Perry was amazingly stupid when he did this executive order. There is no excuse for such a thing. Spin it all you like there is nothing conservative about going outside the legislative process to mandate this kind of thing. And then to hang the bill of millions and millions of dollars around the Texas taxpayers necks. Bills to be paid forever, year after year. For an unproven drug pushed by people that were or had been close to Perry who made money off the deal.
It was equally stupid to not make the program opt-in.
FYI, I know several young women who have been shot up with that crap. Each of them have had side effects. One has had what are akin to very bad migraines. Before Gardasil she never had a headache in her life.
I have a suggestion. To put this topic to bed how about if Rick Perry, in public and verified by a doctor gets vaccinated with Gardasil? If the drug is OK and he defends it let him take the stuff!!!!!
No amount of posts by you will unrung this bell. Rick Perry made a stupid and politically nutty decision to construct and sign an executive order that was certain to be kicked back at him and kicked back hard. That is exactly what Texans and the legislature did. They kicked Perry right in the cajones!
Even still, with all that said compared to Obama Rick Perry poops jobs, diamonds and bricks of gold. Go Perry!
There’s a new study out on the vaccines and Gardasil was found to be very safe, with the only associated risk of anaphylaxis, which is an immune reaction that can happen with any substance that is inhaled, eaten, applied topically, or injected. http://wingright.org/2011/08/26/that-institute-of-medicine-report-is-out/
(Bikkuri, you can opt out of the vaccines made from human fetal cultures like the Measles vaccine and still receive others without endangering your opt out status.)
I was in Austin quite a few days during all this, working on several pro-life bills, including the tweaks we were attempting to make on the Texas Advance Directive Act. I blogged at http://lifeethics.org in February, 2007, if you want to read real-time reports.
Perry did not go outside the legislative process. The legislature delegated the mandating of vaccines to the Executive Branch long before this. Besides a few statutorily required vaccines (including tetanus, diptheria, pertussis, MMR and polio), future mandated vaccines were to be named by the regulatory process at the Department of State Health Services.
“Mandate” has a fairly narrow definition. However, “opt out” can mean lots of things.
Every year, the Texas Medical Association has pressured the Legislature to tighten the mandates, in ‘07 there was a push to force the “opt out” time to each year.
In 2003, they made the mandated vaccines “opt out,” with exceptions for medical or religious reasons. In 2005, they expanded the qualifications to “conscience.”
Unfortunately include in the 2005 law was instruction to the DSHS to produce a form with a security seal so that it could not be reproduced. Regulatory hassles increased. Although, in practice, it was possible to send a letter to the DSHS requesting the paperwork, some in the Lege insisted that their intention was to make it so that the only way to get the form was to actually go to Austin and request a form to request the form it in writing!
(There were two Bills introduced in the Lege to make the vaccine mandatory,SB 110 by Senator Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, and HB 215 by Representative Farrar, D-Houston. Neither had the clarification on the opt-out. http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/pdf/HB00215I.pdf#navpanes=0 )
The Governor did not by-pass the legislature at all. it did, however clarify an easier path to opt out, by ordering that the request be made available on line.