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The Gupta Pick: Piling On |
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Following up on the skepticism of Alex and Josh on Obama’s pick for Surgeon General, Counterpunch ran an article in 2007 questioning Gupta’s disingenuous promotion of Gardasil, a drug that he touted as a vaccine for cervical cancer:
Now there is a way to prevent the virus from ever taking hold in the first place. It’s a vaccine. Typically, you think of vaccines for the measles or chicken pox. But Gardasil protects you against cancer. Trials showed the vaccine could lower cervical cancer rates by 70 percent.
The article continues…
The clinical trials for Gardasil showed no such thing. Even Merck is not making this wild and unsupported claim.
Perhaps Gupta’s ties to Merck, the drug’s manufacturer, explain this overstatement:
The overarching issue in all of this is the dangerous and growing tentacles of a corporate agenda that seeks to control every message pertaining to its corporate brands in every venue visited or medium viewed by a consumer. That includes TV and cable news. Increasingly, corporations demand ”integration” for their advertising dollars. Dr. Gupta is part of this new wave of “integration” as co-host of a program called AccentHealth.
Given the incestuous nature of “integration,” should Dr. Sanjay Gupta have revealed to his CNN viewers during his extolling of the virtues of Gardasil that its manufacturer, Merck, was a financial sponsor of this integrated marketing scheme he co-hosts at AccentHealth?
If Merck did get at Gupta, he wasn’t the first. Another influential proponent of the drug, Texas Governor Rick Perry, ordered all schoolgirls in his state receive the vaccine, without disclosing his numerous ties to the company:
Perry has several ties to Merck and Women in Government. One of the drug company’s three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, his former chief of staff. His current chief of staff’s mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for Women in Government.
Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass laws in state legislatures across the country mandating its Gardasil vaccine for girls as young as 11 or 12. It doubled its lobbying budget in Texas and has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country…Perry also received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his re-election campaign.
I’m not saying it’s a fact that Gupta played the shill for Gardasil, but I am saying our Surgeon General should not roll over for corporations who throw some coin his/her way. He or she should also get the facts straight before spouting off, something that does not seem to be Gupta’s strong point. Let’s hope the man’s got more integrity and horse sense than the 6 incidents laid out here suggest.
Do you think Obama is trying to appeal to the masses by picking a well-liked TV personality? Or is he trying too hard to be diverse? Or is the pick of Gupta a sign that Obama is just as cozy with the big corps as Bush was? I guess only time will tell.
Gupta’s claim only oversteps in the mark in saying that it prevents cervical cancer. The gardasil vaccine has been shown in clinical trials to be an effective vaccine against HPV infections that lead to the majority of cases of cervical cancer.
There isn’t any agenda here. Gupta is essentially correct. The message that women can reduce their risk of cervical cancer by getting a gardasil vaccine is true.
A little googling picked this article up that explains the phase II results, which the vaccine obviously passed. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/22445.php
I appreciate someone taking the time to look at the issues in a direction outside of mainstream media - however i just wanted to point out that gardasil prevents HPV which has been proven to cause cancer so gardasil indirectly prevents cancer…..
Persistent infection with “high-risk” HPV types %u2014 different from the ones that cause warts %u2014 may progress to precancerous lesions and invasive cancer. HPV infection is a cause of nearly all cases of cervical cancer.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hpv
It’s not a wild leap to say Girdasil prevents cervical cancer. There are more things to beat up on Gupta for… Really there is.
Your comments are factually inaccurate and show a lack of understanding of the trials process and FDA approvals. Trials were designed to show a reduction in viral infection, and this was clearly a success. The trial was not designed to show prevention of cancer, as this would require decades of follow up. However it is a fact that infection with specific papilloma viruses is REQUIRED for development of cervical cancer, and thus no viru no cancer. You do a significant disservice to the community by suggesting this does not/will not prevent cancer. It does and your comments are wrong.