If It Was a Snake, It Would Have Bit Him

Governor Rick Perry today trotted out Heather Burcham, a 31-year old Houston woman dying of cervical cancer, to promote his plan to force-inject thousands of young Texas girls with Gardasil, the cervical cancer vaccine marketed by pharmaceutical giant and Perry patron Merck.

First, let me say this: Ms. Burcham's illness is a tragedy, and I am loathe to exploit it any more than Rick Perry already has. From a news story about her in the American-Statesman, I gather Ms. Burcham -- who taught in Mexico and was a pre-school teacher in Houston until sickness forced her to quit -- is probably someone I would like.

So here's the deal, according to Ross Ramsey's Texas Weekly (subscription required):

She said she went undiagnosed for four years by four different doctors who told her she had another, unrelated disease. By the time the physicians figured out what was going on, she had a stage four cancer than has spread into her lungs, one kidney and pancreas.
Burcham said doctors assumed she was too young to have cervical cancer and missed the cancer even after an operation. They didn't do a biopsy, thinking her age ruled out the cancer. They told her, she said, that she had endometriosis and needed a hysterectomy.

According to the Dallas Morning News:

Ms. Burcham ... believes doctors dropped the ball. They never talked to her about HPV – a disease she associated with promiscuity – and never considered someone her age might have it or cervical cancer.

The American-Statesman article adds that, "during one trip to an emergency room, she was told to seek psychiatric help." Ms. Burcham wants to spend the remainder of her life educating people about cervical cancer and how it can be prevented by, naturally, Gardasil.

The sad part is this: since Rick Perry is proposing the vaccine for 11-12 year-olds, Ms. Burcham is only, say, 20 years too late for the mandatory vaccine to do her any good. But the incompetence, obliqueness, and ineptitude of the various doctors that mistreated her have all occurred in the last four years -- since we "reformed" our medical malpractice laws in 2003 with the passage of H.B. 4 and Prop 12. Rick Perry could have done something about that, but he did not. In fact, he actively worked to immunize those doctors from responsibility for their actions.

According to Ramsey, the media at least fumbled with this contradiction, but got nowhere:

Burcham said she's not interested in suing any of the doctors, given the short time she has left. A spokesman for Perry — asked whether the state plans to investigate to see whether Burcham's doctors should be punished or have their licenses revoked, said they hadn't asked Burcham for the names of the physicians who misdiagnosed her.

Sadly, Heather Burcham will die, probably some time soon and certainly before her time. Even more sadly, Rick Perry probably believes in the Gardasil vaccine as sincerely as he believes in immunizing doctors who repeatedly misdiagnose and mistreat patients.

By the way, I am no expert on House Bill 4, but I think it has provisions in it that immunize drug manufacturers from liability for their product's labeling, directions, etc., if certain minimum FDA standards are met. In other words, if Gardasil turns out to be a fiasco on the order of Vioxx, Merck may still get a free ride.

Papilloma, Papilloma, Bo-Bapilloma

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times (which, by the way, is the only Texas paper to have a channel on AvantGo.com -- what's up with that, tech-savvy Austin American-Statesman?) has an interesting op-ed from Dr. Steve Hotze about Perry's executive order mandating that all 11 and 12-year old girls receive Merck's Gardasil vaccine. Allow me to summarize:

1. Merck's ox was in the ditch because of all the Vioxx litigation, on which it was losing its shirt;
2. Merck hit upon the idea of mandating Gardasil as a way of recouping its losses;
3. Merck formed a group called Women in Government as a front to promote its pro-Gardasil agenda. They have created the "Challenge to Eliminate Cervical Cancer Campaign," so named because of the discount on uppercase "C"s they received from their printer;
4. WiG's job was to pass friendly legislation in all the states, and Perry simultaneously jump-started and bypassed that effort with his executive order.

Hotze's conclusion? "This decision is not based on science but upon personal power, profit and politics."

Pretty standard paranoid delusion stuff, except that Steve Hotze is a right-wing nutjob who's spent much of the last decade supporting Rick Perry's career because Perry is a True Christian. Hotze, in fact, is a member of the Christian Reconstructionist sect that believes our nation should become a theocracy while we trigger Armageddon and wait for the Rapture. I guess water IS thicker than blood.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The Dallas Morning News has an article today about how presidential hopefuls of both parties are swooping into Texas, dragging the sack for campaign contributions in anticipation of the first BILLION DOLLAR PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SEASON.

Let's pause and contemplate the notion that a billion dollars will be spent electing someone President in 2008. Think of the promises, implicit and explicit, that will be made in the course of accumulating that much money.

Anyway, the article mentions that "[i]n 2004, Texas ranked behind only California and New York among donor states with $33 million in contributions to candidates for the primary season." Obviously the McCains and Clintons and Giulianis and Obamas are hoping for a repeat performance by Texas donors.

The article goes on to say, however, that "the extra attention on Texas might not amount to much. Candidates will visit the state frequently to collect checks, but they may not campaign here." This has been Texas's problem since the 1980s -- Texas is not a battleground state so none of the money raised in Texas is plowed back into the state for infrastructure building, leadership development, or any other party-building activities.

While the Democratic Party in Texas has literally had trouble keeping the doors open over the last several years, the DMN article reports that "Hillary Rodham Clinton raised $852,000 in Texas for her re-election to the Senate last year" and "John Edwards ... raised $328,000 from Texas in the last two years for his political action committee." Yowzir! In case you're not good at new math, that's a cool $1.18 million that will never be seen in Texas again.

And that is the tip of the iceberg. Senatorial and congressional candidates of both parties from all over the country troop through Texas, using us as an ATM machine for their political ambitions.

As long as this continues, the Texas Democratic Party, and the larger progressive movement, will be starved of resources as they try to build the leadership, ideas, communications and political capacity we need to challenge right-wing and Republican hegemony in Texas.