Vaccine debate
I have sat back for the last few days and watched all the debate about Texas requiring girls going into 6th grade to be vaccinated against HPV, which causes cervical cancer. Cervical Cancer is the number 2 cancer killer of women. Finding a way to prevent it is a huge breakthrough and will save countless lives. No one seems to be actually debating that. I have seen arguments about the safety of the vaccine. That makes sense, we do want to be sure that what we are giving to our daughters is safe. I can understand any parent feeling 5 years just isn’t enough and so there are ways to opt your child out if they choose. I have seen arguments that Merck just pushed this vaccine through to pay the Vioxx settlements. Well, that doesn’t stand the sniff test since the settlements were $253 million and their 2005 sales were over $22 billion. One of the funniest was the argument Techdigger mentioned here.
The argument that actually made me decide to write about this is that vaccinating young girls against HPV is giving them a license to have sex. In order for the vaccine to be effective it must be administered before contact with HPV. It is also a 3 shot regiment over 6 months, I think the choice for 6th grade was based on there being a smaller chance that girls of that age are sexually active or that they would be sexually active in the short-term. This isn’t putting someone on the pill to protect from pregnancy, which I could probably see is giving a girl the okay to have sex, this is a vaccinating against the 2nd biggest cancer killer of women. The HPV vaccine makes no claims to prevent HIV, herpes, gonorrhea, any other sexually transmitted disease or pregnancy. How can anyone keep a straight face and say vaccinating against HPV is promoting underage sex? That is just simply illogical. I ran across this in my reading.
FIRST-PERSON: Protecting our girls - (BP)
It’s a shame, but in America, we often go after the “quick fix.” It”s a lot easier to give your daughter a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease that to build into her, during those “teachable moments” beginning in childhood, the knowledge that sex is for marriage. But, instead, our culture has left our daughters adrift, without an anchor.
At one time our society provided a web of protections for young ladies and supported parents who were attempting to keep their daughters from falling into sexual activity — and the resulting unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. Now, the fashion and entertainment industries encourage teenage girls to dress and act like tramps. Parents experiencing the natural discomfort with their daughters’ dress and behavior often seem to have trouble standing up to the onslaught. MTV, certain websites, hip hop and rock music speak so loudly that all some parents can manage is a timid “be careful.” And parents who stand firm on these issues can no longer rely on a cultural consensus that says, at least ideally, sex is for marriage.
It is simply astounding to me that someone wrote this. Nothing about waiting for marriage protects a woman against HPV. Even if a woman is totally monogamous they still have to trust their husband to be honest about his sexual history and for him to be monogamous also. Let’s be real here folks, 50% of marriages end in divorce and while it would be a better world if cheating didn’t exist, it does. It is not beyond the realm of possibility for a girl to be completely chaste until marriage and then be totally true to her vows and still get HPV. I just can’t believe they are making a health concern into a morals discussion. There are many moral women walking around who have done everything this woman talks about with HPV. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease but a STD is not synonymous with immoral. On the other hand, the idea that a parent would choose to leave their child open to a deadly cancer because they are worried that they might have sex would be immoral.
Technorati Tags: Merck, HPV vaccine, cervical cancer,morality, vaccine, HPV, STD, sexually transmitted disease, rick perry, texas, texas politics
Filed under: HPV, HPV vaccine, Merck, Rick Perry, STD, cervical cancer, morality, sexually transmitted disease, texas, texas politics, vaccine
I caught HPV from someone I had been dating for over a year who never told me he had it. He knew, I asked him and he lied. We are no longer together and he’s probably spreading it around as we speak. I posted him on http://www.womansavers.com and I hope women will read it before they have unprotected sex with him.