what if i promise to never put anything in my ass? which I did promise to Jesus years ago.
keith y | 02.09.07 - 8:42 pm | #

While I would normally agree that the public health argument is used to justify bad legislation (or, in this case, fiats) I think that adding Gardasil to the vaccination list is a slightly diffeent issue. First, it is not a continual restriction like the other public health arguments you mentioned. Requiring one more vaccination doesn't really present any more of a burden than requiring vaccinations in general. More important that the issue of burden, however, is the long-term effects of a vaccination project. Requiring Gardasil is basically admitting that these kids will eventually have sex before marriage. It is conceeding the argument, its a step towards a rational approach to human sexual behavior. It becomes hard to argue for abstainance only education when they're 14 if you're vaccinating them for STDs when they're 10.

I, presonally, like the idea of government moving from prohibition to harm reduction public health models. Sure, having the government walk away from involving itself would be great, but at the end of the day we live in the real world and have to be pragmatic.
William | 02.10.07 - 11:27 am | #

William,

Requiring one more vaccination doesn't really present any more of a burden than requiring vaccinations in general.

Leaving aside the non-existent public health argument, it imposes a $360 burden on every girl's parents and/or insurance. If not them, then the state. Accepting this is a pragmatic reality leads to every other pragmatic compromise.
Tony | Homepage | 02.11.07 - 1:01 pm | #

Tony, you're completely correct. I think the Texas plan uses public funds (I could be wrong) and I know the rationale a lot of people are using for adding it to the mandatory list in other states is because that forces insurance providers to cover Gardasil. I'm aware of the costs and I'm not too happy about them, but the sad reality is that we do not live in a libertarian utopia.

Governments are going to spend money on public health and set certain requirements that we all have to follow. We can fight it and try to keep those requirements and expenses low, but there are only so many hours in a day and we're grossly outnumbered. Barring prevention we can try to lobby for requirements and expenses that will have the least impact on overall liberty. 200 hours spent fighting over who pays for an STD vaccine and who has to have one in Texas are 200 hours that can't be spent hammering out other legislation (which, lets face it, is more likely to infringe on your liberty than a cancer vaccine for a 10 year old in San Antonio).

There is also the halo effect to consider. We do not live in vaccuum and pushing this vaccine will have other effects. It is difficult to argue for abstainance only education when a kid is 14 if you vaccinated them for an STD when they were 10. It is, on average, less threatening to liberty if public health dollars are spent on prevention rather than prohibition and enforcement. And theres always the added bonus that if the Christianist right is against something that something is probably good for libery.

Is it a good solution? Not really. Is it the best of a bad bunch? Reasonable people can come to different conclusions.
William | 02.11.07 - 6:16 pm | #

As soon as prisoners demand the vaccine, watch the Txas government do a 180 or come up with some lame excuse as to why they won't immunize the prison population.
Russ | 02.12.07 - 11:18 am | #