Holy cow. Every once in a while the least likely politicians pleasnatly surprise me.
Apparently Rick Perry of Texas is the first state governor to make HPV vaccines mandatory for girls. He ordered the state to adopt rules requiring girls entering the sixth grade as of September 2008 to be vaccinated. The vaccine protects girls against strains of the human papillomavirus that cause most cases of cervical cancer.
Of course, he’s being opposed, including by his own Lieutenant Governor. (In Texas, according to Molly Ivins, the Lite Gov actually has more more power than the Gov.) And of course the objections are that the state government ought not to “presume to know better than the parents what to do with children”. On the other hand, Texas allows parents to opt out of inoculations by filing an affidavit objecting to the vaccine on religious or philosophical reasons, so I don’t see that they have a beef, presuming that the affidavit process is relatively easy. I mean, G-d forbid parents should have to go to a little extra effort to keep their daughters vulnerable to cancer, should they be raped or even *gasp* have consensual sex someday.
Even better, the vaccine will be available for free to girls ages 9 to 18 who are uninsured or whose insurance does not cover vaccines. And Perry ordered Medicaid to offer Gardasil to women ages 19 to 21.
I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly impressed by an action of Rick Perry’s before, but this time I am. I hope his opponents will lose this one.
Personally, I have some reservations about Gardasil, but I also remember when they tested the polio vaccine on schoolchildren — my little sister was one of them. Scary as it might have been, the fact is that there are doctors now who have never seen a case of polio (or diptheria or whooping cough…) It is philosophical, of course; no one wants to admit that her 12-year-old daughter is engaging in risky behavior.