Justin Healy, ComeLook.Org, 04 November 2010
How School Principals and Health Authorities conspire with a for-profit 'Injection-Service' agency to operate an 'anti-cancer' €100-per-jab scheme from Irish School premises.
The 'Aviva Schools CCV Catch Up Programme' launched on 27th September 2010 with the blessing of the Irish Minister for Health & Children, sees Health Insurance firm Aviva and "Infusion-Care" agency 'Point of Care' team up to target Irish schoolgirls aged 14-18 for injection with the controversial HPV vaccine called Gardasil. This "innovative initiative", according to Point of Care 'CEO' Jim Joyce, will give these girls "access to the vaccine at an affordable price and from the convenient location of their school".
The Silent Partner..The silent partner set to benefit most from this scheme is Merck, maker of the Gardasil vaccine (and their partner Sanofi Pasteur MSD who market it in Europe). This programme will allow access to up to 150,000 schoolchildren, with the course of 3 injections priced at €299 (a €50 deduction will apply if the parents take out a health insurance policy with Aviva ).
This is a welcome win for Merck, however minor, given that, according to CNN, Gardasil 'has proven to be a marketplace dud' and sales 'fell off a cliff' once word got out on the alarming numbers of associated post-injection Severe Adverse Reactions (including 80 Deaths) reported to the FDA post-approval drug monitoring system 'VAERs'. In fact, Merck literally cannot even give it away for free in places like India, after one such Gardasil program was suspended earlier this year due to the post-injection toll of deaths among young tribal girls.
In the EU, pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Sanofi Pasteur are banned from engaging in direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. In order to generate interest in a new drug or vaccine, these companies usually fund surrogates, typically a 'Patient Lobby' group such as 'The ECCA' (European Cervical Cancer Association), to publicly disseminate “information” which is selectively edited to highlight the benefits of the drugs and gloss over potential adverse drug reactions.
By an incredible coincidence, the CEO of Point of Care, the agency promoting this Irish school 'Catch up' programme, and a 'Regional Market Access Leader' at Merck, are currently both members of the 5-man board of the "Schering Plough Alumni Community".
PTA Meeting Faciltated by Injection-Agency 'Specialist'Based on this reported account from the principal of one of the first schools to sign up for the scheme, the soft-sell goes like this:
A Point of Care 'rep' may contact a School Principal and may refer to an industry commissioned "survey" carried out by a "PR Research" agency which claims to show that most parents believe it would be a ‘good thing’ for their daughter to receive a cervical cancer vaccine. Note that the survey quoted in the current ‘Aviva Schools CCV Catch Up Programme’ used a tiny "sample" and could hardly be classed as representative (or independent).
Next, in response to "parental concerns", and in order to 'to find out more', the School Principal organises a Parent Teacher Meeting which will be 'facilitated' by a 'Specialist' from Point of Care. Then the parents will be told that the liquid drug in question will prevent cervical cancer and is perfectly safe to inject.
What they are not told is that any protection (from some strains of HPV) offered by Gardasil is not expected to last beyond 10 years. The professor who headed up some of the Gardasil Clinical Trials (funded by Merck) admits to this in a 2007 article (" we know that most alum-based vaccines need boosters within 10 years"). As the average age at which cervical cancer is diagnosed in Ireland is at age 44 , this vaccination program alone can therefore not be expected to have any impact on the rates of cervical cancer.
Escorting healthy schoolkids onto the Gardasil train with "affordable, reduced price" ticketsAnother purpose of the scheme is to entice people to take out health insurance cover with co-sponsor Aviva. Consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Mona Joyce, a member of the 'Aviva Medical Council', (and whose renumeration details are not published on the Aviva website), adds her pitch to the Aviva press release: "“Aviva continue to be innovators in the Irish healthcare industry, looking for ways to make treatments more accessible and affordable. Cervical cancer vaccination can save lives and I fully support this initiative. The Aviva Schools CCV Catch-Up Programme will make this important vaccine more widely available and affordable at a reduced price of €249 for Aviva members".In her haste to promote the Aviva brand and the vaccine price reduction, it appears she has not researched the post marketing safety record of the vaccine in question. Or even glanced at the highly neuro-toxic ingredients. If she had, she might have got the "flashing lights" she referred to in a Dublin City Coroner's Court Inquest (on a former patient of hers) earlier this year, where she lamented, "If I'd known the train was going to crash, I would have escorted my patient off it."
Setting the PrecedentSuch is the extraordinarily lucrative business of administering vaccines in Ireland that doctors typically can charge 5 times the rate of that of UK GPs . Counteracting such medical establishment profiteering seems to be behind government acquiesence to allowing tax-payer funded public property to be made available as a venue for a for-profit injection agency to operate from.
However, with a green light being given to this 'Catch-up' scheme, in principal, it now appears that the precedent has been set for anyone with an injection to sell to simply ring up a school principal, and book a class to administer their 'product' to (after collecting signed 'informed consent' papers of course).
Protection for SchoolkidsDo schoolkids have a right to receive their education in an environment free from the insideous influence of profit-motivated individuals with disease mongering messages? Do school principals have the right to facilitate those marketeering questionable genetically engineered liquid drugs (i.e Gardasil) in disseminating their 'information leaflets' to parents and schoolkids?
Last month the European Parliament again voted to uphold a ban on direct-to-consumer advertising though pharmaceutical companies had been lobbying hard to have it lifted. Experience has shown how skilful the industry can be in manipulating ill-informed people into needless vaccination and overuse of prescription medicine. However, pharmaceutical companies still find a way to publicise their products through “disease awareness raising” and “information” campaigns for illnesses and drugs such as cervical cancer and Gardasil.
On the subject of DTCA, Tim Reed, Director of the Dutch based NGO Health Action International, explains the context in which unwary parents can be duped into participating in such an expensive, unsafe, and unnecessary* vaccination scheme.
"HAI Europe has witnessed the insidious creep of deliberate promotion of medical products to consumers, masquerading as patient information. We are aiming both to draw attention to the need for support for accurate, independent and relevant health information, and to combat scurrilous attempts to influence patients’ and consumers’ choice through advertising disguised as ‘patient information’’ he said.
*A free national cervical screening program is available in Ireland for over-25s. 95% of possible cervical cancer cases can be prevented in those who submit to regular screening.
**Details of the Survey:"The survey was carried out by Empathy Research online in May 2010, among members of Empathy Research’s Ideas Panel who had daughter(s) in secondary school (from 2nd to 6th year) and was living in the Republic of Ireland. There were a total of 100 participants in the full survey". See Website for PR Research agency "Empathy Research" - "Our results get attention".
See victims memorial page here for those who did not survive Gardasil.Testimonies here from US families of those disabled by Gardasil.
Contact
justin@comelook.org
.
Please read Disclaimer .
No comments:
Post a Comment