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Lyme disease vaccine

Lyme disease vaccine for dogs – good for your pet but not for humans

If you go to your veterinarian to get the Lyme disease vaccine for dogs, just make an appointment and your family pooch will be vaccinated against this serious disease. If you go to your pediatrician to get the Lyme disease vaccine for your children, give up now. It’s simply not available.

Is it because Lyme disease is more serious to your dog than your children? Nope. Is it because Big Pharma makes more money from dogs than humans? No. Is it because the Lyme disease vaccine is safer for a dog than in a human? Again, no. 

Enough with the guessing game!

The blame for why there is a Lyme disease vaccine for dogs but not one for children can be placed right where some of you expect it to be – anti-vaccine activists. This was in the mid-1990s, and the internet was barely usable without Google to help us, but there were people pushing the same narrative that we hear about the cancer preventing HPV vaccine – the Lyme vaccine was worse than the disease. Let’s take time to look at this story.

Read More »Lyme disease vaccine for dogs – good for your pet but not for humans

HPV cancer vaccine

HPV cancer vaccine rates – Gardasil uptake remains low

As I’ve written before, there are precious few ways to prevent cancer. But one of the best cancer prevention strategies is the HPV vaccine, which can prevent numerous cancers such as cervical, oral, penile and anal, all serious, and all dangerous. Maybe we should just rename Gardasil to “HPV cancer vaccine,” which could make everyone sit up and notice.

The HPV vaccination rate remains depressingly low in the USA. According to recent research, 39.7% of adolescent girls aged 13-17 received all three doses of the vaccine in 2014 up from 37.6% in 2013. HPV vaccination rates among teen boys are much lower than for girls, 21.6% in 2014 up from 13.4% in 2013.

There are probably a lot of reasons for the low HPV cancer vaccine uptake rate, so I thought I’d go through the most “popular” ones, debunking them one by one.

Hopefully, the reader can use this article as a checklist of the tropes and myths of the anti-Gardasil crowd with quick answers to them. Maybe you’ll convince one person to get their son or daughter vaccinated against HPV related cancers.

Read More »HPV cancer vaccine rates – Gardasil uptake remains low

Japanese HPV vaccine lawsuit

Japanese HPV vaccine lawsuit – no science, no evidence

The HPV vaccine, specifically the Gardasil 9-valent version, is one of the handful of ways to actually prevent cancer. Along with the hepatitis-B vaccine, the HPV vaccine helps prevent future incidence of dangerous cancers. Unfortunately, a Japanese HPV vaccine lawsuit has been filed in that country by 64 women.

Gardasil has had a tumultuous history in Japan. The vaccine is no longer recommended for Japanese teens, based on an unscientific analysis of evidence related to adverse events. The Japanese Health Ministry accepted supposed “adverse events” after Gardasil vaccine as causal, even though the rate of these adverse events after vaccination was LOWER than the general non-vaccinated population. It was total incompetence on the part of the Health Ministry.

Let’s take a look at this lawsuit in Japan – and we need to see what it really means.

Read More »Japanese HPV vaccine lawsuit – no science, no evidence

gardasil researcher

Is a Gardasil researcher really against the vaccine?

This article about Dr. Diane Harper has been recently updated. The comments here are closed, so please comment at the new article. 

Because vaccine deniers lack any scientific evidence supporting their unfounded belief system about immunizations, they tend to rely upon unscientific information like anecdotes, logical fallacies, misinterpretation of data, or Italian provincial courts to make their case about the lack of safety of vaccines.

It’s rather easy to debunk these claims, but because of the nature of the internet, old news is recycled as “brand new,” requiring a whole new round of blog posts to discredit the misinformation. It’s impossible to recall one single instance where a vaccine refuser made a statement about vaccines that was not, in fact, rather quickly debunked. Not one.

The pro-children’s health side, those of us who think that vaccines save lives, have been winning the hearts and minds for awhile, given that still around 95% of children in the USA get all of their immunizations prior to entering kindergarten. But that doesn’t stop the refusers from trying, because various zombie anti-vaccination memes keep reappearing, especially since the successful pro-vaccine bill was signed into law in California.

One of the latest ones involves a so-called lead Gardasil researcher, Dr. Diane Harper, a former “consultant” to Merck (and GSK, who manufacturers Cervarix, a bivalent HPV vaccine), who apparently had some research role in the clinical trials of the HPV vaccines. But what are the facts?

Read More »Is a Gardasil researcher really against the vaccine?

another flu vaccine myth

Another flu vaccine myth – Big Pharma profits

There is a more general article – about the myth of Big Pharma vaccine profits – which has recently been updated and republished. 

The 2015-16 flu season is upon us, and that means it’s flu vaccine time again. And flu vaccine myth time. There is another flu vaccine myth – Big Pharma profits – that needs to be debunked.

Despite the availability of several flu vaccines, many people think that the flu is a painless, harmless disease, a belief belied by evidence. Wrong.

To put flu in perspective, in the USA, depending on the severity of the flu season, from 3,000 (which happened 25 years ago, and hasn’t been that low since) to 49,000 people die every year. Worldwide, about 250,000 to 500,000 people die from the flu every year. A flu pandemic, like the one in 1918, killed 50-100 million humans, much more scary than Ebola.

Of course, a fairly large group of people, including some who are pro-science (read, pro-vaccine), will fall into the arms of their favorite flu vaccine myth, and then refuse to get the flu vaccine. Given the dangers of the flu, and given the loss in productivity, income, and lives, you’d think that the flu vaccine would be near the top of health care needs for the average person.

My fellow blogger, Tara Haelle, spent numerous hours putting together the Top Myths about the flu vaccine. She debunks these myths completely out of the water. But antivaccination myths are never static, there’s always a new variant.Read More »Another flu vaccine myth – Big Pharma profits

The Irish Catholic children’s home scandal–it’s NOT about vaccines

children-at-st-marysThere’s an appalling story out of Ireland that has dominated the news for the past few days. Over a period of 35 years, St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, a Catholic home for unwed mothers in County Galway (on the west coast of Ireland), apparently buried some children in a sewer system after dying in that home. You might have heard from some irresponsible journalists that over 800 children were buried in the septic tank, without questioning whether 800 bodies could actually be buried in the septic system, and without determining when the home was moved to a County sanitary sewer system, making it impossible to dump dead children in the septic tank. OK, that’s a small point.

According to the individual who actually uncovered this atrocity, Catherine Corless, an academic historian, she claims, through her research of birth records and other information, around 800 children died at this home over 36 years. The Irish Times reports, “between 1925, when the home opened, and 1937 the tank remained in use. During that period 204 children died at the home. Corless admits that it now seems impossible to her that more than 200 bodies could have been put in a working sewage tank.” OK, it’s sad and maddening that 22 children died every year at this home, even if infant mortality rates were substantially higher back then because of malnutrition and vaccine preventable diseases (like measles, mumps, polio, rotavirus and others) that would run rampant through closed quarters like that.

So the first myth we need to debunk is that there are 800 bodies buried in a septic tank–there aren’t. But, like I’ve said, that’s really just a minor point (setting aside the atrocity itself, which we’ll address later), because there are some other issues that have arisen with this story that also need to be discussed honestly.Read More »The Irish Catholic children’s home scandal–it’s NOT about vaccines

FDA approves first vaccine to prevent H5N1 avian influenza

On 22 November 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza was approved for use should the virus threaten to become epidemic in human populations. GSK’s Influenza A (H5N1) Virus Monovalent Vaccine, Adjuvanted, has also… Read More »FDA approves first vaccine to prevent H5N1 avian influenza

Court says Freedom of Speech applies to Big Pharma Sales Reps

pills and pill bottlesIn a strange decision, the United States 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over  Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, ruled that a drug sales representative who promotes “off-label” uses of a particular drug is exercising their “freedom of speech.” The Court decided in a 2-1 vote, in United States v. Caronia (pdf), that the criminal conviction of Alfred Caronia, a former sales representative for a pharmaceutical company, be vacated. The case was an appeal of the sales representative’s conviction for promoting an off-label use of the drug Xyrem, which is approved for treatment of narcolepsy. The Court stated that “we construe the FDCA as not criminalizing the simple promotion of a drug’s off-label use because such a construction would raise First Amendment concerns.”

The Court also found that the FDA allows off-label use by physicians, but “prohibits the free flow of information that would inform that outcome,” while “the government’s prohibition of off-label promotion by pharmaceutical manufacturers provides only ineffective or remote support for the government’s purpose.” The Court also ruled that it construes “the misbranding provisions of the FDCA as not prohibiting and criminalizing the truthful off-label promotion of FDA-approved prescription drugs.”  It also stated “that the government cannot prosecute pharmaceutical manufacturers and their representatives under the FDCA for speech promoting the lawful, off-label use of an FDA-approved drug.”Read More »Court says Freedom of Speech applies to Big Pharma Sales Reps

GlaxoSmithKline fined $3 billion by FDA for improper marketing and unethical behavior

Recently, the US Department of Justice ordered the pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), to pay $3 billion in criminal and civil liabilities in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history. Basically, GSK was caught promoting several drugs for unapproved uses, failing to report safety data, paying kickbacks to physicians, and price reporting. Let’s look at the fraud charges one by one.

Unapproved uses (or off-label uses). By law, pharmaceutical companies are only allowed to market drugs according to what is stated in their package labeling which is approved by the FDA. Off-label uses are the practice of prescribing pharmaceuticals for an unapproved indication or in an unapproved age group, unapproved dose or unapproved form of administration. Physicians are legally allowed to prescribe drugs off-label (as long as it is not contraindicated), but the pharmaceutical company cannot directly or indirectly influence off-label use. In most cases, off-label use isn’t dangerous, nor is it particularly unethical.

GSK was accused of unlawfully promoting Paxil, an antidepressant, for treating patients under the age of 18, even though it lacked FDA approval for pediatric use. GSK participated in “preparing, publishing and distributing a misleading medical journal article that misreported a clinical trial of Paxil that demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of depression in patients under age 18, when the study failed to demonstrate efficacy.” What was most troubling was that GSK did not balance its study with data from two other studies in which Paxil failed to demonstrate efficacy in treating depression in patients under 18. Typical of this type of marketing, GSK sponsored dinners, lunches, spas, and similar types of programs to promote the off-label use of Paxil in children. It’s also important to note that Paxil includes a “black box warning“, the strongest FDA warning for a pharmaceutical product, that states that antidepressants make increase suicidal ideation and behavior in patients under 18.Read More »GlaxoSmithKline fined $3 billion by FDA for improper marketing and unethical behavior