Drug ads with scary-sounding side effects have regularly appeared on TV since 1995, but rarely has a major pharmaceutical company played such an unscripted, prime-time role as Merck did Monday night - a moment that put the klieg sky lanterns on corporate political contributions.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann attacked fellow Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry during the GOP debate over the Texas governor's 2007 decision to have young girls inoculated against a virus that can contribute to cervical cancer.
The vaccine for the HPV virus is Gardasil, made in Merck's plant in West Point, Montgomery County.
The controversy spun around the country, with medicine, politics, ethics, religion, and business all coming into play.
"Is it about life or was it about millions of dollars and potentially billions for a drug company?" Bachmann asked Perry.
Perry said Merck gave his campaign only $5,000 of the roughly $30 million he raised.
"If you're saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I'm offended," Perry said.
The Texas Tribune reported that Merck had given Perry nearly $30,000 over his 10 years as governor and much more to the Republican Governors Association while Perry led that group. Merck also hired Perry's former chief of staff as a lobbyist.
The Associated Press reported that Perry's staff met with Merck personnel before the controversial 2007 decision. The Texas Legislature overturned Perry's inoculation order.
Merck had lobbied governors and state legislators to include the vaccine among those required for schoolchildren.
Evangelical Christian leaders opposed the vaccine in 2006, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its use. They expressed concerns that if girls 11 or 12 years old were vaccinated, they would be less inhibited sexually.
Bachmann and Perry are fighting for that branch of the party, and Bachmann was also playing to her donors. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bachmann has received some pharmaceutical money, though none from Merck, while receiving much more from single-issue conservative donors and financial groups.
In 2006, Wall Street analysts predicted Gardasil could bring $4 billion a year in sales. But with fewer states requiring vaccinations, sales hopes dimmed. Gardasil sales totaled $490 million in the first six months of 2011, according to Merck's second-quarter report.
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