The Road to Hell

By Libby

They say it's paved with good intentions and this would seem to be the case with the new HPV vaccine. It's an admirable goal to try to prevent unneccessary deaths from this sexually transmitted virus but when 3 girls died already and many others have been hospitalized, it seems that Big Pharma, aided and abetted by an emasculated FDA under the Bush administration's industry crony appointment policy, once again rushed the drug to market before it was fully tested.

I thought the drug showed some promise of being beneficial but I was appalled when the government was taking steps to make it mandatory for attendance in public schools. This is why. Big Pharma has demonstrated a nasty proclivity in the last decade for using early adopters of their newest drugs as unwitting guniea pigs.

It makes sense from a profit angle. One suspects it's cheaper to pay off a few wrongful death lawsuits than it is to conduct a scientifically rigorous study under strict regulatory criteria. From the standpoint of public safety however, it pretty much stinks. I call it a fraud. I believe corporate apologists call it the free market.