Wow, that was fast.
Rick Perry has Jenny McCarthy's vote back...and that's worth a little more cervical cancer, right Governor?
It didn’t take long for newly-minted GOP presidential contender Rick Perry, now leading in the polls, to tell us what we needed to know about his values and integrity.
He doesn’t have them.
Back in 2007, I awarded Perry an Ethics Hero designation for leading Texas to become the first state in the nation to mandate vaccination of young girls for the human papilloma virus, or HPV, which is sexually transmitted and can cause cervical cancer. “Requiring young girls to get vaccinated before they come into contact with HPV is responsible health and fiscal policy that has the potential to significantly reduce cases of cervical cancer and mitigate future medical costs,” Perry said then in a news release explaining his executive order. Now, however, Perry is declaring what I thought was a courageous decision four years ago “a mistake.”
I hereby revoke his Ethics Hero award.
What has changed to cause Gov. Perry to reverse himself? Only this: Perry is running for president, and is battling for the support of the extreme social conservatives who hold the balance of power in the Republican Party. Most of them oppose the HPV vaccinations for reasons that range from ignorance to faulty logic. Perry has seemingly decided that outflanking Michele Bachmann is worth allowing more young girls to get cervical cancer.
Meanwhile, his original decision looks less heroic and more corrupt. At the time, Perry was criticized because he had a close relationship with Mike Toomey, a lobbyist for Merck, the makers of the HPV vaccine. Toomey had once served as Perry’s chief of staff and since 2007 has helped found a super PAC aimed at boosting Perry’s presidential quest. Perry vigorously deflected accusations of cronyism and argued that his support of the vaccine was motivated by wanting to do the right thing. “I challenge legislators to look these women in the eyes and tell them, ‘We could have prevented this disease for your daughters and granddaughters, but we just didn’t have the gumption to address all the misguided and misleading political rhetoric!’ ”Perry declared then.
He was right, but now we know that he was only incidentally right. The executive order wasn’t about protecting young girls from getting cancer. It was motivated by political back-scratching. Perry didn’t believe that vaccinating 11 to 13-year-old girls against a potentially deadly sexually-transmitted virus was right, but he supported it anyway, to put money into the pockets of an ally’s client.
Wait: that’s may not be fair. Sometimes a politician can do the right thing and make a favored lobbyist happy at the same time; in fact, they love it when that happens. You wouldn’t want Perry to condemn thousands of girls to cancer just so that he wouldn’t look conflicted, would you? That’s why he was an Ethics Hero, bucking his conservative constituency and raising the specter of cronyism to save lives.
So was he betraying his own beliefs and mandating a risky treatment to please an ally then, or is he betraying his beliefs and risking the lives of young girls now to attain the White House? It doesn’t matter. Either way, we have learned that Perry has no integrity, and cannot be believed.
I could conclude differently if the opponents of the vaccinations weren’t so clearly and pig-headedly wrong. Some claim that the Gardasil, the Merck vaccine, encourages promiscuity. Amazing. These are presumably inept and irresponsible parents who find it more persuasive to argue “Don’t have pre-marital and unprotected sex or you’ll die a horrible death!” than to encourage their daughters to make good decisions by teaching them common sense and strong values. Thus they want their daughters to be at risk for cervical cancer; all the better to keep them in line. That’s a great constituency you’re courting, Governor—you must be so proud.
Tell me, you “HPV is a gift from God” fans: if Merck offered a treatment that made pre-marital sex deadly for teens, would you sign your daughters up for that? I guess so, right? The results would be the same as they are with denying the vaccination to prevent cancer: there would be a new and powerful reason, other than morality, for them to stay chaste.
The rest of the opponents of the vaccination come from the Jenny McCarthy crowd, hysterics who believe that vaccinations cause autism, even though they 1) don’t and 2) are the responsible choice anyway. Giving this well-meaning but dangerous camp any encouragement or support is an ethical offense all by itself.
Look on the bright side, principled Republicans. Now you know what you need to know about Rick Perry. He’s willing to compromise the health and morals of young girls to please a lobbyist, or, in the alternative, he’s willing to put them at risk of cancer to please a Neanderthal voting bloc.
Either way: Yechhh.
Back to the drawing board. Does anyone have Chris Christy’s phone number?
Ethics Alarms 
I read the initial Washington Post article on the subject. Some excerpts.
The issue in the original article is not whether HPV vaccinations are good, but whether the state should mandate them. And here is the thing. Every mandated vaccination involved a disease that could be spread casually, e.g., measles, mumps, rubella. A child infected with such diseases could infect an entire classroom in a single day. It is clear that the purpose of mandatory vaccinations is to prevent mass outbreaks among schoolchildren. By contrast, there is no possibility of a mass outbreak of HPV, as its transmission method means it will spread much more slowly, if at all, than measles, mumps, or rubella. Due to this lack of a possibility of a mass outbreak of HPV, it is not necessary for the state to mandate vaccinations of HPV.
Sure it is, just as the state doesn’t allow parents to pray over kids who need hospitalization. Genital warts are passed from individual to individual…there is a legitimate disease prevention issue.
Parents neglect the health of children without requirements…look at Jenny McCarthy. I don’t see a significant distinction at all.
So are regular warts. And yet, strangely, no one is proposing mandating vaccinations for that, even though warts on the hands are much more communicable than genital warts.
The distinction is clear.
Vaccinations were mandatory for school attendance. And the reason for this is that some diseases, like measles, mumps, and rubella, could spread through an entire school within days if no one is vaccinated and a child is infected with one of the diseases. HPV is clearly not one of those diseases. People with HOV infections are unlikely to expose even ten people, let alone hundreds as with measles, mumps, and rubella.
So what? You’re making up rules where there are no rules. The regulation saves lives, and at what costs? None that I can see.
This is a also special case, because of the moral aspect of it. A parent who tells a child taught not to have sex to get the vaccine is giving a mixed message, much like government agencies who hand out syringes to junkies—the government is facilitating conduct it is also condemning—a weak and stupid message. The government mandate in this case takes the moral parent off the hook. SHE isn’t contradicting her message at all.
The cost is the ability to refuse the vaccine and still go to school.
Because HPV is exclusively transmitted sexually, a schoolchild infected with HPV would be unlikely to expose even a single fellow schoolmate to the disease. By contrast, a schoolchild with measles could expose over a hundred fellow schoolmates to the disease.
And I did not make up any rules. In fact, I pointed out that before the HPV vaccine was mandated, no other vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease was ever mandated as a condition for attendance of a public school.
It would not. Persons who abstain from sex until marriage can still be infected if they marry an infected person, if the person they marry commits adultery with an infected person, or they get themselves raped.
I have refused to have my teenage daughter vaccinated against HPV because the vaccine hasn’t been around long enough for me to take that risk. What if I make that choice, FOR HER, and in 20 years we find out that the daughters of HPV-vaccinated mothers are sterile? That’s happened before. I only acquiesced to the chicken pox vaccine after I learned that it had been in use in China without incident for 30 years. So: I don’t think being vaccinated makes girls more sexually active, but I also don’t think it should be required. I want proof. And a politician who backs off that mandate is a good guy in my book. I believe in choice, for a whole lot of things.
I have not heard anyone claim that the vaccine might make girls more promiscuous, but rather that they would be lulled into a false sense of security and engage in riskier practices.
It should also be noted that HPV is not the type of disease for which mandatory vaccinations were intended. To put this in stark contrast, if an HPV-infected schoolgirl enters a crowded cafeteria, her mere presence there will not expose anyone to the virus. In fact, is unlikely that an HPV-infected girl will expose more than ten other persons in her entire lifetime . By contrast, if a schoolgirl with measles enters a crowded cafeteria, she will expose everyone therein to measles. Depending on population density, a person with measles could expose thousands of people.
This is why mandatory measles vaccinations make sense, while mandatory HPV vaccinations do not.
They make sense because they save lives, with minimal risk or intrusion. That’s not enough?
It is not enough when it comes to mandates as opposed to permission.
Can you think of a previous instance when vaccinations were mandated for a disease that could not be transmitted casually? Because, before the HPV vaccine was mandated, every madated vaccine was for a disease in which an infected child could expose an entire classroom or cafeteria.
Well, we can either trust the health establishment or not. The AMA and the FDA say that the vaccine is safe, and even the most risky vaccinations have statistically miniscule incidents of bad reactions..
If my fictional daughter is raped, I think I’ll wish that I had taken the tiny risk as I wait to see whether she is infected with HPV. The longitudinal certainty you want to wait for would rule out a lot of mew developments in food, drugs and medical treatment. Do we know that MRI’s don’t cause blindness in 30 years? No. I think I’ll risk it.
No. I think I’ll risk it.
I like this line. It shows that you know of potential consequences and have weighed them into a decision for you to take a risk.
Why would you force other people to take that risk when the only person affected by that risk is themselves?
Scenario: Children are becoming drones and are unexcited and uninspired leading some to become dolts that want to flip burgers for the rest of their lives. A maker of bungee cords commissions an independent scientific research project and that project discovers that kids who experience a bungee jump between the ages of 11-13 become invigorated with life and passion leading to amazing life achievements. Kids that otherwise would have become dolts are now doing great things. Parents ask questions about the bungee cords, are they safe and do they fail. Research suggests that the manufacturing and QA testing for bungee cords results in 99.999% success rate of not failing.
Knowing that there is a minuscule chance that the cord will fail and your child would die in his/her jump and a minuscule chance that he/she will become a burger flipping dolt, which option would you like the government to choose for you?
I’ll debate the macro issue if you like, but the point about Perry stands either way. He was either selling out his beliefs for political favors, or is selling out the health of women for political gain. And that was the topic of the post—though I think Virginia and DC are dead right on this issue, if Lianne and you have trouble with it, then I have to presume there are rational people on the other side. Which surprises me.
Your post is spot on, I should have given you props for that. I have an uncanny trust of our government’s medical and drug regulators, so I’m not really on the other side. But if the other side has an irrational fear, and it’s not of paramount importance to the continuity of our society or will cause innocent victims, then I don’t see the need for a government mandate.
Mandates should only be used to ensure the continuity of society.
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION
Anyone who is allergic to the ingredients of GARDASIL, including those severely allergic to yeast, should not receive the vaccine. GARDASIL is not for women who are pregnant. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Only a doctor or health care professional can decide if GARDASIL is right for you or your child.
http://www.gardasil.com/hpv/hpv-types/hpv-transmission/index.html?WT.mc_id=GL0ES&MTD=2