Ethics Newsline®

Special to Newsline by Adrian Allen

WASHINGTON
An influential U.S. government advisory panel last week unanimously recommended that girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26 receive a new vaccine that prevents a sexually transmitted disease that often leads to cervical cancer.

The decision by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices virtually assures that the government will spend about $2 billion to buy the vaccine, called Gardasil, in a program that offers free immunizations for poor children nationwide, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The committee’s recommendations are usually accepted by federal health officials and often influence insurance companies’ stance on covering vaccinations.

The vaccine prevents infection by the human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted disease and a precursor of cervical cancer in women and various cancers in men. More than 50 percent of sexually active men and women are expected to be infected with at least one strain of HPV in their lifetimes, according to the Associated Press.

Vaccination is most effective when given to girls before they become sexually active, the AP reported.

Because the vaccine is designed to prevent a disease transmitted through sexual activity, some critics have lodged objections on moral grounds to vaccinating children. “You can’t catch the virus, you have to go out and get it with sexual behavior,” Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group based in Colorado Springs, told the New York Times. “We can prevent it by having the best public health method, and that’s not having sex before marriage.”

Opponents have focused many of their objections on fears that the vaccine someday could be mandated by states and required for school attendance, according to reports from Maine’s Portland Press-Herald and the Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey.

The federal advisory panel’s recommendation is not binding on states, which make individual decisions on which vaccines to require.

At $360 a dose, Gardasil is the one of the most expensive vaccines ever developed, according to the Times. But advocates contend that the cost of preventing cervical cancer via the vaccine is less than the cost of treating the cancer later, and argue that because cervical cancer disproportionately impacts the poor, government funding of vaccinations for those who cannot afford them will ultimately prove cost-effective.

While HPV has been linked to multiple types of cancer in males, sufficient tests have not yet established Gardasil’s safety for male patients, noted the AP. Such tests should be completed by 2008, according to Gardasil’s manufacturer, Merck & Co.