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The headline caught my eye..."Bad Things Happen to Good Girls, Too"...SouthtownStar columnist Kimberly Brehm was revisiting the issue of having her daughters vaccinated with Gardasil, which is designed to prevent the four most common viruses that cause cervical cancer and genital warts in women. I read on, interested to know what she thought, because when offered the vaccine for my 11 year old daughter (it's recommended specifically for 11 and 12 year old girls who have not been sexually active), I declined.

Brehm says:

"I know contracting HPV can lead to cervical cancer in women, but I believed my daughters would not be at risk because I am rasing 'good girls' with strong morals. They won't be the type of girls who need to worry about sexually transmitted diseases, I decided, and declined the shots. But after learning one in four teenage girls in the United States has a sexually transmitted disease, with the large majority suffering from HPV, I'm not so sure I made the right decision."

While I looked for and couldn't find the study she referenced on the Centers for Disease Control web site, I did find a CDC study which quotes a 2003-2004 survey of 1,921 women ages 14-59. 25% of the 14-19 year old girls tested positive for HPV. 45% for 20-24 year old women tested positive for HPV. A second CDC report using 2006 data estimates that there are 19 million new STD infections per year with half of those occurring in the 15-24 year old population. Another CDC estimate is that at some point in time 50% of the sexually active US population will have an STD infection.

So, like Brehm says, even if my daughter is a "good girl" and manages to successfully navigate through the peer pressure and rash decisions of the adolescent/young adult years, she has a 50% chance that her future spouse will not have been so successful and will expose her to STDs, knowingly or not. That certainly casts new light on my decision.

However, Gardasil was just approved in June 2006. I don't think there have been enough long term studies done to see how this is going to affect young girls' growth and development and future reproductive health. And I speak from related experience here...like other "good" parents, I had my oldest two vaccinated with the highly touted chicken pox vaccine not long after it came on the scene in the mid-90's. Within 2 years, both experienced mutated cases of the chicken pox. The sores were larger than normal with increased itchiness, pain and fever. The total duration of the illness seemed shorter, but the intensity was definitely higher. By that time, we were seeing a different pediatrician who said that what they'd learned after the first few years of giving the vaccine was that its non-refrigerated shelf life was pretty much non-existent and that the vaccine was partially or completely ineffective if it had sat out waiting more than 5 minutes for the nurse to come administer the shot. Hmmmm...

So I'm not real excited about running out and getting my daughter vaccinated with Gardasil, which has only been in active use for less than two years. In talking to two friends who will have high school fresh(wo)men next year, one is absolutely having her daughter vaccinated now. The other is waiting, as her pediatrician felt they had some time and she preferred to see more research data on long term effects. My tween is not yet a teen, and high school is two years away. So I think I'll spend that time working hard to ensure that our family values are just that, family values that are internalized by my daughter. Yet I'll also be keeping an eye on the research because, quite frankly, this shot may be a shot that protects her from someone else's rash decisions made along the way.

Learn more about this author, Rachel Gilmore.
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