HPV bills move forward in Senate

One senator removes a vaccine mandate from her bill, citing political reality.

Texans would get access to more information about human papillomavirus, but the vaccine would not be mandated, under a series of bills approved by a Senate panel Tuesday.

A month after the House passed a bill that would essentially erase Gov. Rick Perry's Feb. 2 executive order requiring that girls get the HPV vaccine before entering sixth grade, the Senate panel recommended a similar measure.

"The message is that the Legislature is not yet prepared to mandate the HPV vaccine," said Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, chairwoman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

The Senate committee version, unlike the House-approved bill, says the ban on state health officials mandating the HPV vaccine would expire in 2011, leaving the door open for future mandates.

The measures approved by the committee could come up for consideration by the full Senate as early as next week.

Another proposal, by Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, would require Texas schools to distribute information about the cancer-causing HPV, including how it is transmitted and how it can be prevented and the availability and effectiveness of vaccines.

Van de Putte had originally proposed requiring girls to be vaccinated against HPV beginning this fall, a full year before Perry's executive order is to go into effect. But on Tuesday, she removed the mandate from her bill because of opposition in the Legislature, she said.

"I sincerely believe that Gov. Perry really did have the best interest of our young women, young Texans, at heart," Van de Putte told the panel. "But I know the reality of the political world."

On Tuesday, Perry stood by his mandate, which Nelson has called a suggestion because she says it does not carry the weight of law.

"I hope that the focus will be on those young women who will lose their lives if the Texas legislators do not allow for this vaccination to go forward," the governor told reporters. Perry did not say whether he would veto a bill that contradicts his mandate.

Lawmakers were upset when Perry bypassed them and ordered state health officials to adopt rules requiring girls to get the HPV vaccine before entering sixth grade.

Merck & Co.'s Gardasil, a three-shot series approved last summer by the FDA, is designed to inoculate girls against the strains of HPV that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers.

Caroline Davis of Round Rock, mother of an 11-year-old girl, told the panel Tuesday that she opposes mandating the vaccine.

"If you administer this vaccine to my daughter and then we find a problem, you cannot take it back," she said.

But Cheryl Swope Lieck of Anahuac, a 40-year-old cervical cancer survivor, said that after her experience — she was diagnosed with cervical cancer despite normal Pap smear results — she'll be getting her 12-year-old daughter the vaccine.

"Had I continued to listen to (my doctor) and rely solely on the results of my Pap smears, I would be dead today," she said.

cmaclaggan@statesman.com; 445-3548

Additional material from staff writer W. Gardner Selby.