Government experiments in health care

Back in January 2007, I wrote a column taking Colorado legislators to task for sponsoring a bill that would have forced parents of girls 12 and older to either vaccinate their daughters with a HPV “vaccine” or “opt out.” Social conservatives argued that the bill would lead to promiscuous behavior in children. My concerns were different.

Not only is this bill an invasion of privacy and an implicit endorsement of the vaccine, the law has the potential to encourage many parents to give the vaccine to their children without educating themselves properly beforehand.

After all, shouldn’t parents “opt in” instead of being forced to “opt out”? Trust me, if in 10 years we learn that the HPV vaccine causes toe cancer, not a single lawmaker will be held responsible.

The same bill had been peddled in states across the nation. The reason I mention my column (which isn’t online anymore), is that I remember receiving a rather large number of angry emails and calls. One nurse practitioner, in an agitated letter that ran in the Denver Post, scolded me: “We have the potential to drastically reduce the incidence of cancer with the introduction of the HPV vaccine. To cloak this discussion in the “government forcefeeding parents” debate is an affront to the health and well-being of the public.”

How could I oppose the HPV drug? Did I hate children? (Well, some children.) Was I willing to put the lives of these poor creatures at risk for an ideology? The answer, of course, is yes. Freedom and choice is an ideology worth risking lives over. But, even more than that, there was no convincing proof that HPV vaccines were effective. Nor did we know enough about the side effects. Individuals, I argued, with detailed knowledge of their own situation, will, on the whole, make smarter and healthier choices for their children than detached government officials.

Now, the New York Times runs a story titles “Researchers Question Wide Use of HPV Vaccines.” The article quotes two New England Journal of Medicine articles that conclude, the “Two vaccines against cervical cancer are being widely used without sufficient evidence about whether they are worth their high cost or even whether they will effectively stop women from getting the disease …”

So will all those states that endorsed these vaccines through legislation now “educate” parents about the potential pitfalls? Highly unlikely.