CDC ends HPV vaccination requirement for immigrant women

In July 2008, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) implemented a mandate that immigrant women ages 11 to 26 who were seeking permanent resident status, must get the HPV vaccine. The mandate was considered discriminatory because it is costly and gender specific. Also, there isn't currently any requirement that American women must get the vaccine, so why should women seeking citizenship be required?

Well the CDC decided that effective December 14th, young women who are seeking legal permanent resident status in the United States will no longer be required to be vaccinated against the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). The Federal Register notes,"while HPV may be an age appropriate vaccine for an immigrant applicant, HPV neither causes outbreaks nor is it associated with outbreaks...Further, HPV has not been eliminated, nor is in the process of elimination, in the United States. Therefore, because HPV does not meet the adopted criteria, it will not be a required vaccine for immigrant and adjustment of status to permanent residence applicants."

It's about time! Immigrant Rights and other social justice organizations have actively opposed the mandate and have organized against it since it became policy last year. The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, have been leaders in insisting that the HPV vaccine mandate be repealed. It was another giant barrier on the already path to legal immigration.

HPV For Boys

The CDC gave Gardasil, the vaccine against HPV, a "permissive" recommendation for men and young boys. This means that the vaccine is okay to sell, but it isn't recommended for all men.

Why? A CDC economist argued that it would be more cost-effective to improve accessibility for young women rather than extend the vaccine to young men.

The argument is that if girls are vaccinated, boys won't have anything to catch or transmit. Why should men bear any responsibility when women can do it for them? It's not like women have any obstacles to obtaining health care.

Furthemore, Dan Savage makes a decent point when he says:

"But if you want to vaccinate gay men against HPV—because women can't do it for us—you have to vaccinate gay men well before we become sexually active, same as girls. Age 11, remember? And since we don't know at age 11 which boys are going to be gay when they grow up, you have to vaccinate all boys against HPV in order to protect the ones who are going to be gay when they grow up. It seems like a no-brainer and a win-win: vaccinating all boys against HPV will protect the gays ones—gay men are 17 times more likely to develop anal cancer as adults—and help protect girls and women from the deadlier strains of HPV. It would also offer some protection to girls whose parents denied them the vaccine for... religious reasons. That's a win-win-win."

More broadly, any man that doesn't have sex exclusively with HPV-vaccinated women is at risk. It's ridiculous that the CDC didn't let this fact influence their decision.

Image courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/euthman/

Why make boys pay for vaccinations when you can make girls pay?

According to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal, it wouldn't be cost effective to vaccinate boys and men against the human papillomavirus (HPV) if all girls and women got the vaccine.

Now let's hold that thought for a second, and examine the language. This study specifically states that it will not be cost effective if all girls and women got the vaccine, which reflects a viewpoint that thinks its okay to shove all the medical costs onto women. Not that that viewpoint diverges much from current US insurance agencies normal practices, as women are routinely charged more for health insurance premiums, even though maternity care is not included, according to the Feminist Majority Foundation.

The HPV vaccine is not cheap. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vaccine costs $125 per shot, which totals $375 for the whole series. Considering that women already only make 76 cents per male dollar, that's a lot of extra cost.

This study also seems to promote a heteronormative view of sexuality, because it implies that men will be only having sex with vaccinated women, and therefore will not be able to catch HPV--thus implying that men wouldn't be able to catch HPV from each other.

I wonder if they'd even considered the cost effectiveness of only vaccinating boys and men--considering, presumably, that the goal is to vaccinate half the population that would heteronormatively only interact sexually with the other half of the population. It might be an interesting study.

Photo Credit: euthman on flickr.com