States debating rules for cervical cancer vaccine

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http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070213/LIFE11/702130337/1006/LIFE

Ask nearly anyone whether vaccinating girls against cervical cancer is a good idea, and you're likely to get an affirmative reply. Ask whether states should require girls to get vaccinated, though, and you're likely to get more varied answers. But you might be surprised about who falls on which side. ...

Columbia University public health researcher James Colgrove says every state except West Virginia and Mississippi allows parents to opt out of getting their children vaccinated on religious grounds. But, Colgrove wrote in December in The New England Journal of Medicine, "it is a mistake . . . to view the contrasting stances on HPV-vaccine mandates as solely, or even primarily, evidence of a conflict between science and religion."

In an interview Wednesday, Colgrove said mandating HPV vaccination could lead to a backlash that would result in fewer girls getting immunized. Perry's order, "if anything, will help to mobilize opposition," he said. "You have to consider it in the context of the already long list of vaccines that children are required to get."

By rushing to mandate HPV immunization, says Samuel Katz, a co-developer of the measles vaccine, "you just throw oil on the flames of the anti-vaccine folks." The measles vaccine, licensed in 1963, launched the debate about mandating immunizations, Katz, pediatrics professor emeritus at Duke University, said Wednesday. But HPV isn't the measles, he says. "It isn't transmitted in a classroom to dozens of children. It's not the same thing as infectious diseases that fly through the air with no boundaries."

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