Playing games with girls' health: why it is too soon to mandate the HPV vaccine for pre-teen girls as a prerequisite to school entry.

Most individuals want to live long, healthy lives. Consequently, society values the protection of its members from illness. In order to protect its members from disease, society often requires that children be vaccinated against certain illnesses as a prerequisite to school entry. By mandating that students be vaccinated, society infringes on another important value: a parent’s right to make decisions regarding his or her own children. Society must choose which values its laws will protect—a complex decision. Currently, states are confronted with deciding whether school-age girls should be required to receive vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease that can result in genital warts and cervical cancer. Because HPV is not an airborne disease and a dearth of information regarding long term effects of HPV vaccination, mandating the vaccine is a violation of parental rights. The debate about vaccination resurfaced in the news after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Gardasil, a vaccine manufactured by Merck Pharmaceuticals that protects against four