Reality Check of the Day: Based on recent polls, Republican frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry currently holds a double-digit lead over GOP understudy Mitt Romney. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who trails them both, is in desperate need of a quick fix to boost her flagging numbers.
Enter: HPV.
Human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection, according to the CDC — is responsible for almost every new case of cervical cancer diagnosed in the US. Luckily, hard-working scientists have developed a vaccine that prevents the types of HPV most commonly associated with cervical cancer.
Backstory: In February of 2007, Gov. Rick Perry approved an executive order that required young girls to be vaccinated against HPV before they enter the sixth grade.
The order was easy enough to opt out of — parents were given the option of signing a form objecting to the vaccination — but social conservatives saw it as controversial nonetheless. Their main argument: Vaccinating against a sexually transmitted disease would encourage sexual promiscuity. Perry offered his critics a highly rational retort: “If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it, claiming it would encourage smoking?”
The order was overturned by the legislature a few months later.
Since then, RP65 has come up a few times when Perry was in the hot seat, but at last night’s GOP debate, Michele Bachmann put Perry in her sights and launched an all-out anti-vaccination campaign.
“I’m a mom. And I’m a mom of three children,” Bachmann said, “And to have innocent little twelve-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong. That should never be done. It’s a violation of a liberty interest.”
She then went on to claim that the HPV vaccine was a “potentially dangerous drug” and claimed Perry was merely kowtowing to the demands of drug company donors. Later, Bachmann told Fox News she had met an audience member whose daughter allegedly became “retarded” after received the vaccine.
As mentioned above, Perry’s executive order had an explicit opt-out for parents. More importantly, any claim that receipt of the vaccine led to mental disability is entirely anecdotal. In its HPV Vaccine Safety FAQ, the CDC lists “pain at the injection site, headache, nausea, and fever” as the most serious side effects directly linked to the vaccine.
After Bachmann claimed on this morning’s Today show that “mental retardation” as a result of HPV vaccination was a “very real concern,” the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a highly unusual move, felt it necessary to issue a press release on the matter.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation,” said AAP president Dr. O. Marion Burton. “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement.”
The release goes on to stress the importance of administering the HPV vaccine “around age 11 or 12” when it is likely to produce “the best immune response in the body.”
“In the U.S., about 6 million people, including teens, become infected with HPV each year,” the statement concludes, “and 4,000 women die from cervical cancer. This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer.”
To put into perspective just how far to the right Bachmann’s dangerous, conspiratorial, anti-science scaremongering is, on his show today Rush Limbaugh said “[t]here’s no evidence that the vaccine causes mental retardation,” and lamented the fact that Bachmann “might have jumped the shark.”
[newyorker / cdc / wapo / cnn / msnbc / npr / thehill.]
![Because America is clearly not getting fat fast enough, Burger King has begun testing home delivery at a handful of restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area.
The success of the program will eventually lead to a nationwide rollout.
A few restrictions apply: Customers must live within a 10-minute drive from a BK location, and a $2 delivery charge will be tacked on to orders below the minimum total of $8 to $10.
Every whopper and fries will be hand-delivered to your door within 30 minutes or less using “new delivery packaging technology” engineered to keep your food warm from the grill to your gullet. (So that’s what NASA’s been up to since they scrubbed the Space Shuttle program!)
This isn’t Burger King’s first foray into stay-on-your-couch convenience: Internationally, the chain has been in the delivery business for some time.
“Burger King has had great success with it all across the globe including in Mexico, Turkey, Brazil, Columbia and Peru,” said spokeswoman Kristen Hauser. “e are currently testing the service to bring this convenience to the United States, starting with just a few restaurants in the DC area.”
[latimes.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly07knGQOg1qa56bco1_500.jpg)
![thedailywhat:
Legalize It of the Day: A 20-year, federally funded study conducted jointly by researchers at UCSF and UAB found that smoking marijuana once a week, or even once a day in some instances, did no long-term damage to the lungs.
The study, published today in the the Journal of the American Medical Association, tracked 5,000 individuals across 20 years, and compared their usage of marijuana and tobacco to their health stats.
Cigarette smokers saw a considerable loss in lung function over time, but participants who smokes marijuana as often as once a day for seven years saw no change.
Additionally, no harmful effects were recorded in individuals who smoked marijuana occasionally for longer.
According to the study’s authors, one possible explanation for the results may be THC — the active ingredient in marijuana. The compound is known to combat inflammation, and may be responsible for offsetting irritants that cause lung problems.
Dr. Stefan Kertesz, the study’s co-author, also posits that an unintended side-effect of marijuana usage is the strengthening lung tissue as a result of breathing deeply during inhalation.
And as if all that wasn’t enough, researchers found that pot smoking might actually improve lung function. “At levels of marijuana exposure commonly seen in Americans, occasional marijuana use was associated with increases in lung air flow rates and increases in lung capacity,” Kertesz said.
He did note that the increase was not enough to “make you feel better,” but, then again, if you’re smoking marijuana, chances are you’re already feeling pretty great.
[ap / afp.]](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxluk30Cez1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
![Reality Check of the Day: Based on recent polls, Republican frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry currently holds a double-digit lead over GOP understudy Mitt Romney. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who trails them both, is in desperate need of a quick fix to boost her flagging numbers.
Enter: HPV.
Human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection, according to the CDC — is responsible for almost every new case of cervical cancer diagnosed in the US. Luckily, hard-working scientists have developed a vaccine that prevents the types of HPV most commonly associated with cervical cancer.
Backstory: In February of 2007, Gov. Rick Perry approved an executive order that required young girls to be vaccinated against HPV before they enter the sixth grade.
The order was easy enough to opt out of — parents were given the option of signing a form objecting to the vaccination — but social conservatives saw it as controversial nonetheless. Their main argument: Vaccinating against a sexually transmitted disease would encourage sexual promiscuity. Perry offered his critics a highly rational retort: “If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it, claiming it would encourage smoking?”
The order was overturned by the legislature a few months later.
Since then, RP65 has come up a few times when Perry was in the hot seat, but at last night’s GOP debate, Michele Bachmann put Perry in her sights and launched an all-out anti-vaccination campaign.
“I’m a mom. And I’m a mom of three children,” Bachmann said, “And to have innocent little twelve-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong. That should never be done. It’s a violation of a liberty interest.”
She then went on to claim that the HPV vaccine was a “potentially dangerous drug” and claimed Perry was merely kowtowing to the demands of drug company donors. Later, Bachmann told Fox News she had met an audience member whose daughter allegedly became “retarded” after received the vaccine.
As mentioned above, Perry’s executive order had an explicit opt-out for parents. More importantly, any claim that receipt of the vaccine led to mental disability is entirely anecdotal. In its HPV Vaccine Safety FAQ, the CDC lists “pain at the injection site, headache, nausea, and fever” as the most serious side effects directly linked to the vaccine.
After Bachmann claimed on this morning’s Today show that “mental retardation” as a result of HPV vaccination was a “very real concern,” the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a highly unusual move, felt it necessary to issue a press release on the matter.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation,” said AAP president Dr. O. Marion Burton. “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement.”
The release goes on to stress the importance of administering the HPV vaccine “around age 11 or 12” when it is likely to produce “the best immune response in the body.”
“In the U.S., about 6 million people, including teens, become infected with HPV each year,” the statement concludes, “and 4,000 women die from cervical cancer. This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer.”
To put into perspective just how far to the right Bachmann’s dangerous, conspiratorial, anti-science scaremongering is, on his show today Rush Limbaugh said “[t]here’s no evidence that the vaccine causes mental retardation,” and lamented the fact that Bachmann “might have jumped the shark.”
[newyorker / cdc / wapo / cnn / msnbc / npr / thehill.]](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrhl1yDfP81qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
