His action was quickly overturned by the state legislature after public outcry over the vaccine manufacturer Merck’s lobbying and campaign contributions to the governor. Rick Perry, a Republican, signed an executive order. In 2007, Texas became the first state to mandate HPV vaccines for 11- and 12-year-old girls when then-Gov. A vaccine for the few cancer-causing strains has been available since 2006 it prevents around 90 percent of HPV-related cancers. It’s the cause of around 3 percent of all cancers in women and 2 percent in men, around 36,000 new cases each year. HPV is a virus that is often, but not always, sexually transmitted, and certain strains of it can lead to cervical, oral and other cancers. Almost immediately, her bill - which would have required students to receive the HPV vaccine by eighth grade to attend school - became a problem. Įven before Aguiar-Curry’s HPV bill had been formally introduced, groups advocating for “parental choice” and “medical freedom” were roaming the halls of the state Capitol, meeting with elected officials in case anyone in Sacramento was thinking of trying to mandate the Covid-19 vaccine again.īy the time the Democrat finally proposed an HPV mandate, one that she had been urged to shelve years earlier during earlier vaccine wars, the politics had hardened. The anti-vaccine side is not waiting it out. “Right now the politics of vaccines are such that we’re in a holding pattern.”

“There’s been an avalanche, a flood, of bills introduced on vaccine policy, but they’re mostly negative,” said Brent Ewig, the chief policy and government relations officer of the Association of Immunization Managers, which has been going state to state to counter the small but loud “medical freedom groups.” It’s an ominous sign for the ability of states to enact new vaccine laws. “I have to have a brass backbone on this,” she added. “People are so wary of science and data now,” said the HPV bill’s author, Democratic Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry. In just over a year, proposals in Sacramento to let younger teens get the shot without parental consent, require the Covid-19 vaccine for schools and some employers, and tighten up vaccine reporting requirements lost steam, weighed down by pandemic fatigue and growing public resentment toward public health mandates.

“I think there is weariness about addressing the issue because of the impact that the closure of in-person instruction had on students, as well as just the vitriol that surrounds the issue and has the potential to distract.”Īnti-vaccine activists, who argue immunizations are a personal choice and should not be compelled by the state, have seized on that reluctance - and lately, they’ve been on a winning streak. “It’s fair to say we’re experiencing a new paradigm in the vaccine debates,” said Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association, which has not taken an official position on the bill. 'I have to have a brass backbone on this,' she added.

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