Monday, September 19, 2011

Gardasil Warning

Whew! This Florida correspondent really doesn't like Rick Perry...

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8396883/political_pundits_predict_a_perry_plunge.html?cat=9

but she does explain how Michele Bachmann scored a point off him, even though Bachmann also used a word that's outdated.

"Retardation" would be precisely the right word for the effects of a drug that hasn't been in use long enough for anyone to be sure how permanent its potentially bad side effects can be, when that drug is given to children and when it delays, or retards, any or all of the processes of their development. The only problem with this word is that, oh dear oh dear, the professional hurt-feelings crowd have decided that, because "retardation" has sometimes been used (hopefully) for what turned out to be genuine stupidity, any suggestion of possible retardation is somehow more "hurtful" than the longer-equals-trendier phrasing "developmental delays."

I counter-suggest that longer phrasing doesn't make bad news better news. "Retardation" was the word used when my father stopped growing taller after what turned out to have been a mild case of polio, was the smallest kid in the ninth grade, then resumed growing and was 6'1" by the time he graduated. "Retardation" was also the more polite, and correct, word used when one of our relatives stopped speaking after a throat injury, didn't learn to read or talk to anybody in school, but then learned to read as an adult and is now a well-read minister. It's unfortunate that the development of so many "retarded" children did not pick up later on, but the fact is that "retardation" is a shorter, simpler way to describe exactly the same thing as "developmental delays." And, unfortunately, a lot of kids who are hopefully described as having "developmental delays" today aren't going to become tall, or literate, or well coordinated, or whatever as they grow up, either.

But what if they're 11-year-old girls given Gardasil as a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease that they might, after all, be able to choose to avoid by practicing abstinence? We don't know. Some of these children went into comas. A few died. Some seem to be growing up normally. It's too soon to say how much harm the optimistic, if not sympathetic, Governor Perry and his buddies at the Merck Corporation have done these children. Or how much good...after all, some of them probably would not have practiced abstinence and would have developed the warts that tend, as women age, to become hosts for cancer.

I give one clear point to Bachmann, and deduct one clear point from Perry...although Perry doesn't look too old to learn from, and even use, his past mistakes. Nobody knew anything about Gardasil when Perry agreed to let the manufacturers test it on Texas middle school girls. Perry knows, now, and perhaps has learned something about testing any new drug on any group other than adult volunteers.

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