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I thoroughly resent the move by the Obama Administration to put french fries off limits to children in restaurants. But in some ways what Perry did was worse.

Not having french fries will never kill a child. But forcing them with the power of the state to accept a vaccine into their bodies which was rammed through the approval and mandating process with payoffs could harm an awful lot of them.

Not like there aren’t a lot of FDA approved pharmaceuticals out there that quickly got pulled from the market once it was learned that they harmed people in the real world.

YOu do know that in the years that Gardasil has been on the market, more than 36 million people have been vaccinated, and there are NO deaths that have been found to be caused by the vaccine?

You can argue over whether a 12-year-old should recieve the vaccine. It is meant to be given before you become sexually active, and it requires a 6-month schedule, and if you already have an HPV it can actually be more risky, so the normal situation is for the vaccine to be given to virgins.

There is little evidence that Gardasil wasn't properly vetted, or that it's trials were flawed. The statistics since it became widely available show that claims that it was unncessarily risky are false.

Sarah Palin's Alaska encourages pre-teen girls to get this vaccination. They push it on a government web site, with government (taxpayer) funds, and also encourge people who don't qualify for the free program to still get the vaccine.

It is voluntary, which LONG AGO was the argument against Perry -- making it a requirement. Somehow, Bachman has managed to trick some conservatives into thinking the issue is the vaccine itself, like either it is evil because it vaccinates against a sexually transmitted disease (apparently those are God's punishment for sinful actions, so we shouldn't vaccinate for them), or that it is bad because it will make your kids retarded, and is unsafe, and everybody should actively work to get it off the market.

But when Sarah Palin was Governor of Alaska, she had no problem with signing up for a federal program to offer this supposedly evil, sinful, child-killing vaccine to the pre-teen girls in her state -- So long as parents chose to do so voluntarily.

I am actually hard-pressed anymore to figure out what the valid charge is against Perry. It was that since this was not a communicable disease, we shouldn't require it for attendance in public schools. I agree with that, I fought the requirement in Virginia, and Perry was wrong to add it to the list for THAT reason.

But that apparently wasn't a good enough reason to attack Perry, so people started making up all sorts of other attacks. Like:

the drug is unsafe -- it isn't.
he only approved it because he got money from Merck, or because a friend of his told him to do it -- there is no evidence for this claim, no e-mails, letters, or prior art suggesting a change of heart. Meanwhile, there is lots of evidence to the contrary, like his relationship with the women who pushed this because of real deaths, his parent's fights with cancer, etc. He had plenty of reasons to think that vaccinating pre-sexually-active girls with a vaccine meant for pre-sexxually-active girls to prevent the spread of a sexually transmitted disease which causes cancer deaths and other lifetime illness was a good thing that should be encouraged (like Alaska encourges it).
he forced kids to get the vaccine against their parent's wishes -- a charge disproved by the very words of the EO that said the parents had the "final authority", and by the trivially easy opt-out process where you just get online, fill out a 30-second form, hit enter, and the state SENDS you a filled-out opt-out form for you to sign and turn it. Easier than almost any other interaction with government.

BTW, I should note that I changed my position on the efficacy of Gardasil over the last two years, as studies were performed based on the actual vaccinations and it became clear that it was effective, and the side effects showed it was not unreasonably risky.

If you search my posting history, you will see that back in 2009 I thought people who knew they were waiting until marriage, and had their spouses tested for HPV, probably wouldn't want to risk this vaccine. I'm not sure I'd feel the same way today, although that is certainly the lowest-risk group.

I never had my daughter vaccinated, but now that she is 18, I reminded her to discuss it with her physician at her next check-up, and to make her own decision.

But I still don't think it should be on the school-required list. I wrote about that back in 2008, and my one column even got cited on a vaccination-news web site (unfortunately, my column was on a web server that my paper took down, so it's not available online anymore):

February 8, 2008 - Double standards with HPV vaccine - Manassas Journal Messenger - "The government has no business forcing people to do what government thinks is best for them. [...] Parents can decide about vaccination in consultation with their doctors, not on orders from the government." The Virginia Department of Health currently requires vaccinations against 11 diseases that equally affect men and women, including measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox and polio. My inner Libertarian would carry Mr. Reichley's position to the logical conclusion that parents should be able to decide on any or no vaccinations for their children. Yet Mr. Reichley only opposes mandatory HPV immunization. Why?"

So I was known at the time to oppose Gardasil vaccination while not fighting other mandatory vaccinations.