Invasion of Privacy: State has no Business Mandating HPV Vaccine
Posted on January 25, 2007
No one wants the government rifling through his or her bank accounts. The FBI has no business perusing your grocery lists. The right of privacy is clear in this country. With very few exceptions, the government has no reason to mandate that you tell them about your finances, your relationships, or your personal health.
That is why Representative Naomi Jakobsson’s bill, HB115, is unconstitutional. The bill requires that sixth grade girls receive the vaccination for HPV before going to public or private school. Many similar laws and proposals have cropped up in other states as well.
The decision to get the HPV vaccine should be between a woman, her parents if applicable, and her doctor. HB115 does not specifically require that girls entering the sixth grade get the vaccine, but it does require the disclosure of whether that vaccine has been administered or not. The school has no need of that information. The right of privacy dictates that the government cannot demand private sexual health information.
Schools have a compelling interest to know which students are vaccinated or not for diseases such as polio, mumps and the like. These diseases can be transmitted in the classroom where students are required to congregate. Even if parents choose not to vaccinate, the schools could use the information to contain an outbreak should one occur.
With HPV, no plausible or allowable situation would allow for the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease in school. Quite simply students aren’t allowed to have sex at school for obvious reasons.
Further, there is nothing keeping the government from making the HPV vaccine a recommended one for girls. Doctors can discuss the issue with parents and the girls and they can decide what is best for them. They don’t need Naomi Jakobsson, Rod Blagojevich, or anyone else deciding the matter for them. Neither do they need to have school officials looking over their shoulder.
Additionally, there are some serious concerns about the trials of the HPV vaccine that could pose risks for young girls. 17 people died during the trials and sixty percent of participants had side effects ranging from headaches to asthma to gastroenteritis. The vaccine contains aluminum which has been considered to cause problem in people. In clinical trials, the rate of problems between the placebo and the vaccine were similar. The placebo also contained aluminum.
In short there are significant concerns that the testing was flawed. In the recent past, drugs such as Vioxx proved to have problems after passing FDA testing. Rushing the drug to market and then sticking our daughters with it before all the facts are in and adequate testing is done is a dangerous gamble. The company that made Vioxx was shown to have used less-than-sound testing practices in getting the drug to market. Both Vioxx and the HPV vaccine are made by Merck.
Adopting new technologies, whether a vaccine, new medical treatment, or the latest version of Microsoft Windows, is best done in a cautious manner. The vaccine has only been approved since June, 2006. Rushing to make the drug mandatory smacks more of a government handout to Merck than a public health concern.
At $360 for the entire series, many poor women and girls will not be able to afford the vaccine on their own. If the state makes disclosure mandatory, that amount will likely be foisted on the tax payer. All in all, for the state of Illinois alone, Merck will profit $32.4 million per year out of such legislation.
If the drug is such a winner, doctors will have no problem selling it to patients. They don’t need politicians smashing through the wall of doctor-patient privilege to try to force the drug down the American public. Not just the right of privacy is at stake, but the legally protected doctor-patient privilege. Either Jakobsson doesn’t trust doctors to give the information or she doesn’t trust parents to make the right choices. Either way, it isn’t her business, or the business of the state of Illinois.
Assuming the drug is safe, vaccination should be the parents’ option to choose for their daughters or for women to choose for themselves. However, like all other health decisions, the right of privacy requires that the state butt out. Medical decisions should be between patient and provider and any intrusion without a significant government interest is unconstitutional. Schools exist to provide sound education for students, not to be a platform to force medical decisions down parents’ throats.
John Bambenek is the Assistant Politics Editor for BC Magazine and is an academic professional for the University of Illinois. He is a syndicated columnist who blogs at Part-Time Pundit and the executive director of The Tumaini Foundation which helps AIDS orphans and other children in Tanzania to get an education.
He is the current owner of BlogSoldiers, a blog-only traffic exchange.
» Filed Under Child Exploitation, News, Politics As Usual
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8 Responses to “Invasion of Privacy: State has no Business Mandating HPV Vaccine”
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HPV increases your risk of cervical cancer significantly. 90% of cervical cancer deaths could be prevented if every woman were vaccinated. And the ability of the government to mandate stuff like this for the common good is well-established, the first vaccination program was tested in the Supreme Court shortly after the founding of the nation.
If you don’t like it, fight it in the legislature. It’s not unconstitutional. Stop it with your activist interpretation of the constitution.
(Actually, isn’t it a requirement to be a conservative that you disbelieve the existence of the right of privacy?)
Vaccination is allowed by the constitution under the power of the government to protect the common good. See Jacobsen v. Massachusetts (1905).
The test a court would use to test whether this act would be rational basis, not compelling interest, since the power to vaccinate is firmly grounded in the police powers of the government. So, can the government put forward any justification for the vaccination?
90% of cervical cancer deaths could be prevented if everyone were vaccinated. That’s a rational basis for the law.
(You didn’t note in your post that this is an Illinois law. If it were a Federal law, it might violate the Commerce Clause, but even then, you’d have a tough row to hoe.)
I’m not saying it’s a good law, if you don’t like it get it defeated. I am saying, however, that it is not unconstitutional.
(It’s sorta funny to post this here. Isn’t this site devoted to the principal that the right to privacy doesn’t exist?)
John, it is a rare treat for me to say this on this board: I agree with every word you said.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE ABOVE BLOG. I READ TODAY THAT THE ACLU IS MAD BECAUSE OF THE CROWDED CONDITIONS AT GITMO. I DON’T GET IT WHEN DID WE AS A COUNTRY START WORRY ABOUT ILLEGAL ALIENS, TERRORISTS AND OTHER ABOVE OUR OWN CITIZENS. I THOUGHT AFTER MY MANY YEARS IN THE MILITARY THAT I WOULD BE USED TO THE STUPIDITY OF ORGANIZATIONS LIKE THE ACLU, BUT ONCE AGAIN I FIND MY SELF JUST AMAZED. WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS COUNTRY? THE LIBERALS AND THE DEMOCRATS AND ALL THOSE WHO SUPPORT THEM MUST BE SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH ROSE COLORED GLASSES.
“The right of privacy dictates that the government cannot demand private sexual health information.”
What exactly does disclosing whether someone has had the HPV vaccine reveal about her sexual history?
This makes me proud to be from Illinois. Good old Governor Rod announced he would be
extending all state benefits to illegal aliens last week. Perhaps a move is in my future.
Look.. HPV can cause cervical cancer. There is nothing wrong with our government wanting to prevent cancer. Too many people have their minds wrapped around the fact that HPV happens to also be a sexually transmitted virus. You’re going to have to get over that because people die from cervical cancer. Gee.. what’s wrong with wanting to prevent people from losing their life to cervical cancer? Also, I would appreciate it very much if you would put more links that back up what you are saying as to how the clinical trials worked out. We’re supposed to just believe that people died from the trial without there being any explanation as to why? Come on.. I will be getting my daughters vaccinated.
No one is saying we should take this vaccine off the shelves. If you want to vaccinate your daughter, that’s fine.
What we are saying is that it is a breach of privacy to report your medical decisions to the government.