OK, let’s connect the dots. Merck produced and marketed Vioxx. Vioxx is bad. Merck produces and markets Gardasil. Gardasil is bad.
Yes, this is the logic of the vaccine deniers–associate Big Pharma with one of the mistakes it made in the past, then use that association to convince themselves everything produced by that Big Pharma company to be evil. This is a perfect example of the logical fallacy of Poisoning the Well, which states that one side of an argument pre-provides information that could produce a biased opinion of the reasoning, positive or negative.
Examples of this poisoning of the well abound throughout the antivaccination cults. There are numerous tired, hackneyed myths about the drug thalidomide, which, in the 1950′s was marketed by a German pharmaceutical company for the treatment of morning sickness in pregnant women (as one of its many indications). At that time, medications were not as strictly controlled as they are today for use during pregnancy, and thalidomide was given out rather freely to pregnant women. Unfortunately, nearly 10,000 children (half of them born in the former Federal Republic of Germany, also known as West Germany, but none in East Germany, because the communists did not approve it for use) were born with birth defects as a result of the drug.
Here’s an important point. Despite significant pressure from politicians and Big Pharma, the FDA, specifically the Director of the FDA at the time, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, blocked approval of thalidomide in the USA, because it did not have the testing that proved it was not dangerous to the fetus. This showed the weakness of the drug approval process at that time, and led to better and more complex rules for drug testing. But Dr. Kelsey is one of the heroes of modern medicine for standing up for better drug testing. And saving a lot of American babies from birth defects.
But let’s fast forward to today. Thalidomide is not some drug that’s laying on the waste heap of failed drugs. It is part of the standard treatment for leprosy, a horrible disease in many parts of the world. Because of our understanding of how thalidomide did harm the developing fetus, scientists began to examine its power in treating other diseases. For example, thalidomide is part of the chemotherapy regimen that is used to treat multiple myeloma, a type of cancer of plasma. Modern treatments, which include thalidomide, has increased survivability from 3-4 years by almost double to 5-7 years or more. So if you’re going to invent a vacuous strawman argument, trying to poison the well about pharmaceutical companies and the FDA, well, using thalidomide as your well-poisoner is not going to fly in an intelligent conversation.
But let’s get back to Vioxx, since it’s more recent. And it was approved by the FDA.
The twisted illogical gambits of the antivaccination cult