Let youth choose HPV vaccine
When I was diagnosed with head and neck cancer, which was caused by the human papilloma virus, the debate about the HPV vaccine became personal — not because the vaccine has been around long enough to save me a lot of pain (I am age 66 today and the vaccine is recommended for youths age 11 and older) but because I wouldn’t want any other young Texan to one day walk down my path.
My life changed dramatically after I underwent chemotherapy and 33 radiation treatments. I have lost function in my saliva glands. My teeth need to be soaked in fluoride daily to save them and have now become discolored. Radiation treatment has affected my taste buds so food has no flavor. Fibrous tissue has built up in my throat making it difficult to swallow and impairs my voice. I must have my carotid arteries checked regularly due to radiation damage. My heart valves must be checked on a regular basis, too, as well as my lungs, as those organs have also suffered tissue damage. I lost my hair, and my mouth is always dry from lack of saliva. This affects my sleep because I wake up every two hours to drink water to moisten my mouth. As a result, I live through a constant cycle of insomnia. Every four months, I receive a CT scan, and three weeks leading up to it I start to get nervous about any new lump.
This is my new reality. It’s not that I feel sorry for myself because, truly, I am grateful to be alive. But our youngest generation doesn’t have to endure what I have endured.
There is a vaccine to prevent HPV, the cause of 5 percent of cancers worldwide, and 2,900 deaths in Texas between 2009 and 2013. But sadly, only 60 percent of our girls are vaccinated with one dose of HPV vaccine, and an even smaller percentage of our young boys — 41 percent — have received at least one dose of HPV vaccine.
Houston-area state Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, is trying to do something about our low HPV vaccination rate. Her bill involves no mandate, only a change in law that allows minors to consent to their own inoculation to HPV.
I know some will express concern about parents rights, and I think those voices should be heard. But a couple of important facts need to also be introduced into this debate.
First, a young Texan who presents symptoms of HPV to a doctor can be treated without parental consent. So it is legal in Texas to be treated for HPV if you are a minor, but the law does not allow you to take action on your own behalf to prevent it. Second, while many children are raised in loving, nuclear families, we also have a great many children in Texas today who have no parents, who are part of the foster care system or even homeless. We have young girls who have been criminally smuggled into our state as part of the sex trade, victims of an underground economy that reduces their lives to a commodity. Should we not be concerned about the health and well-being of these young Texans?
I support House Bill 97 by Davis because HPV causes cancer, suffering and death, and it can be eradicated from our state if we inoculate our youngest generation. The HPV vaccine is a modern miracle, akin to the breakthrough of the polio vaccine. We live today in a world where we don’t worry about polio and its devastation. Just a couple of generations ago, Americans lived in dire fear of it. Imagine a world where our mothers and daughters and wives never again have to fight cervical cancer; where our sons and fathers and husbands never die from head, throat and neck cancers. It’s possible, if we set politics aside and do right by our children.
No young Texan should ever have to walk my path. We should prevent what is preventable, especially when it saves lives of our precious children from the ravages of cancer.