Science and Politics and Drama...Oh my!

Considering the state of the American economy, the 2012 elections have produced an interesting amount of pseudo-scientific rhetoric.  I wrote a bit about this last week, here, but this week has introduced some perhaps more interesting issues at hand. 

During Monday night's GOP debate, one topic of discussion was Rick Perry's policies regarding mandatory HPV vaccination.  Michelle Bachmann took this as an opportunity to attack Perry on several fronts, but also to attack the HPV vaccines themselves, playing on popular fears which link mental disease (retardation, autism) and vaccination.  That was not the end of her opine, adds one NPR story (where there is also a video link of the debate exchange),

"...on the Today show Tuesday morning, Bachmann went further, telling Matt Lauer, that a mother had approached her after the debate to recount the problems her daughter had after being vaccinated against HPV:

She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection. And she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. The mother was crying when she came up to me last night. I didn't know who she was before the debate. This is the very real concern and people have to draw their own conclusions.

When Lauer pressed Bachmann on whether she would keep pushing on the issue, she answered that it has traction "with a lot of people and we'll see what people say.""

Importantly, the American Academy of Pediatricians released a statement refuting Bachmann's misrepresentation of the HPV vaccine, stating:

"The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation. There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement. Since the vaccine has been introduced, more than 35 million doses have been administered, and it has an excellent safety record.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Family Physicians all recommend that girls receive HPV vaccine around age 11 or 12. That’s because this is the age at which the vaccine produces the best immune response in the body, and because it’s important to protect girls well before the onset of sexual activity. In the U.S., about 6 million people, including teens, become infected with HPV each year, and 4,000 women die from cervical cancer. This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer."

It's a shame that such a correction may receive less publicity than the debate itself.  (As an aside, it's also a shame that such vaccines are only best-practice in female patient cohorts.  Men can get HPV as well, and spread the virus more easily, particularly since as there is no test for a male HPV infection men may not know of their infection before sexual contact.  Beyond the risk of increased transmission, the virus is also being linked to oral cancers in male patients -- a risk which, although to my knowledge is unstudied at this point, may be good cause for male HPV vaccination too.)

The HPV exchange also brought up some interesting campaign financing questions regarding Merck's donations to Gov. Perry's campaigns and Republican fundraising efforts.  Coincidentally, Merck is the manufacturer of guardasil, the leading HPV vaccine on the market -- the vaccine which Gov. Perry wanted to mandate as "required" for all girls of a certain age in the state of Texas. 

Meanwhile, here in Wisconsin, there's shaping up to be another debate on science regulation as legislation has been proposed which prohibits the use of fetal tissue in research.  Dr. Stephen Duncan, a researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin and leader in stem cell biology wrote an eloquent opinion piece which detailed the importance of access to fetal tissue in research.  Importantly, he concluded,

"If AB 214 is enacted, it will not reverse the original decision to terminate three pregnancies. It will, however, jeopardize future health care advances, decimate biomedical research within the state, lead to substantial job losses and a significant "brain drain" from Wisconsin and cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding and biomedical commerce."

The statement puts at odds the need to create/preserve jobs and revive the economy, and the desire to integrate conservative social values into the workings of science.  It remains to be seen which of these two agendas wins out in the long run.