Courtney Bartle

Biology 1090
Taking Sides
Issue Number 11
Should Vaccination for HPV Be Mandated for Teenage Girls?
1. Joseph E Balog. Health science professor Joseph E. Balog believes that a principal-based
approach to moral reasoning leads to the conclusion that compulsory HPV vaccinations
for teenage girls can be justified on moral, scientific, and public health grounds.
2. Gail Javitt, Deena Berkowitz, and Lawrence O gostin believe that, given the limited data
and experience, and the fact that HPV does not pose imminent and significant risk to
others, mandating HPB vaccine is just premature.
3. Yes- The vaccine helps to prevent woman from getting HPV, which is the main cause of
cervical cancer. Women get this from being sexually active, and many teens are
infected. It would be ideal if all teens would wait for marriage but it is not realistic, so
the vaccine would help prevent the disease.
No-The vaccination is fairly new so there are not long term effects found yet. Also not all
children and teens will be exposed to this unless they choose to be sexually active.
4. Yes- Children who have not been exposed to HPV should have the right and opportunity
to get the vaccine. History teaches us that if vaccines are voluntary, most dont do it;
this will be best prevented by implementation of a compulsory vaccination program.
No-it is not a public health necessity because not all women will be effected because it
is only transmitted sexually. Mandating the vaccine would be premature because the
long term safety is unknown.
5. A fallacy on the Yes side that I noticed was when the author acknowledged the health
professionals, he is a health professor and could be using his own moral reasoning for
that opinion.
6. A fallacy on the no side is that the authors are law professors and could be thinking
about the law side of things, about how people could sue physicians is something
happens long term from the vaccination.
7. The authors on the no side impressed me more, they had more reasoning to support the
reason for mandating the vaccine to be premature.
8. I believe that both sides have reasons to be biased, law professors can see the side
where people could be sued for not knowing long term results and the other talks about
health professionals when that is exactly what he is.
9. I personally believe that the vaccine should not be mandated especially because that
vaccine has not been around for long enough to know all of the side effects. Also
because not every will have the same chances of being infected.