HPV and You

Ellen Goodman's op-ed today:

There was a time when only the loony left believed that the loony right favored death over sex. Not any more.

If you've been engrossed in the culture-war correspondence on the judicial front, maybe you missed the news on the medical front. While the religious right escorted Harriet Miers out and welcomed Samuel Alito in, a group of scientists announced the beginning of the end of a deadly cancer.

In clinical trials, a new vaccine was 100-percent successful in preventing the virus that causes most cervical cancer, the second-leading cancer killer of women in the world. Every year, some 10,000 American women are diagnosed with it and nearly 4,000 die. Needless to say, the success story was greeted with cork-popping enthusiasm by doctors. Eliav Barr of the beleaguered Merck, one of the two companies to develop a vaccine, offered a toast: "This is it. This is the Holy Grail."

But it appears that social conservatives aren't drinking from the same chalice.

This was the response of Leslie Unruh of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse: "I personally object to vaccinating children against a disease that is 100 percent preventable with proper sexual behavior."

The honchos at the Family Research Council said tepidly that they "welcome medical advances," but with a very frayed welcome mat. FRC's Tony Perkins said he would not inoculate his own daughter: "It sends the wrong message. Our concern is that this vaccine will be marketed to a segment of the population that should be getting a message about
abstinence."

A friend of mine got HPV from her husband, while she was pregnant with her fourth child. What a lovely gift to bring home, no? Even better during her treatment after she had the baby he told her he didn't love her anymore and left her.

She wasn't having premarital sex...it was postmarital. Her husband (obviously an asshole) infected her. Fortunately she is fine but if she had been vaccinated she wouldn't have had to go through chemo and radiation and the fear that she wouldn't be there for her kids.

I try to understand other people's views but I have hard time living in dreamland. Every parent would like their child to be perfect and not have sex until marriage but that is not the reality. But even if their perfect child does wait that may not protect them either. It's like home improvement - you buy more than you need for the project because it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.