From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
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.
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