Good news from Texas in their efforts to stop Governor Perry’s order to force every 11 and 12-year old girl in Texas to be injected with Merck’s Gardasil.
House adopts proposal to override Perry’s HPV order
AUSTIN — The Texas House approved a bill Tuesday that would keep the human papillomavirus vaccine off the list of required shots for school attendance, tentatively circumventing Gov. Rick Perry’s executive order.
The bill adopted Tuesday “will not take away the option for a single girl or a single family in this state to choose to vaccinate a child,” said Republican Rep. Dennis Bonnen of Angleton, the lead author of the bill. “It simply says a family must make that choice, not a state government.”
Bravo. There are still some steps that need to be taken, and Perry could conceivably even veto the bill, so read the whole story. In the meantime, it’s heartening to know that there are still some politicians out there who resist the attempt of Big Government (at the behest of a Republican no less!) to control your lives, even to the point of mandating the injection of a relatively untested drug into the veins of your children.
You can see my initial reaction regarding the announcement here. I think it’s great that there could be a vaccine for the one virus, an STD, that we know causes cancer. But I also want it tested completely (which they have not done), and government has absolutely no business mandating this for your children. HPV is a behavior-based virus, not communicable in causal situation to the general public. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. Common sense and American values dictate you as a parent should be the sole decision-maker when it comes to what your minor children will be injected with.
I still can’t believe I even had to write that last line.
The Republicans are in serious trouble…as a conservative I am a former one but the Bush administration’s pandering to the left like scared school girls and their unwillingness to stand for ANYTHING has made me rethink my position. I will no longer give my vote to any party…they have let me down time after time after time!
I don’t think that the question of HPV vaccination should be only framed as the right of parents vs. the nebulous “State”. (cue villain music). I can appreciate their concerns, but I also think that they should consider as part of their deliberations on the decision they will make, what exactly their responsibilities are, not to just their own children, but to other people’s children as well.
As with any disease, the less places that there are where the disease can dwell and incubate, the less disease there will be harming any given population overall. Reducing the chances of your child becoming infected with HPV also reduces the chances of everyone from becoming infected from HPV.
I also don’t really buy the “if we vaccinate our children against STD’s they will go out and have sex” line of reasoning. If you vaccinate when the children are young of age, along with all the other vaccinations I don’t think they will really think about it at all, unless everybody makes a big deal out of it.
All diseases can be spread by behavior, but why treat a disease spread primarily by intimate contact as big of a deal as one spread by sneezing? The person sneezing in a crowded elevator is going to infect a lot more people than someone sleeping around is. And if the disease is SARS, the consequences may be much ore dire.
The essential assumption is that one can only “get” HPV or HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases by making a choice to do so by engaging in “risky behavior”. But thats not always the case. What do you tell your daughter who just got HPV or HIV from being raped that you as a parent could have protected her from getting the disease (if not the rape) but chose not to? What do you tell her husband? Or what do you tell her infant that may catch the disease in her womb?
It seems to me that provided the vaccine is safe, not getting your child vaccinated is in of itself highly “risky behavior”.
I think that as both parents and citizens, people have a moral obligation to get their children and themselves vaccinated.
As Tammy states this vaccine has not been tested completely and that alone should be enough to say NO to this vaccine. Under no circumstances should we be using our daughters as guinea pigs. Teri
Just as in the “global warming” post this is based on the scaring us silly tactics. I am curious though if its about spreading the virus why are boys not being included in the “mandatory” shots? After all, in the majority of cases wouldn’t the male be helping to carry the disease onward?
Are you really asserting that parents should be the sole decision-maker when it comes to the vaccines their children receive? I’m quite alarmed at the anti-vaccine movement. Putting aside the question of this new vaccine, do you think parents should have the right to refuse any vaccinations they wish, on any grounds? It seems to me that this would put our whole public health system at risk.