Women, girls are the losers in the Merck fiasco

BOSTON — Hasn't anyone ever told drug companies to put a warning label on their lobbying? You know, the kind you find on every little prescription bottle? Caution: Too much lobbying may result in an overdose of suspicion. Push too hard and you may experience political acid reflux.

As it is, Merck seems to have rolled a million — or many millions — into a shoestring. And the real losers may be girls and women who need access to the vaccine against cervical cancer.

Let's return to that magical moment when clinical trials proved that a new vaccine was nearly 100 percent effective in preventing two strains of the HPV virus that causes most cervical cancer. This is the second-leading cancer killer of women in the world. In America, about 9,700 women are diagnosed with it every year and 3,700 die.

In October 2005, Eliav Barr of Merck said exuberantly, "This is it. This is the Holy Grail." Merck, barely recovering from its Vioxx troubles, was the first of two companies to develop a vaccine. There were hosannas all around. Or, well, almost all around .

The response from the abstinence-only crowd was less enthusiastic. Family Research Council's Tony Perkins said that "it sends the wrong message." After all, HPV had been almost as useful in the scare tactics of abstinence-only education as had HIV. There were fanciful charges that preventing cancer would encourage promiscuity.

But it was bad PR to be against cancer prevention. So right-wing groups dropped back from opposing the vaccine itself to opposing mandatory school vaccination.

All of this might have just simmered along, but something happened on the way to gradual acceptance. After FDA approval, the folks at Merck saw Gardasil as their anti-Vioxx, the drug that would help them do well by doing good.

Let us say that the lobbying and advertising that ensued were not heavy-handed by drug company standards. Let us not say much about drug company standards.

Nineteen states introduced legislation to add Gardasil to the list of school vaccines. But the plans blew up when Rick Perry, the governor of Texas and a conservative darling, issued an executive order mandating vaccines. His order allowed parents to opt out on religious or philosophical grounds, the same all-purpose loophole that has worked with other vaccines.

But it turned out that Perry's former chief of staff is now a lobbyist for Merck. Did that look bad? Whoa, Nellie. Did it look bad that Merck had funded an organization of women legislators backing similar bills? Whoa, Merck.