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Required Vaccination of Middle School Girls Virginia's General Assembly recently debated a law requiring vaccination for girls in middle school in order to prevent possible cervical cancer from sexually transmitted diseases. The vaccine was developed by Merck, which has tried for some time to get Congress to pass a similar law. Merck has just recently abandoned this effort. I have several problems with this type of legislation. It is quite possible that the effort by Merck to make it a requirement for young girls to get this vaccine was nothing more than an effort to make money. I am not against the work of pharmaceutical companies. I believe that what they do is very important, and that drugs have provided great benefits for mankind. However, there is no pressing need for requiring vaccination against a problem spread by sexually transmitted diseases for the reasons set forth below. Stopping the possible cancer spread by these diseases is not a pressing problem for health in schools. Those matters for which vaccination is now required - tuberculosis, whooping cough and the like - are diseases which do not necessarily require a positive effort to catch. Therefore, there is good reason to expect some level of protection against such diseases. A sexually transmitted disease requires an affirmative step - engaging in sexual intercourse - to catch. In addition, exposure to such activity is not something which will naturally occur in a school setting. Therefore, there is no pressing social medical need to protect school children. Requiring such vaccination also sends the message to children and parents that the state does not think that parents who wish to discourage their children being sexually active will not be effective. This is a slap in the face to parents who are trying to raise children who do not necessarily follow the lead of people like the former surgeon general, Jocelyn Elders. Requiring such a vaccination may in fact remove an argument which such parents might use in trying to discourage sexually active youths. There is also an implicit indication that government specifically accepts and possibly encourages sexually active youths by requiring such a vaccination. These different messages undermine the importance of the family as the keystone to a strong society. In short, such a nanny-state law is not only unnecessary, it sends the wrong moral message to youths and undermines parental responsibility within the family, which is the keystone of a strong society. |
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