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EDITORIAL: Regarding New Cancer-Preventing Shots, Keep Medical, Moral Decisions Separate By The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa. Jun. 12--The speed at which scientific and medical discoveries leap forward always strains our ability to keep up. It isn't simple awareness that is the problem, but the legal, ethical and moral thinking that inevitably must go along with new things. Adults of a certain age remember that there was a time that human space travel was controversial not because of questions about cost or safety, but whether it was in any divine plan for people to leave the Earth and visit other galactic rock piles. That notion seems quaint today, but particularly in the medical sciences, discoveries continue to force new, challenging questions. Take cloning. Take stem-cell research. Take the FDA approval last week of Gardasil, a vaccine against cervical cancer. Gardasil, which is made by Merck & Co. Inc., has been shown to prevent infection by four kinds of human papillovirus, or HPV. HPV is the most prevalent sexually transmitted disease in the United States. Two of the HPV strains cause about 70 percent of all cases of cervical cancer. It also prevents other infections, and potentially, 90 percent of genital warts. Cervical cancer kills about 3,700 women per year in the United States, a heavy toll, but a death rate that is relatively low because women here get relatively good screening and treatment. World-wide, it is the third-most deadly cancer, killing almost 250,000 women a year. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil's use by girls and women aged 9 to 26. Merck recommends that it be given before a girl becomes sexually active, the means by which infections that cause cervical cancer are spread. If infection already has occurred, Gardasil doesn't work. The three-injection regimen, which will cost about $360, will be available to doctors this month. The next step is for another FDA committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, to decide whether to endorse routine Gardasil vaccinations. If it does, it will become widely used. The controversy about Gardasil stems from the question, "How widely?" Support from the FDA committee (which will meet on June 29) would not make Gardasil vaccinations mandatory, as are the more familiar ones for mumps, measles, etc., that are required for public school. Such a decision would be made by state health and education departments. However, some conservative groups, such as Focus on the Family, are objecting. They say a vaccination that prevents a sexually transmitted disease gives girls the message that pre-marital sex is permissible. Of course, parents should be able to decide about any medication a child receives, even if it means choosing not to enroll in a public school to avoid it. But we think it strains logic to argue that this medical and public-health decision has anything to do with moral training. It is the business of families and faith communities to give children the moral training they need to traverse the difficult growing-up years. That holds true with or without a Gardasil vaccination. This discovery holds the potential to save lives. Meeting its cost will be a challenge for insurers and publicly funded vaccination programs for children. But beyond each family's choice to opt-out, it ought to be made broadly available. ----- Copyright (c) 2006, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn