Merck Kind of Ditches Effort to Make HPV Drug Mandatory
Maybe somebody at Merck took Dr. Fuhrman’s comment that requiring kids to get the HPV vaccination as Taliban-like to heart. Because according to The Detroit Free Press they are bowing out of the push to make it mandatory. Cecilia Oleck reports:
Michigan legislators won’t abandon plans to require 11- and 12-year-old girls to receive a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer, even though Merck, the company that makes the vaccine, announced Tuesday it would stop lobbying for the requirement.
Merck funded campaigns in state legislatures to make the vaccine Gardasil mandatory through a third party group called Women in Government. Pressure from some parents’ and doctors’ groups—who object to the vaccine because it protects against human papilloma virus, a sexually transmitted disease that causes cervical cancer and because it was only released on the market last year—prompted Merck to bow out of lobbying to make Gardasil a requirement.
