I am talking about Gardisil, too. Merck wanted the drug to make money quickly, so they went for the approval as a cancer-preventative in young women, first. Fewer clinical trials, and possible cancer-preventers get greenlighted quickly through FDA to get to public use to save lives.
Gardisil does help in those few cervical cancers associated with post-herpesvirus infection in women.
But the true intended use of the drug is as an STD preventative for sexually transmitted herpesvirus, which is why the company went forward with the additional clinical trials for labeling in men and boys since the drug first came on the market, and the drug got that approval this weekend.
That was Merck's ultimate goal with this drug since the start.
I agree with you, there have been cases of drug companies covering up findings. That's why, unless it's very important, I often don't use new drugs until they have been on the market for a year, out in general public use and misuse in thousands of patients. In the vet world, it's a little better than in the human world, I think, because it's a smaller number of doctors (60,000 or so) and we talk among ourselves, as a profession, more. So "bad juju" with new drugs rumors flys around pretty fast.
I usually fault the FDA for being slow. Lots of good drugs with long histories of successful clinical use in Europe do not get US approval for use.
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"Have the clean racing people run any ads explaining that giving a horse a Starbucks and a chocolate poppyseed muffin for breakfast would likely result in a ten year suspension for the trainer?" - Dr. Andrew Roberts
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