"The Ethics of Politics of Compulsory HPV Vaccination," New England Journal of Medicine: Efforts to mandate that girls receive Merck's human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil have raised "broad questions about the acceptability of mandatory public health measures, the scope of parental autonomy and the role of political advocacy in determining how preventive health measures are implemented," James Colgrove, an associate research assistant at Columbia University's Center for the History of Ethics of Public Health, writes in a NEJM perspective. Requiring HPV vaccination "will almost certainly achieve more widespread protection" against the virus than policies that "rely exclusively on persuasion and education," but a key question is whether the expanded protection "justifies the infringement on parental autonomy that compulsory vaccination inevitably entails," according to Colgrove. Bioethicists, people concerned with a "sharp increase" in the number of recommended pediatric vaccines and religious conservatives all might have objections to mandated HPV vaccines, Colgrove writes. He adds that although efforts to mandate Gardasil vaccination "are sure to ignite a new round of polarizing debates," it is a "mistake" to view contrasts in the debate "as solely, or even primarily, evidence of a conflict between science and religion" (Colgrove, NEJM, 12/7).

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