{"id":2482,"date":"2011-10-05T13:00:38","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T18:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=2482"},"modified":"2011-12-29T16:30:02","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T21:30:02","slug":"candidates-cancer-and-public-health-in-the-public-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2011\/10\/05\/candidates-cancer-and-public-health-in-the-public-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"Candidates, Cancer, and Public Health in the Public Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"<\/a>Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) has gone on record against the Gardasil vaccine preventing cervical and possibly throat cancer, calling it \u201cdangerous\u201d during and after the CNN-Tea Party Republican Debate in mid-September.\u00a0\u00a0Medical experts quickly objected (two bioethicists even offered up $10,000<\/a> if Bachmann could produce scientific evidence that the vaccine had, as Bachmann claimed, caused mental retardation in one patient), and Bachmann backpedaled, admitting that she is neither a doctor nor a scientist.\u00a0\u00a0Yet, as a recent New York Times<\/em><\/a> article notes,\u00a0the effects of Bachmann\u2019s disparaging remarks against the vaccine will likely outlive this election cycle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[T]he harm to public health may have already been done. When politicians or celebrities raise alarms about vaccines, even false alarms, vaccination rates drop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cThese things always set you back about three years, which is exactly what we can\u2019t afford,\u201d said Dr. Rodney E. Willoughby, a professor of\u00a0pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a member of the committee on\u00a0infectious diseases of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The academy favors use of the vaccine, as do other medical groups\u00a0and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although the vaccine\u00a0has been proven to prevent cervical cancer and has been declared safe by the Institute of Medicine (a government advisory group), and despite backing\u00a0from the\u00a0American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vaccine has been slow to catch on, lagging behind vaccines licensed at the same time, such as one to combat meningitis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis vaccine has been portrayed as \u2018the sex vaccine,\u2019 \u201d said Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a member of the infectious disease committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics. \u201cTalking about sexuality for pediatricians and other providers is often difficult.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Recent research <\/a>published by Siegwart Lindenberg, Janeke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel, social scientists in the Netherlands, has confirmed that “star status” can really boost a cause (Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2011). Unfortunately, in this case, Bachmann’s public status lends credibility to her scientific missteps and will likely, the New York Times<\/em> says, set back HPV vaccination efforts by years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) has gone on record against the Gardasil vaccine preventing cervical and possibly throat cancer, calling it \u201cdangerous\u201d during and after the CNN-Tea Party Republican Debate in mid-September.\u00a0\u00a0Medical experts quickly objected (two bioethicists even offered up $10,000 if Bachmann could produce scientific evidence that the vaccine had, as Bachmann claimed, caused mental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":973,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[35,2862,39115,665,176,3652],"class_list":["post-2482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-children","tag-hpv","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-sexuality","tag-vaccination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/973"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2482"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2679,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions\/2679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}