80TH LEGISLATURE
House panel hears testimony on HPV vaccine
91 House members sponsor bill to cancel Perry's HPV mandate.
By Corrie MacLaggan
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Houston resident Heather Burcham is 31 years old, petite, with dark brown hair and no obvious signs that she has advanced-stage cervical cancer.
The former teacher has fewer than six months to live, doctors say.
 Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, introduces a bill that would undo the governor's mandate on HPV vaccines.  Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN Heather Burcham, who has advanced-stage cervical cancer, listens as a supporter talks about a bill Monday that would undo the Governor's mandate on HPV vaccines.  Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN Rep. Dennis Bonnen talks with Carol Ann Armenti of the Center for Cervical Health, who is a cervical cancer survivor.  Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN Heather Burcham, who has advanced-stage cervical cancer, waits for the beginning of a hearing in which a bill is introduced that would undo the governor's mandate for an HPV vaccine. Burcham intended to speak out against the bill but left before she had the chance to do so. |
As a House committee heard testimony Monday on a bill that would reverse Gov. Rick Perry's executive order mandating that sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against the cervical cancer-causing human papillomavirus, Burcham was eager to share her support of the vaccine.
"The vaccine has done its job if it saves one person from cancer, let alone knock out cervical cancer altogether," she said with tears in her eyes Monday morning after Perry introduced her to reporters he had summoned.
But at the Monday evening meeting, Burcham and a committee room full of people learned that a large bloc of lawmakers opposed the governor's mandate.
Ninety representatives in the 150-member House had joined state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, as co-authors of a bill that would override the mandate the governor issued Feb. 2.
Bonnen said that there are too many unanswered questions and that the vaccine received FDA approval too recently — in June — to be mandated.
"Until we can say that we understand this fully and it will be better for your children to have it, we can't give it that good old government seal of approval, which is a mandate," Bonnen told members of the House Committee on Public Health. It was the public's first official opportunity to tell lawmakers how they feel about the vaccine.
Critics have said that it violates parental rights or the legislative process or that it would encourage girls to be more promiscuous. Supporters of the governor's mandate have lauded Perry for requiring the vaccine.
Rep. Dianne White Delisi, R-Temple, an author of Bonnen's bill and chairwoman of the committee, cautioned state health officials against saying that the vaccine prevents cervical cancer. It protects against four strains of HPV, which cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers, she said.
Dr. Linda Flower, chairwoman of the Texas Physicians' Resource Council, a Christian network of physicians and health care providers, testified that her group does not support the governor's mandate.
"While the vaccine Gardasil is a major breakthrough as a vaccine that prevents cancer, it is too new to be mandated," she said.
In testimony after 10 p.m., the committee heard from Vicki Bone, a mother of four who traveled from Red River County to speak in support of the bill.
She asked the panel to protect "the rights of parents when concerned with the precious health matters of the daughters which God has given unto our care."
Amanda Vail, 29, of Houston spoke against the bill.
She got HPV after being raped in December, she said. Doctors have told her that she has a strain of HPV that can cause cervical cancer. She said she feels that her attacker has re-injured her every time she has a Pap smear.
"I would not have to be repeatedly violated had I been vaccinated," Vail said.
Burcham left before she was called to speak. But earlier in the day, she said she wanted to spend the time she has left sharing her story.
"It's my wildest dream come true that I get to maybe reach one person, that my life would not be in vain, that I have lived for a purpose and that I won't die and never have done anything," she said.
cmaclaggan@statesman.com; 445-3548
