Columns

Politics, morality and policy collide

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published February 27, 2007

Well, this is a first. The drug industry finally found a product it couldn't sell so easily to an eager public.

We're not talking about the drug for toenail fungus. That one seems pretty popular.

Not the one about preventing twitchy legs under the bedsheet, now labeled as restless leg syndrome.

Not the one that advertises, hey, take this pill and you can eat that big meal after all.

And certainly not the one about keeping men of a certain age "in the game."

But as it turns out, we do have our limits. We have finally balked at a new drug that is intended to ...

Prevent an especially deadly form of cancer in women.

As my colleague Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler reported Monday, the giant drug company Merck is beating a retreat in Florida and elsewhere on a new drug called Gardasil.

Gardasil is a vaccination against a virus that causes 70 percent of cervical cancers.

Merck launched an unusual campaign around the country to push vaccinations, even to require them by law.

Now, setting aside the health benefits of Gardasil for a second, Merck's campaign by itself is scary. It raises big red warning flags.

It's bad enough that the drug industry has us all begging our doctors for the latest pill. At least that's a free-market decision.

But in the case of Gardasil, Merck tried to influence the writing of scientific public health policy and law.

This is a bad idea even if the drug works, and even if it has no nasty effects in the long run. In today's world, that is not always such a clear question, is it?

And yet Merck still might have succeeded in its campaign, had it not been for one teeny, tiny extra detail:

The virus targeted by Gardasil is transmitted by sexual contact.

And so, just as with the issues of contraception and sex education, we have the debate of whether it is better to Educate Just In Case, or whether that Condones It And Encourages Them.

(By the way, if you ever want to watch liberals and conservatives switch sides, then trot out my idea of gun-safety education in the schools. My gun-hating friends suddenly become supporters of "abstinence only" education: Just Tell Them Not To Touch It.)

Okay. So, IF we get past the problem of a drug company lobbying for its own product, and IF we assume the drug is effective and safe, then we still have the political question of how to use it.

The Florida proposal was a compromise: Have a vaccination program, but give parents the option of not taking part.

Reasonable? I think so, yet there still are objections on both sides. There's still the conservative worry that such a program condones sex.

And from the other side, you can argue that the chance to stop the disease outweighs even the rights of parents. In an age where we allow young women to get a judge's approval for an abortion without parental consent, shouldn't they be able to choose to protect themselves against a deadly virus?

Okay. I would make it highly illegal for drug companies to lobby for laws involving the use of their products from now on. I would pass the Florida vaccination program with the right of parents to opt out -but also with a judicial safety valve for young women who want it anyway.

No doubt, this will satisfy everyone. Right?

[Last modified February 27, 2007, 00:10:11]