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GUEST: Vanessa Dixon, member of the Parents and Citizens Committee to Stop Medical Experimentation, based in Washington DC

Last June, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a new vaccine produced by pharmaceutical giant, Merck, called Gardasil. Gardasil is a vaccination aimed at preventing a viral form of cervical cancer and genital warts. Human papillomavirus or HPV, is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world, and most women have had it. Often it will disappear on its own but each year hundreds of thousands of women and girls in the United States develop persistent infections from it, more than 10,000 get cervical cancer. 3,700 die from the cancer. Following the FDA decision to approve Gardasil, the Center for Disease Control’s immunization committee recommended less than a month later that the vaccination shots be given to all young girls and women between the ages of 9 and 26. Currently four states in the US are in various stages of proposing or passing legislation to mandate the virus for young girls: Texas, New Mexico, Washington DC, and California. Proponents of mandating Gardasil shots on young girls include Texas governor Rick Perry and a non-profit group called Women in Government. Both have been shown to receive substantial donations from Merck corporation. In fact, Governor Perry’s former chief of staff now works as a lobbyist for Merck.