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Health and Healthcare

Merck Pressured to Halt Gardasil Vaccine Lobbying

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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By H.S. Ayoub
BioHealth Investor.com

I wrote earlier about the anti-vaccination movement, and how Merck (MRK) has been receiving a lot of backlash because of its lobbying efforts.

Merck (MRK) has been lobbying pretty hard for mandating the vaccination of pre-teen girls with its HPV vaccine Gardasil.

More than 20 states have drafted bills to mandate the vaccination, and in fact, an executive order was made by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to force young girls to be vaccinated. Mr. Perry’s executive order calls for all girls entering sixth grade in that state to be vaccinated by September 2008.

Public backlash against the mandate, including parent groups, has forced Merck to end its lobbying campaign. Among the main arguments made by the opposition included, the freedom to make that decision for their daughters on their own, and of course, the high cost. A three dose regimen of Gardasil costs $360, higher than most mandated vaccination programs.

Merck will now focus on programs aimed at educating the public about HPV, which is a virus that is sexually transmitted, and is a cause of cervical cancer.

http://www.biohealthinvestor.com/

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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