States have 2nd thoughts about requiring cancer shots

Yvonne Prettner Solon survived one type of cancer and lost her husband to another. So she thought everyone would be as excited as she was about a new vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.

She was wrong.

In the face of opposition from vaccine critics and others, Prettner Solon, a DFL state senator from Duluth, is backing off a proposal to require the vaccine, Gardasil, for Minnesota schoolgirls 12 and older.

"I thought parents would embrace this [and] say, 'Oh my gosh, here's one cancer I can protect my daughter from,' " she said.

Instead, she discovered "that people are scared about a new vaccine, and they're scared about a mandate." As a result, Prettner Solon plans to call for a task force to study the issue instead.

The vaccine was approved last year to protect girls and young women from a sexually transmitted virus called HPV, or human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer and genital warts.

According to a study being released today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, U.S. scientists reported that nearly 27 percent of women ages 14 to 59 have some form of HPV, although only 3 percent have one of the strains covered by the new vaccine.

However, those few strains are blamed for an estimated 70 percent of the cervical cancers that kill nearly 4,000 American women each year.

The study published today found the highest rate of HPV -- nearly 45 percent -- among women ages 20 to 24, according to researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In January, a national report ranked Minnesota first in the nation in efforts to combat cervical cancer through screening and other measures. It also said Minnesota has one of the lowest rates of cervical cancer in the nation, about 6.8 cases per 100,000 women.

Safety, morality backlash

In the past few weeks, a national campaign --by the vaccine's manufacturer and a group called Women in Government -- to mandate the vaccine for preteen girls has prompted a backlash in many state capitals, in part because of concerns about safety and morality.

Opposition mounted so quickly in Minnesota that two original co-sponsors removed their names from the House version of Prettner Solon's bill.

"When this bill came out I thought, 'How wonderful that we have a vaccine,' " said Rep. Sandra Peterson, DFL-New Hope. But at town meetings, her constituents raised so many questions about the disease and the vaccine that she decided to withdraw her support.

"Even though there was an opt-out provision," she said, the word "mandate" made people leery. "Do I think we should have it? Yes," she said. But "we need to have more knowledge about the disease and the vaccine before we mandate it."

Rep. Maria Ruud, DFL-Minnetonka, also withdrew as a sponsor.

Some critics are offended by the idea of requiring preteen girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease. Others worry that it's too soon to embrace a vaccine that has been on the market for less than a year.

"I'm looking at safety," said Chris Abel of Crystal, a vaccine critic who founded a group called Vaccine Awareness Minnesota. "You're injecting something into a healthy young female three times. And obviously if it's effective, wonderful, but you want to make sure that there's not a tradeoff."

Abel says she believes that the vaccine hasn't been tested long enough and that it shouldn't be required by the state. "I think we need to respect parents' intelligence to know whether to do this," she said.

For Prettner Solon, who sponsored the legislation, the appeal was obvious: It's the first vaccine approved to prevent cancer.

"I certainly know from my own personal life and my professional life the ravages of cancer in people's lives," said Prettner Solon, who developed breast cancer in 1999. This "is the first time that we're able to actually eradicate or eliminate a cancer in known history. So I got very excited about that."

Prettner Solon succeeded her late husband, Sam Solon, in the state Senate after he died of cancer in 2001.

A new strategy

Prettner Solon said she still supports the vaccine, but has changed course. "[I] heard from a lot of people who said this is outrageous, the pharmaceutical companies are pushing this, we don't have enough information," she said. "I thought, boy, they're scared or somehow threatened by this, let's take some time and reassess."

Similar proposals have foundered in other states, and last week, the vaccine's manufacturer, Merck & Co., announced it was suspending its lobbying campaign for the mandates. "It felt like there was a perception that our involvement was clouding [the] issue," said Jennifer Allen, a Merck spokesperson.

The vaccine, however, is recommended by medical groups throughout the country, including traditionally conservative ones. The Christian Medical Association posted an endorsement on its website, saying: "Just as we treat STDs for the good of our patients, we can also strive to prevent these diseases."

Maura Lerner • 612-673-7384 • mlerner@startribune.com