Should states enact laws that would require girls to be vaccinated against HPV?
Um let me think…required vaccinations are an abomination!
I think that forcing someone to take a darn needle for no reason is not right; it should be the individuals right to take a vaccination and not the governments. Some are probably thinking about the chicken pox vaccine but chicken pox can be serious to people when they are older HPV is a very private and exclusive kind of disease. Everyone can tell if you have pox but you might not even know you have HPV. I do not think it is fair or right to force people to get a needle for someone like HPV.
They need to give out vaccines for aids before HPV…yes they have the cure! (Okay now I am ranting a little) Nevertheless, seriously forcing someone to have a shot is wrong especially if it against a religious practice or faith. Enforcing such a rule would bring more problems into the already heated battle between church and state and stuff.
Your thoughts?
"They need to give out vaccines for aids before HPV"
I have to disagree. Yes, AIDS is horrible and something needs to be done, but that doesn't at all negate how bad and how common HPV have become. Do they need to require vaccination? No, but they should certainly make them available and educate parents who are too ignorant to realize that taking their child to get the shot doesn't equate to giving their child explicit permission to have sex.
"Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you." - Kahlil Gibran
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." Isaac Asimov
I'm torn on this issue, but not for the reasons you are. I have reservations about new drugs, simply because a number of new drugs that have come out have very bad long term side effects. I'm not convinced of the safety of the vaccine, and have been carefully tracking it's progress.
However, I don't see any reason why the government shouldn't mandate a vaccine that protects against HPV, should it prove to be safe. For the exact reason that you say... people don't KNOW if they have HPV or not, and it's easily passed on as a result. Preventing the strains that cause most herpes outbreaks and cervical cancers would save a lot of people a lot of heartache.
And schools do allow for exemptions for religious reasons, though I don't know how a vaccine against HPV would be against someone's beliefs, and a vaccine against chicken pox is not (I'm personally against the chicken pox vaccine, just because the immunity you get from having the disease is better than the immunity you get from having a shot).
~C
Read the news: www.progressiveu.org/news
Nominate a featured blogger: http://www.progressiveu.org/node/27612
I've been iffy on this issue as well, but seeing as how HPV prevents a common type of cancer in women, the amount of people who are infected really goes to show why this vaccine may need to be mandated. What sways me to believe the shot should be mandatory is that if you really have strong reasons (more than 'I'm afraid of needles') as to why you shouldn't have the shot, you can opt out of having to get it. There's something about the HPV vaccine debate I just don't understand: I've met a number of people my age who think the government shouldn't tell them that they have to have a shot, yet they support government-run or universal health coverage. I don't get it: so it's okay for the government to keep you healthy, but it's not okay for them to implement procedures that can actually keep you healthy?