Dan Walters: Democrats oddly abet drug drive/Sac Bee

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Dan Walters: Democrats oddly abet drug drive

By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist

Last Updated 12:49 am PDT Friday, May 11, 2007

Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3

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Merck & Co. is a very large pharmaceutical company and it's Democratic Party

dogma to

attack drug companies for their large profit margins.

That's why it was particularly odd when a very liberal Democratic legislator,

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber of Mountain View, introduced a bill that would have

required

every sixth-grade girl in California to have been administered a dose of Merck's

vaccine

that purports to guard against cervical cancer caused by a sexually transmitted

virus.

Lieber gave up the bill after, she said, learning that a family trust owned

stock in Merck,

and Assemblyman Ed , D-West Covina, picked it up. Meanwhile,

conservative

" pro-family " groups mounted a fierce attack, complaining that the measure

usurped

parents and assumed that young girls would be sexually active. And it was

revealed that

California was just one of many states in which Merck had mounted well-financed

lobbying and media campaigns to mandate its three-shot regimen.

No small amount of money is involved. There are about a half-million

sixth-graders in

California, and if half of them are girls, that would mean a quarter-million

vaccinations at

$350 apiece each year, costing parents, private insurance or public health

programs

around $90 million. It might be worth it if the vaccine were effective at

stopping large

numbers of cervical cancer cases. But is it?

A month ago, the Wall Street Journal published a front-page article, revealing

that " behind

the scenes, " the vaccine, called Gardasil, " has been dogged by uncertainty about

how

effective it really is. " Although the Food and Drug Administration agreed that

Gardasil was

effective against two strains of the human papillomavirus that are thought to

cause 70

percent of cervical cancers, the FDA did not ask its reviewers to examine

whether the

vaccine prevents cancer itself. In fact, the Journal reported, 361 of the 8,817

women who

received Gardasil shots went on to develop cancerous lesions, just 14 percent

fewer than

those administered placebos.

Merck, of course, vigorously defended the efficacy and safety of Gardasil, but

with the

doubts expressed in the Journal article and elsewhere, one might think that

California

legislators would adopt a more cautious attitude about helping a big drug

company ring

up big profits. Not so.

changed the bill, eliminating the direct mandate for Gardasil and

repealing all

other public school student vaccination mandates effective in 2009. Instead, the

new

version (Assembly Bill 16) would require pupils to receive shots recommended by

the

federal government's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices -- a list that

happens to include Gardasil -- after approval by the state health officer.

Rick Rollens, a longtime Capitol staffer and lobbyist, pleaded with the Assembly

Education

Committee to hold up AB 16, saying his son " suffers from vaccine-induced

regressive

autism " and citing increasing evidence that childhood vaccines play a role in

autism. He

characterized AB 16 as " an outrageous and arrogant attempt " to shift vaccination

mandates from the Legislature to a " non-accountable bureaucrat " and a remote

federal

committee. Nevertheless, the bill sailed through the Assembly's education and

health

committees with Democratic votes.

On Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine published a research article

saying the

benefits of Gardasil were modest and an editorial advising a cautious approach

to its use

because of concerns about its efficacy -- a far cry from mass vaccinations

costing $90

million a year.

Despite those warnings, a spokesman for says he'll pursue the bill,

continuing

an odd rush to judgment by politicians who are usually leery of drug company

marketing.

About the writer:

Reach Dan Walters at (916) 321-1195 or dwalters@.... Back columns:

www.sacbee.com/walters