Friday, July 08, 2016

Everything You Wanted to Know About Vaccine Marketing, PR, Earned Media, Lobbying, and "Anti-Vaxxers"

Anti-HPV vaccines (e.g., Merck's Gardisil) are back in the news these days.

Last night, NBC Nightly News reported "Study Shows Alarming Rise in HPV-Related Cancers." The takeaways are (1) HPV infection causes cancers, (2) those cancers can be prevented with new vaccines, but (3) not enough kids are getting vaccinated.

A woman with cervical cancer attributed to HPV says at the end of the piece "I don't know how you can not prevent your child from getting cancer if there is a way to do it."

This comes on the heels of a new Merck campaign that blames parents for not getting their children vaccinated (see "Merck Ad Blames Parents & Asks: 'Mom, Dad, Did You Know'".

Click on "Read more" for the details, including numbers form the CDC, and links to articles and blog posts related HPV vaccine marketing over the years.



Merck's "blame the parent" campaign was not the first pharma campaign to blame or demonize relatives. Also see: "GSK's Whooping Cough Vaccination Campaign Needlessly Demonizes Wolves & Grannies!" which may have been aired because Pertussis (Whooping Cough) [is] Making a Comeback. Why? New Vaccine is Less Effective"

Parents who have been reluctant to have their children vaccinated with Gardisil have been labelled "anti-vaxxers" and called "stupid" by the pharmaceutical industry as is evident in these articles:
Here are some "anti-vaxxers" that include a scientist from within pharma's rank and file, a famous rich person, and a celebrity who is NOT Jenny McCarthy:
Vaccines are a big business for pharma, which may explain why many pharma people think there's a special place in hell for "anti-vaxxers":
Meanwhile, "Vaccine Reduces HPV in Teenage Girls, But Many Physicians Don't Recommend It to Parents." If Merck can't win over parents and physicians, then it will go around them and promote directly to young people and even lobbying to make anti-HPV vaccination mandatory, which did not help its efforts:
Don't get me started on Flu vaccines! Why don't we have a universal one so we don't have to get a new one every year, which often is not as effective as one might think?:

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