We can obsess over s-e-x or help save young lives

With all due respect — and one could debate whether any should be forthcoming — the controversy over a vaccine for cervical cancer calls to mind two television characters, Lenny and Squiggy.

They starred in the 1980s television hit "Laverne and Shirley." Every time this dim duo caught whiff of something remotely sexual, they jammed their palms in their mouths and squealed like school children.

A version of this is playing out over the Gardasil vaccine that protects against HPV, the human papillomavirus, and the most common sexually transmitted virus. HPV affects more than 6 million Americans every year and, in women, can lead to cervical cancer — one of the deadliest forms of cancer.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the HPV vaccine seven months ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended girls and women from ages 9 to 26 be inoculated. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have legislation mandating the vaccine for school enrollment.

A commentary in the December issue of the New England Journal of Medicine cited a large body of evidence proving the efficacy and efficiency of school-based vaccination laws.

Despite mandatory vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis and other contagious diseases, the HPV vaccine sticks in some people's craw. Washington's Legislature could have gone the way of other states and entertained mandatory vaccine legislation but a survey of the political landscape persuaded lawmakers to lob this controversial issue to the state Department of Health.

Why? Sex. Quiet, Lenny and Squiggy!

Some fear the HPV vaccine's protection would give young girls permission to spend their days having sex. I'm not kidding.

For other critics, it is the notion that their youthful innocence could be violated, during the course of three shots over six months, by a medical practitioner's potential sex-education lecture. The horrors!

State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, was to introduce legislation tying the vaccine to school enrollment. But the prospect of a vocal opposition sinking the vaccine's prospects as a mandatory or voluntary option made her think twice.

The mother of five is an experienced politician who doesn't scare easily. But the nutcase factor made it easier to persuade Kohl-Welles that the HPV vaccine is a project for public health, not the Legislature.

Opposition isn't coming just from the religious right and conservatives. In my old hometown, Washington, D.C., a prominent columnist called the city's move toward a mandatory HPV vaccine for its mostly African-American school system racist. In case that didn't scare anyone, he invoked the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, that ugly stain on American history when our government conducted medical experiments on black, mostly illiterate, men for 40 years. In 1997, President Clinton apologized for the Tuskegee experiment.

A universal HPV vaccine cannot be equated with a secret experiment on the unwitting. To believe otherwise means we've got Lenny and Squiggy joined by the evil Dr. No.

In D.C.s backyard, a public-health affiliate of George Washington University found that state laws requiring immunization as a condition of school enrollment increased the use of vaccines, reduced disease and lessened racial disparities in vaccine coverage.

According to the university's public-health arm, adolescents, especially from minority and low-income communities, have less access to care, and a voluntary HPV vaccine is less likely to reach them, contributing further to health disparities.

Back to the other Washington. A mandatory law in our state is dead for now. Despite immunization rates that lag behind the national average, public-health officials want to try a voluntary campaign centered on educating girls and women of the HPV vaccine's benefits. Gov. Christine Gregoire has proposed spending $13.1 million in the 2007-09 biennium that, pooled with federal vaccine funds, would purchase 286,000 doses. Most major insurers will also cover the vaccine.

Efforts should be closely monitored. Success shouldn't rest on how many get the vaccine but how well public-health workers reach girls and women in rural communities, Indian reservations and low-income neighborhoods.

Just as important, public-health leaders will have to get around the Lennies, Squiggies and Dr. Nos of the world who are prepared to launch a mis-education campaign about the vaccine.

Politics and conspiracy theories aside, all should consider this: Each year, 10,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer; one-third of them will die from it. The HPV vaccine has the potential to decrease these numbers and one day eradicate cervical cancer, in a way similar to what vaccines did for polio, chickenpox and measles.

We have a tool to increase public health and save lives. Pick it up and use it.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com