Texas House Adjourns HPV Vaccine Hearing With No Vote

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Main Category: Public Health
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Cervical Cancer / HPV Vaccine;  Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 20 Feb 2007 - 11:00 PDT

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A Texas House Public Health committee hearing that convened on Monday to override Governor Perry's executive order to make schoolgirls have the HPV vaccine adjourned on Tuesday morning without a vote.

The committee took six hours of testimony from witnesses on both sides of the debate but adjourned without taking a vote.

Supporters of the Governor's action say that the public health priority is paramount - prevent the fatal cancer that kills 4,000 American women every year.

Health professionals and a woman with advanced stage cervical cancer testified at the hearing in support of the mandate.

In opposition were groups representing some parents and social conservatives.

On Friday, Texas House Representative Larry Taylor (Friendswood) spoke against Governor Perry's executive order, saying that it bypassed not only the normal legislative process but the rights of parents.

He and 31 House colleagues wrote to the Governor asking him to rescind the order. He is also co-author, with 90 others, of the Bill to reverse the Governor's mandate.

Rep Taylor said, ""At a minimum, legislators should have the opportunity to debate the issue and express our constituents' concerns."

Other legislators have also spoken out against the mandate, citing the same reasons as Taylor, and also saying that it goes against the state's policy of abstinence-only in sex education.

Governor Perry signed the executive order on 2nd February. It requires that all schoolgirls are vaccinated against HPV, the sexually transmitted Human Papillomavirus which causes 70 per cent of the infections that lead to cervical cancer. It is estimated that about 365,000 girls would receive the vaccine every year.

Parents who do not want their daughters to have the vaccine will be able to opt out "for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs," said Perry.

Since the signing of the mandate all females from 9 to 21 years of age eligible for public assistance have the right to have the vaccine at no cost to themselves straight away. The vaccine, Gardasil, is made by Merck, costs 360 dollars per person, and is administered in three doses.

A spokesperson for the Governor said that the money to pay for the cost of giving the vaccine to girls from low-income families will come out of the 29.4 million dollars of increased funding for existing health programs.

Some 20 other states are currently considering bringing in legislation to make the vaccine compulsory for girls and women.

However, many medical and health advisory bodies are not happy with making the vaccine mandatory. Not because they don't believe girls should have it, on the contrary. But they say that if parents were given a chance to learn what HPV is, most would voluntarily allow their child to be vaccinated.

The Chair of the Committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Joseph Bocchini said that making the vaccine mandatory may cause a backlash and make parents mistrusful about vaccines altogether.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug Gardasil for use as a vaccine for females from 9 to 26 years of age in July 2006. This was the same month that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted that girls aged 11 and 12 be vaccinated.

In approving the drug the FDA revealed that over 50 per cent of people who have been sexually active at any time in their lives will have HPV. Even if a woman remains monogamous her entire life she could contract HPV from her partner.

Health experts say that immunising girls before they reach the age of potential sexual activity is the best way to protect them individually, and the community as a whole because it stops the virus from spreading.

Click here for CDC Factsheet on HPV.

Written by: Catharine Paddock
Writer: Medical News Today


Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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