The hot topic on the talk radio circuit here in DC lately has been whether to make vaccination against the human papillloma virus mandatory for school-age girls. The subject, predictably, has brought out the crazies—but it’s also been a good month for airing some legitimate concerns.

Sometime this week, the DC city council is slated to vote on such a mandatory-vaccination bill. Events here in DC might reflect events going on across the country, since similar bills are pending in about 24 states.

The council members behind the bill have acted firmly and swiftly—lining up vaccine advocates to testify in favor of the bill, and soundly thrashing anyone who opposes it. For instance, at a city council meeting I went to last February, one councilman harshly criticized the city’s Children’s Hospital for failing to take a stance on mandatory vaccination.“I am taken back and disappointed,” he said.

But the council might not have bargained for the skepticism in the community. Most callers on the talk shows are against mandatory use, and the fear of vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry is alarming, with words like “sterilization campaign” and “experimentation on our children” being thrown around the airwaves.

Merck didn’t exactly engender confidence among skeptics with its heavy-handed lobbying campaign—which it has since shrewdly withdrawn—for compulsory vaccination with its HPV vaccine, Gardasil (for a great perspective on this see the March editorial in Nature Biotechnology).

To find out more about opposition to the vaccine, I went to a community forum on it at a local library back in March. As expected, representatives of religious groups, such as the Archdiosese of Washington, attended—presumably concerned that the vaccine could lead to promiscuity among young girls.

But the religious folks didn’t say much, because they didn’t need to. The anti-Merck, anti-pharmaceutical industry rhetoric was out in force—it had passed no one by that Merck was behind the Vioxx scandal a few years ago. A few people ventured into full-blown conspiracy scenarios,

“This is a recombinant vaccine, made by GENE SPLICING,” said one participant, “It changes the entire structure of the human race.”

While that might be exaggerated, other arguments against mandatory vaccination were more sane and well-reasoned. Most compelling to me was the argument that the long-term efficacy is unknown (for more on this and related issues see our news story). Studies show the vaccine protects for a few years, but whether girls vaccinated at age 11 will be protected if they become sexually active in their late teens seems unclear—given this uncertainty, is worth the public health investment?

Even some members of the CDC panel that recommended voluntary vaccination are skeptical that it’s time for mandatory measures.

While we aren’t in danger of changing the entire structure of the human race, I can understand the reasons for caution—if only to give people time to get used to a new type of vaccine in their doctors’ offices.