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The state isn't saying, "You need to have this or you'll be kicked out of school." It's saying, "You should get this but we won't keep your child out of school if he or she doesn't get it." There's a big difference. The American Pediactric Center has opposed this mandate because it's potentially dangerous and not much is known about it. They don't even know if it will prevent cancer. They actually admit it won't prevent all cervical cancer and tell people in the insert to still get tested for it after having the vaccine. The test for it is being added by many GYNs. If a woman has a regular (meaning, anual, not, routine. I'm sorry if that was confusing) pap smear, it can be caught.

I'm not saying there should be no effort. I would love it if this vaccine turned out to be safe and effective. But we don't know that yet. My logic isn't "Since it isn't the main killer it shouldn't have efforts made to prevent them," it's, "Why aren't the other killers having efforts made too, why is it just this one, when there are even worse things out there?"

If this wasn't a mandate, I wouldn't be opposed. But it is a mandate. I don't want it pulled off the market. I just don't think that girls should be turned into lab rats with an undertested vaccine against the wills of themselves and their parents.

I think what is being lost here is the fact that it's a vaccine for HPV not cancer. It so happens that cervical cancer CAN be prevented because of this vaccine.I could go back and forth with you, but I think it's pointless. You keep saying "it can be caught"- once you are diagnose with HPV, that is a lifetime disease and there is no cure, you just have to learn to live with your disease and attempt to prevent flare ups, etc. So the way you are using the term "it can be caught" is misleading IMO because once you have the disease, it's not going away, unless I am misintepreting what you are appempting to say. I agree about not wantng it to be a mandate, howeverif chances shows there are little risks and the HPV virus can be prevented in some istances, I am all for a vaccine with parents and young women making an informed decision. As I said in a previous post, a number of my colleagues have turned out + for this and these are professional women with children ( I am taking offense to the poster who is saying over and over that the government is calling your daughter a whore" nonsense, it's ignorant), so a preventative measure for something that is tunring out to be fairly common is not necessarily a negative stance, IMO.