Gouging

This is exactly why I have such a huge problem with for-profit companies involved in the production of vaccines. Those figures are truly disgusting.

But the apparent negligence on the part of Merck in the production of vaccines is a far, FAR more serious problem. It puts the safety of the public in considerable jeopardy. In addition, if contaminated vaccines are sold and do harm, it will cause public alarm over vaccine safety in general, which will result in less use of an exceptionally effective public health measure. The alleged negligence on Merck's part, if accurate, is very serious, and they should be punished for it.

CP

Was this before colour tv? Can I call you geezer from now on? Just remember CP, Purity Of Essence, never waste a bodily fluid. I think that's what all you militant anti-commies used to tell each other right?

Salk

There actually were some difficulties with the original Salk vaccine - which was why they moved to another one, the Salk/Sabin vaccine a few years after Salk's discovery in 1953.

As for hysterics and scare mongering, c'mon, the Polio vaccine was universally welcomed and has, for the most part, lived up to its original promise.

The controversy and the hysterics with the vaccine, occurred more than a generation later, in the 1980s. A little knowledge is often misplaced – sadly, on line ‘knowledge’ is often mis-used.

I welcome respectful comments to my posts here at Tyee.

G West

The free market...

The actual cost of production is, of course, in the so-called "free market, but a secondary consideration in determining the price of a commodity. The primary determinant is again, of course, what the market will bear.

As for cp. He is of little use or contribution here, other than as comic relief-, and not worth a thin dime at that. :-)

Canis L.

One can only assume then, that our so-called business-oriented politicians are not at all as astute in deal-making as they'd have us believe.

The only other assumption one could make is that other, behind-the-scenes "deals" have been made.

Given the hundreds of other areas where tens of mllions could make a real difference and yield proven payback, one has to wonder what prompted them to spend so much money on something with such doubtful efficacy

There's CPs on every site, and they only go away when they are ignored.

Yup...

Yup.

And yup. Been dealing with these mofus all my life. :-)

Busy day. Catch ya's later. Got on my hoss's back yesterday without getting bucked off. That's twice in a row now. Which is my definition of progress. :-) lol. ( A guy can't get thrown like that too many times, when he's looking down both barrels of being 70.)

HPV in 1967

There is no cure that I've heard of, though I was cured several times. Big ugly white warts, the size of quarters, and all other medical belief systems are just voodoo?

Maybe, to preserve a woman's ability to bear children, since western medicine can't seem to do a thing about HPV except pretend to vaccinate against it, we should routinely cut young women's labia off, when they are about nine. The way they do it in those "primitive" African and Arab countries.

We get the broken glass applied by grannies stories, I got the best of western medicine at the time. I now really question, far too late, whether I could have had children.

HPV and the triumphs of western med

I was infected with HPV in the late spring of 1967 in Portugal. My lover flew to Canada, and during the taxi ride home, one of his best friends told me I might be infected with something. He was short on details.

I went straight to a VD clinic, got examined and sampled and given a clean bill of health. But the best friend had seemed so earnest and sure. I visited some medical students, and one of them told me she thought there was something new out there, a genital condition that might be connected with something like gum disease.

About six months and hundreds of miles later, I got a loose tooth and had it extracted. I was given a piece of paper that entitled me to a shot in the bum.

Several letters to and from home later, I learned that the antibiotic I'd reacted very strangely to had been banned in N. America for decades.

About a year later, the warts appeared, huge and flat and white and really itchy. They were so terrible, they were funny, even at the time.

The clever French doctor I went to told me to insert yeast infection losenges on a little stick every day for two weeks or so. When the warts disappeared, I figured, for the second time, I'd been "cured". I'd made high marks in Shakespeare courses, but I didn't realize how Elizabethan this was.

Late in '68, I was in a NYC free clinic being fitted with a contraceptive device (removed in '70 by a BC gynaecologist, who waved it around saying "where the hell did you get this, the ark?"). The young NYC doctor answered my question about my mysteriously (cured?) warts with blithe amusement. Nothing to worry about anyway, "Jacquie Kennedy has them".

My "celebrity" warts seemed to be in remission for many years. They showed up as an itch (swab daily with hexacholorophene! mid 70s), and a tiny swarm (burned off with silver nitrate in '76) and then in full potentially cancerous glory in the summer of '76.

$$$$$ Shazamm. The original the ark? hexachlorophene gynaecologist, who lost my file and went duck hunting in Louisiana, got the gig of cutting off my labia (truly dazzling great job, cosmetic surgery nowadays and of course, when done badly, genital mutilation). And then, my uterus.

I wondered, very soon after, if there were videos of me in all my glory of those days, to lure extremely wealthy patriarchs to have their daughters done in BC.

HPV in my experience showed up the worst of western medicine, while rather ridiculously providing me with gorgeous(?) and sought after streamlining.

It took ten years for any kind of cervical signs to show up, so current claims that PAP tests find it, particularly in young women, are absurd. This is important, as there is evidence that vaccinating people who already are infected is a really really bad idea. Thus the ages of the targets.

I recently sat next to a nurse who works in a northern native community in Ontario who was sure that PAP tests identified HPV.

I had PAP tests every year.

James Burns

My German correspondent added to her previous comments with this :

"Today I have read in a scientific magazine that even some girls became ill and died after the vaccination. They wrote that condomes and medical checkups would be enough in order to prevent cervical cancer"

I asked her for the site, and she responded with this :

"I have found an article in English about the same issue. I think my daughters will not get that vaccination....."
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07092004.html

I don't know how trustable that site is, but perhaps with your expertise you can verify the information.

condoms and checkups

James, and all, please read my post, there is no test for HPV that means anything about young people. It takes a decade to show up on a PAP test.

Also, in my personal opinion and experience, condoms do not protect anyone from HPV as it seems it can be spread by warm genital contact, say lying together, rather than actual sexual activity. It's about warts.

ads

check out the hpv pictures ads upper left.

Western med is so so Elizabethan...

Margot

I was not trying to upstage you. Our posts appeared simultanously.

Lifesitenews

Pro-life groups are typically religiously affiliated. Those groups disapprove of premarital sex, and anything they think might encourage it, like condoms, the pill, HPV vaccine and the like. In addition, they are predisposed to an anti-science point of view for obvious creationist reasons.

If you note the presentation of the article about the HPV vaccine on the LifeSiteNews site, you'll see that they mention death and thousands of adverse reactions in the same headline. The clear intent here is to have people confuse the number of adverse reactions with deaths. Moreover, they provide no details of the deaths they do claim are "associated" with the vaccine. Did the individuals die immediately after being vaccinated? Or did they die some period after, for totally unrelated reasons? The same holds true for lost pregnancies (although I find it surprising pregnant women would seek to be vaccinated for HPV). Frankly, I wouldn't trust anything from that website given the clearly biased way they present information.

Now, if there are peer reviewed studies available showing an unusual incidence of adverse reactions to HPV vaccine, then I'd say it certainly warrants further investigation. BUT chances are, adverse reactions are far more likely due to quality control problems in the production of the vaccines. There is a lot in a vaccine besides the inert virus, and those chemicals are usually what people react allergically to if they do have that kind of reaction. In addition, if Merck is being sited for quality control problems then the vaccines could be tainted in a manner similar to how food packaged in unhygienic conditions can be tainted.

margot

The HPV vaccine isn't exactly a cure, as it doesn't protect against all strains, but it would certainly reduce the likelihood of infection.

Western medicine is a practice staffed by fallible humans. The professionals that populate it are of varying quality. In addition, physicians here tend to under emphasize prevention (like vaccines, good eating habits, etc.). They make their money by billing the system per visit and per procedure. They have no real incentive, beyond care for patients, to encourage prevention. In fact, the whole system encourages them to spend as little time with patients as possible to maximize their income. So it's little wonder that something like HPV didn't register with the physicians you saw. And given the belief at the time that genital warts were really only a nuisance disease, they likely didn't consider it to be a big deal. I know that doesn't speak well of the profession.