body parts.

In the human body, it was long thought to be inert. But scientists have discovered that it appears to activate latent biological processes that spur healing and regenerate tissue.

Medical researchers have been making intriguing progress in the field of regenerative medicine. The pilot test, at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, shows how doctors are trying to apply their recent discoveries to a pressing challenge: helping thousands of Americans returning from Iraq to recover from wounds that would have killed soldiers a generation ago.

Now this is unlikely to result in the complete regrowth of entire digits, or even the bone in a segment – but it may enable some patients to have more complete use of hands after serious injury. That is great advance that will help people in both the military and civilian worlds.

Posted by: Greg at 12:39 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Some folks are just deemed unworthy of care under such systems.

Doctors in Britain regularly discriminate against older patients by denying them tests and treatments they offer to younger people, research shows today.

GPs, heart specialists and doctors who care for the elderly were all found to be influenced by a patient's age when making their recommendations -and older doctors were more likely to discriminate than younger doctors.

The study in Quality and Safety in Health Care, a specialist publication from the British Medical Journal, found that half of doctors in each of the professional groups treated elderly patients differently.

The researchers compared the responses of doctors to people aged under 65 and over 65. They pointed out that 65 was no longer regarded as being particularly old in British society.

Prof Ann Bowling, of the department of psychology, at University College London, led the study. She said: "Resources are limited and doctors have to make difficult decisions. Maybe they have run out of options and are using age as an excuse.

"When we spoke to the doctors they were quite ready to justify their reasons. They may see older people as less deserving," she said.

The truly alarming thing is that the referrals, tests, and procedures denied to these hypothetical patients are what we in country would consider to be routine care, not extraordinary measures – things like angiograms and angioplasty, or even cholesterol medications. Do we really wish to import such flaws into the best medical system in the world?

And on a related note, Dr. Walter Williams offers some other negatives about socialized medicine in his column today.

Posted by: Greg at 12:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I’m sorry, but there can and should be no patents on life – or on genes, the basic building-blocks of life. Yet for some strange reason, our government has allowed companies to patent parts of the human genetic code.

The results of this absurd practice is to make our own, naturally occurring genetic structure the property of someone else – an intolerable intrusion into our own fundamental right to own our own lives and to control our own bodies.

Gene patents are now used to halt research, prevent medical testing and keep vital information from you and your doctor. Gene patents slow the pace of medical advance on deadly diseases. And they raise costs exorbitantly: a test for breast cancer that could be done for $1,000 now costs $3,000.

Why? Because the holder of the gene patent can charge whatever he wants, and does. CouldnÂ’t somebody make a cheaper test? Sure, but the patent holder blocks any competitorÂ’s test. He owns the gene. Nobody else can test for it. In fact, you canÂ’t even donate your own breast cancer gene to another scientist without permission. The gene may exist in your body, but itÂ’s now private property.

This bizarre situation has come to pass because of a mistake by an underfinanced and understaffed government agency. The United States Patent Office misinterpreted previous Supreme Court rulings and some years ago began — to the surprise of everyone, including scientists decoding the genome — to issue patents on genes.

Humans share mostly the same genes. The same genes are found in other animals as well. Our genetic makeup represents the common heritage of all life on earth. You canÂ’t patent snow, eagles or gravity, and you shouldnÂ’t be able to patent genes, either. Yet by now one-fifth of the genes in your body are privately owned.

What this means, in a practical sense, is that private companies and researchers can control what information you can have about your own health, and they can also prevent scientific progress that will help improve the health of every man, woman, and child in the country (if not the world). The notion that private individuals have the right to control access to and study of a naturally occurring part of every human body is completely absurd – and morally indefensible.

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Posted by: Greg at 12:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Last week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry decided he was going to play doctor with little girls across the Lone Star State by unilaterally ordering that they receive the Gardasil vaccine when they enter sixth grade. Many Texans, of all political stripes, are outraged by this naked power grab designed to bypass the legislative process. Others question the message that a mandatory vaccine for an STD sends to these children.

But there is one other group opposing Perry's practice of medicine without a license -- physicians.

From, among others, the Texas Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, many doctors are saying it's too early to mandate the vaccine, which was approved for use last June. It protects against four strains of the human papillomavirus that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers.

"We support physicians being able to provide the vaccine, but we don't support a state mandate at this time," said Dr. Bill Hinchey, a San Antonio pathologist and president-elect of the TMA, which represents 41,000 physicians. "There are issues, such as liability and cost, that need to be vetted first."

Other reasons cited by doctors in Texas and across the country include the vaccine's newness; supply and distribution considerations; the possibility opposition could snowball and lead to a reduction in other immunizations; the possibility it could lull women into not going for still-necessary cervical cancer screenings; gender-equity issues; and the tradition of vaccines starting as voluntary and becoming mandatory after a need is demonstrated.

Hinchey said that TMA leadership expressed their concerns to Perry on Tuesday. He said the TMA arrived at its position after debating the issue in committees in recent days.

A perry spokesperson indicates that the governor is "listening" -- but actually means he is digging in his heels and ignoring all opposition to his end-run around the 181 members of the Texas legislature and every parent in the state.

Commercials for Gardasil counsel consumers to "talk to your doctor to see if Gardasil is right for you." It appears that physicians are giving an answer that is unambiguous -- mandatory vaccination with Gardasil is wrong for Texas.

Posted by: Greg at 11:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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