I can’t make up my mind over this whole controversy. I think I’m torn because both sides are making good and bad arguments. I think the charge of crony capitalism against Perry is valid generally and looks on target in this case in particular. The issue isn’t just that he got $5,000 from Merck. It’s that his former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck. I think Perry’s partial apology is heartfelt. He did it the wrong way and has said so. On the other hand, I think his argument that he did this because he will always “support life” is dangerous hogwash. He mandated government inoculations against STDs because he’s a pro-lifer? It takes some pretty circuitous reasoning to get there, and in the process you’ve conceded the case for pretty much every other kind of health-care intervention by the state up to and including Obamacare.
Meanwhile, I think Michele Bachmann’s attacks on Perry are irresponsible and borderline demagogic. References to the “government needle” being “pushed into innocent girls,” sound paranoid and exploitative to me. And fueling anti-vaccine fears to score political points against Perry is beneath her. I think Fox or some other news outlet should investigate Bachmann’s claim last night on Greta Van Susteren’s show. Bachmann said that a member of the audience came up to her and told her with tears in her eyes that Gardasil caused “mental retardation” in her daughter. I’m not doubting that someone told Bachmann that, but it’s a pretty serious — and unusual — claim. Regardless, the suggestion that Rick Perry is in any way responsible for it is ludicrous.
Santorum’s objections seem the most philosophically sound to me. I agree with him that there should have been more of an opt-in rather than an opt-out provision. And I agree with both Bachmann and Santorum that this shouldn’t have been done as a mandate from the governor’s office. But I can’t muster much outrage over the underlying policy of offering the vaccination as a general proposition.
I’ll keep noodling.
Perry is an incoherent mess on this. His "I'm for life" was laughable. Will people really fall for that? Are they that gullible? How is this guy who is also incoherent on just about everything else even in the race?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI disagree. A lot of girls become sexually active at a young age. My daughter is in her mid-twenties and knows several young woman who have had cervical cancer.
You seem to dislike Perry and simply attack him for that reason.
He was not incoherent.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThen those girls' parents can get them the vaccine. Of course, if their 12yo is sexually active, then someone needs to look into statutory rape charges. (He wasn't mandating this for 16yos, people.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJonah, how is Perry's HPV action not a top 50 or higher example of liberal fascism?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBachmann is getting pretty close to showing herself as unhinged as her wildest critics say. The sooner she drops out, the better.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy concern is that Michele Bachmann is threatening to turn herself into all the bad parts of Jenny McCarthy over a tactical argument.
As you know Jonah, the GOP has been unfairly ridiculed as anti-science for a decade now. This even though the embryonic stem cell debate was about *ethics*, not science, and it's repeatedly been shown that it's most often the *defenders* of global warming who are anti-science.
But if Bachmann goes down THIS path... I'm sorry, she's on her own.
Anyway, if you think this all is fun, just wait until the day we have a vaccine for *HIV*...
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Anti-science" is one thing. Anti-everything-a-scientist-says is something else.
We do need a principled, eloquent person to say not everything "science" comes up with is an advance or harmless. Plenty of "scientific" advances have been harmful. Prudent caution is not "anti-science" -- but we need someone to make the case better than anyone currently does. (Ron Paul might be able to, but unfortunately not everyone listens to anything he says.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you, Dave, for posting the comment I was going to make.
I'm sure there are a lot of skeptical people who don't want vaccines thrust upon them by the US Government. However, when vaccines can be proven to save lives (mostly women, in this case, although there are studies which show benefits of Gardasil to men), I want to see them administered to my kid.
In Texas, Rick Perry was "the decider." He made a snap decision to protect the children of Texas. Now he regrets the process he took in doing so, but still believes all children should get vaccinated. I can follow that logic.
Bachmann is becoming the stereotypical "Anti-Science Republican."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSorry, but this argument is about ethics, too. And about freedom. No one has any business pushing a vaccine for little girls that protects them from something they can only get through sexual contact. And, there is *definitely* a problem with mandating this with an executive order.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe crux of this issue is that when society has demanded taxpayer funded healthcare (Medicaid), then as a stakeholder (ie taxpayer), why wouldn't I have the right to demand those that will ultimately use the program to adhere to mandated preventions? Every cancer patient I personally have known in my life at some point during the battle gets placed on Medicaid. Private health insurance never takes care of everything. The same should go for smoking. Your personal rights to smoke should end the minute you depend on me to pay your medical bills. The only thing Ron Paul got right last night was that if you make the decision to not buy health insurance, you need to live and die by that decision. Your family, neighbors, and church may assist in making a bad decision better, but don't come to me.
We live in a nation that believes we have a right to live forever, no matter the cost. That is the conversation that needs to happen in regards to fixing healthcare and SS.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHere's a word for you to noodle: polio.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat do you think that means?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusenon-sequitor.
Polio does not require that you be in a position of doing something many think is bad for you (sex outside of monogomous marriage) to get it. You can argue it is naive to think that, but it does not even come close to being able to use polio and HPV remotely interchangeably.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's not even that it requires "that you be in a position of doing something many think is bad for you", but that this involves children who don't even qualify for that activity. 16yos, maybe, but not 12yo and younger.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut that comment suggests that we shouldn't educate or push vaccines on people if they can avoid the disease by their behavior. Which also suggests that we think people who engage in that behavior deserve what they get.
I can argue that they shouldn't even pretend to force this on kids (they didn't ACTUALLY force it on anybody, there was an easy opt-out). But it is clear a lot of the objection to this is simply that some people don't want others to be protected from the "consequences" of what those people see as "bad behavior".
So remember -- you could get married to someone who wasn't a virgin, and get cervical cancer, without ever committing a sin. Your husband could cheat on you. You could go on a date and your date could force hiimself on you, or give you the date rape drug.
And that's just for those who actually believe people should be punished for sinful sexual practices. For the rest of us, I don't want to hand out condoms because they are only useful for people who are about to have sex, but a vaccine that prevents STDs is fine with me, so long as we get to choose whether the risk/cost/rewards are good enough.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe're talking about children. Children who can conceivably be harmed by the vaccine. All vaccinations are a trade-off of risk versus reward. In the case of children who shouldn't be having sex at all, much less multiple-partner sex, the risk of the vaccine is greater than the reward. Once the children grow old enough to have sex, they can decide for themselves if they wish to reassess the risks involved.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHere's another: Thalidomide
Just because someone comes up with a medicine, that doesn't mean people should take it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRegarding Bachmann's statement about Gardasil and mental retardation: Having worked in alternative healthcare for a number of years, I feel pretty confident that if you had a widely-used placebo vaccine that was just distilled water, you would still have people claiming that the vaccine caused mental retardation / autism / autoimmune disorders. People whose children are stricken with these disorders are often desperate to find any "cause," and vaccines are a convenient scapegoat.
Unless Bachmann has additional proof that vaccination with Gardasil is at least correlated with mental retardation, it's incredibly irresponsible of her to give that view national airtime.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOn this dynamic you mention, I place some of the blame on certain individuals who have politicized science. If scientists opine on moral topics, it doesn't take much of a stretch for moralists to start opining on science.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBravo.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse