HPV Vaccine Mandate: a Human Rights Violation?

The DC City Council passed legislation on April 19 stipulating vaccination against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) as a requirement for public school attendance for young girls. On April 4, a similar bill was passed by the Virginia legislature. I find the HPV vaccine requirement very troubling and an infringement on the rights of the U.S. female population. (Imagine the hue and cry if an Islamic country were forcing its female population to take an untested vaccine for any reason.)

Some reasons for my objections to the HPV vaccine mandate:

• 90% of HPV serotypes do not result in cancer.
  
  
• Sexual activity is required to contract the virus.
  
  
• The HPV vaccine (Gardasil) has not been adequately tested on the subject (teen) population.
  
  
• So, 100% of sixth grade girls in Washington, DC (including the significant Muslim population), will be required to take a vaccine for a virus which is non-lethal 90% of the time, which occurs only as a result of sexual activity, and which has yet to undergo proper testing in their age group.
  
  
• HPV was simply not on the public agenda until (artificially) placed there by a multinational corporation. The vaccine requirement in DC and Virginia--and its very consideration in other states--resulted from extensive lobbying by the manufacturer, Merck. And Merck, like any self-respecting pharmaceutical company, has profit as its primary interest, not public health. The vaccine costs $360 per person to administer, so the bottom line in vaccinating the entire school age population of a major city such as DC is huge. It is clearly a case of corporate interests driving public policy.
  
  
• Gardasil's use was endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) upon the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), without full disclosure of who sits on the ACIP (for instance, the number of Merck board members).
  
  
• While the option to opt out on behalf of their children is available to parents, it is feared that the procedure to do so will not be clear to many parents.

So, young girls will be Merck's lab rats. Side effects may not become evident for years, making it difficult to demonstrate Merck/U.S. government complicity in case of complications. And the U.S. government has a long and unsavory history of experimenting on its own population. My suspicion is the HPV requirement may even violate the Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Child--but that is something I'll have to research further.