First, Merck suspended lobbying on making Gardasil mandatory. Now the Texas House has voted to overturn Rick Perry's executive order mandating the vaccine for Texas schoolgirls.

A House committee handed a stinging rebuke to Gov. Rick Perry by voting to rescind his executive order requiring pre-teen girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

Wednesday's Public Health Committee vote was 6-3, with all the Republican members and one Democrat voting to reverse Perry's order. Three other Democrats voted against the bill, which now goes to the full House for consideration.

Passage is all but guaranteed since 90 of the 150 House members have signed on as co-sponsors, said the author of House Bill 1098, Rep. Dennis Bonnen.

"I'm very pleased that the majority of the committee saw the wisdom of not putting every 11-year-old girl into a mandated situation of a vaccination that we don't know all the facts about," said Bonnen, R-Angleton.

Perry spokesman Robert Black said the committee's vote doesn't change the governor's position.

"He believes the state should do everything it can to protect young women from getting cancer," Black said. "He has encouraged the Legislature to have a vigorous debate on this issue. They are."

Another bill, HB 1397 by Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, would require the Texas Department of State Health Services to develop a public education plan about HPV. It also was passed by the committee on a 9-0 vote.

So as you can see, the vote is not one of opposition to the vaccine -- it is a rejection of the naked power-grab of a governor intent upon playing doctor with evey little girl in Texas. Education -- and presumably eventual legislation to make the vaccine more widely available -- are supported by many of us who opposed by Perry's actions. What we objected to was the high-hande3d manner in which teh governor sought to override the political proces.

Posted by: Greg at 10:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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