Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14629

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Rockoff JD.
Making Gardasil Vaccination Mandatory Would Be Unwise, Academics Say
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2008 Nov 11
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/11/11/making-gardasil-vaccination-mandatory-would-be-unwise-academics-say/?mod=yahoo_hs

Full text:

More academics are joining arguments against government mandates for immunizing girls with Merck’s Gardasil vaccine against cervical cancer.

In the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, three scholars argue that state and local governments shouldn’t require girls get cervical cancer vaccinations for both public health and constitutional reasons.

Gail Javitt of Johns Hopkins’s Berman Institute of Bioethics, Deena Berkowitz of George Washington University School of Medicine and Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University Law Center say the vaccine – recommended for young girls to prevent cervical cancer – doesn’t address the same level of public health threat as existing mandates for polio, measles and other childhood vaccinations.

And for that reason, the authors argue, courts may not uphold the constitutionality of a mandate for vaccination against human papillomavirus, the target of Gardasil.

“We should be careful about adding more and more vaccine requirements when they exceed the original purpose of mandatory, school-based vaccinations,” Javitt told the Health Blog. She recommends states educate parents about the benefits “because it will allow parents to make informed decisions without coercing them.”

The article was published online in June, but we have to admit that we didn’t see it until the medical journal got around to publicizing it this week. Even after the delay, we found the arguments thought-provoking and worth sharing.

Gardasil has enjoyed strong sales since winning FDA approval in 2006. But controversy over Merck’s lobbying of states to require vaccination against HPV led the company to drop that tactic. So far, governments have been more inclined to educate and fund HPV vaccinations than to mandate them.

Critics have also raised questions about the vaccine’s effectiveness, the ethics of requiring it and even its safety.

Update: Merck spokeswoman Amy Rose told the Health Blog in an email this afternoon that the company had stopped lobbying for Gardasil school-requirements and is focused on educating policy and lawmakers looking at Gardasil use about HPV, cervical cancer and the company’s vaccine.

“Merck’s goal is to ensure that Gardasil, which helps protect against the HPV types that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers, is used to its fullest appropriate extent to help reduce the burden of cervical cancer and other HPV-related diseases in the United States,” Rose wrote.