Month: October 2011

Original story from Discovery News posted in their Blog on 21 September 2011.

Politics has a number of victims, particularly right now when things are so savage between parties and the party lines aren’t just drawn in the sand. There are fences up and woe betide he who is on the “wrong” side of it, no matter how good their idea is or isn’t.

Republican Michele Bachmann, for example, attacked her same party competitor Rick Perry of accepting campaign funding from the pharmaceutical company that makes the HPV vaccine when he was working to make it mandatory for 6th grade schoolchildren. Bachmann raised the stakes, however, and made false accusations that the vaccine causes mental retardation. So far, no person has been able to back up the accusations against this vaccine or even get the people who supposedly make these anecdotal connections to step forward and let their situation to studied. Even with money as bait.

HPV is a political victim because we have an STD that can be vaccinated against. and heaven forbid we be able to prevent a cancer from taking root in people. Is this what’s going to happen is an HIV vaccine is developed?