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Are you really willing to sacrifice liberty for that gain, my FRiend?

I don't see immunization as impacting liberty, anymore than requiring insurance to drive, seatbelts installed on cars, hospitals with emergency rooms, or guardrails on bridges.

These are all put in place to save lives, freedom doesn't mean a whole lot to you when you are dead. A shot in the arm does not impact your freedom of speech, the pursuit of happiness nor any other right. It is a biological control on preventing a plague from wreaking havoc on us. If not for the polio vaccine how many people would be dead today?

At the height of the polio epidemic in 1952, nearly 60,000 cases with more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the United States alone.
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I like modern science, I'm just an engineer (not a medical expert); but to me it seems silly to reject a vaccine by saying it infringes on your rights. If you don't get a flu shot, and you get sick - too bad. That is your decision and you get to suffer for it. I think you would agree that your decision not to get a flu shot is your choice, and getting sick as a result of it is an inconvenience you are willing to risk.

But consider, if you get sick, how many other people do you infect? How did your exercise of your rights impact others around you? If I get a shot, I have a 80-90% immunity. If I work in close proximity to you, I will test my immunity against your contageous condition. But, if we both had our shots - the odds of me getting sick from you drops dramatically (20% chance you got sick x 20% chance of me catching it from you yields only a 4% odds of getting sick). Now, if the Swine Flu were absolutely horrible, I'd say let's make it a legal requirement to get the shot, just like Polio. The fact is that the Swine Flu is nasty, but not as bad as the press would make it out to be. But the fact remains, vaccines are not an imposition of tyranny on everyone, they are there for the protection of society as a whole.

I don't see immunization as impacting liberty, anymore than requiring insurance to drive, seatbelts installed on cars, hospitals with emergency rooms, or guardrails on bridges.

New Hampshire does not require insurance to drive and has one of the lowest auto insurance rate structures in the country.

New Hampshire does not criminalize the refusal of adults to use seat belts, and has one of the lowest fatality rates per vehicle mile.

Emergency rooms and guard rails have nothing to do with individual liberty.

How did your exercise of your rights impact others around you?

You're right: Liberty is not the only concern. But it is the first concern, and must not be ignored. If liberty is to be preserved, the case for abridging it must be overwhelming. And profits for Merck don't make such a case.

Yes, I believe that's all this is about - money. As was posted earlier, Gov. Perry tried to force this vaccine on young Texan girls, and got slapped down for it. It seems Americans by and large don't want this forced on their daughters.

"But hold on a sec, we can force it on immigrants, can't we? That'll work! And maybe we'll get some good results from these tests, and slowly get the public accustomed to the vaccine, and then later mandate it for everybody."

I'm not opposed to mandating vaccinations. I'm not opposed to every abridgment of liberty. In fact, I took a lot of heat on this thread for advocating the abridgment of liberty in dire circumstances.

But these are not dire circumstance we're talking about, are they? There's no plague of venereal diseases decimating our population, is there? If so, we'd better come up with something just a bit more impressive than one vaccine, for one disease, and applicable only to immigrant girls who want to become citizens - wouldn't you say?

It is a biological control on preventing a plague from wreaking havoc on us.

HPV isn't exactly a plague wreaking havoc on us. There are other ways of avoiding HPV that have fewer side effects, and also do not expose you to risks of the other viruses and diseases that you become exposed to by engaging in the risk behaviors that exposed you to HPV in the first place.

But people who have swallowed the "one less" campaign, and think that taking Gardasil gives them a license to have promiscuous sex without consequences can then contract one of the forms of HPV that Gardasil does not prevent (or one of many other STDs that Gardasil does not prevent)