Pros And Cons Of Mandatory Vaccination

For many, it is one of several reasons why they oppose compulsory vaccinations: an overwhelming belief that there is a ‘big pharma’ conspiracy present in the pharmaceutical companies that produce the vaccinations, and also within the government that control vaccination purchasing and legislation. The ‘big pharma’ conspiracy theorists are majority based in the US, but will ultimately affect any opposition to compulsory vaccination legislation in the UK due to the nature of the Internet and the case study that the US provides as a country with compulsory vaccinations for children entering state education.
‘Big pharma’ conspiracy theorists believe that there is a conflict of interest in the pharmaceutical companies and the government, with both
focusing more on financial gain than the health of the people. Compulsory vaccination schedules in the UK would allow for an opportunity to make an even larger profit for pharmaceutical companies manufacturing vaccines, similar to how it is in the present in the US. These beliefs are not unfounded either. Merck, the seventh largest pharmaceutical company in the world, was criticised and sued recently in a whistle-blower suit in 2010 by two former virologist employees that accused the company of amplifying and overemphasizing the efficacy of the MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) vaccine (5). The two virologists claim Merck altered clinical trial results to document the MMR-II vaccine to be 95% effective (a benchmark the FDA has granted to approve Merck vaccines since the MMR-I vaccine in 1967) in order to maintain the exclusive license to manufacture it (5). The suit claims that the ineffective vaccine helped facilitate two recent mumps outbreaks in the US after the US government bought four million doses of it each year for at least a decade: 65,000 cases reported in a highly vaccinated population in 2006 and another 5,000 cases confirmed in a second outbreak in 2009 (5). Mumps was originally targeted to be eradicated by the CDC by the time of the first outbreak, but Merck’s financial gain was prioritised and the efficacy of the vaccine was undermined (5).
The same company that is trusted to manufacture the vaccines that are administered to children only adds credence to the ‘big pharma’ perception that pharmaceutical companies prefer to pursue profit and to “preserve their market share” than protect and ensure the health of the customer (5). Rather than develop a new MMR vaccine formulation, tests were altered to produce the desired efficacy with no thought to the effect on the population’s health (5). Merck had also previously been involved in a predicament as the manufacturer of the almost certainly fatal arthritis drug Vioxx, which may have caused 28,000 deaths before it was removed from the market in 2004 (6).
A compulsory vaccination schedule for children in the UK may encourage the pharmaceutical companies the UK government purchases vaccines from, to defraud the UK government too (vaccines manufactured by Merck are also purchased by the UK government by intermediate companies) (6).
However, there is proof that Merck may also be bribing select individuals in the US government, trusted vaccine groups and known sexual health groups to promote new vaccine legislation to add their new HPV vaccine to the compulsory childhood vaccination schedule (6). The HPV vaccine immunises against the human papilloma virus that can ultimately cause cervical cancer, but due to HPV having an association with sexually transmitted diseases, many pro-abstinence campaigners oppose such a vaccine being compulsory as they believe it may encourage sexual activity. Nonetheless, pro-abstinence Republic Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, issued an executive order that would cause the Gardasil HPV vaccine to be compulsory for girls in sixth grade (year 7 in the UK), which confused many people until it was discovered that Perry had accepted $6000 in campaign contributions from Merck (6). Perry had accepted a bribe to encourage new mandatory HPV vaccine legislation and in doing so, proved that pharmaceutical companies work too closely with government policy makers (7). Now even the general population could not, not be sceptical about the pharmaceutical industries’ and government’s apparent ulterior financial motives to make the largest possible profit with compulsory vaccinations
(7).