By Alexander Strada
Western Sun associate editor
During a recent Republican debate, candidate Michele Bachmann made the vague claim that the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer was “dangerous,” and later tried to tie it to mental retardation on NBC’s “Today” Show.
Medical experts fired back, criticizing Bachmann’s statements and defending the vaccine’s safety. Bachmann quickly backed down and stated, “I am not a doctor, I am not a scientist, I’m not a physician,” on Sean Hannity’s radio show. Physicians, however, fear that the damage is already done.
Unfortunately, Bachmann isn’t the first offender. In 1998, British scientist Andrew Wakefield published a study connecting the combined measles, mumps, rubella, or MMR, vaccine with autism, recommending the vaccine be split into three separate shots and given over a longer period of time.
Although Wakefield was later discredited and faced charges of serious professional misconduct, the damage was done. Vaccination rates in Britain plunged, and measles cases soared, and his idea persists to this day.
“There are people out there who, because of this kind of misinformation, aren’t going to get their daughter immunized,” said Dr. Kenneth Alexander, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago Medical Center, during a phone interview with Reuters.
“As a result, there will be more people who die from cervical cancer.”
This comes at a time when HPV vaccination rates are already critically low. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 32 percent of adolescent girls got the complete HPV vaccine last year.
“We’ve got 12,000 women a year in this country getting cervical cancer,” Alexander says. “The vaccine could prevent about 70 percent of that.”
When so many lives could so easily be saved by such a simple procedure, it is crucial that public figures, especially politicians, do not create unnecessary panic and paranoia merely to advance their own agendas.
Historically, vaccine scares cause vaccination rates to drop for three or four years, leading to outbreaks of diseases that were previously under control. Once the disease begins to reappear, parents become worried and vaccinations catch up.
Unfortunately, with cervical cancer there are no symptoms to scare parents into vaccinating their daughters until it is too late.
Vaccines can and do save millions of lives and billions of dollars worldwide every year. With public opinion of vaccines already on such shaky ground, it is crucial that those with influence do not create more undue fear and paranoia.
