Monthly Archive for February, 2007

Once in a blue moon, a conservative does something right. But I didn’t expect this person to be Rick Perry. Perry is the current governor of the great (*cough*) state of Texas, where making the right decision gets you tarred and feathered, run out of town, or simply voted out of office. It’s really no surprise that our glorious president came from Texas. Anyways, Perry, has ordered young women in the state to receive mandatory (and sometimes free) vaccines which can prevent cervical cancer. Good, right? Wrong. The situation has people all over Texas up in arms about how the vaccine could cause their children to become sexually promiscuous and have premarital sex. Oh noes! Ironically, though, Perry is a conservative Christian against abortions and stem-cell research who would be the most against promoting premarital sex. Clearly he sees how big the benefits of this vaccination are.

Anyways, a bit of background. The vaccine causing all the controversy is known as Gardasil, manufactured by Merck & Co. It is designed to prevent the contraction of human papillomavirus, or HPV, a virus which often is received through unprotected sex. So, through the twisted logic most religious conservatives employ, any vaccine which can prevent people from getting HPV must be condoning premarital sex. But that’s simply not true. While some strains of HPV are sexually transmitted, others can be contracted from the environment or simply through non-sexual skin contact. And HPV infections play a major role in almost all cases of cervical cancer.

Now, regardless of HPV’s status as an STD, I must question why parents in Texas are reluctant to have their kids vaccinated against it. Yes, HPV is mostly caused by unprotected sex. But choosing not to have your kids vaccinated against HPV is just as bad as not teaching them about contraceptives. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it doesn’t matter what you want, your kids will most likely have sex anyways. Vaccinating them against a virus that can cause cancer is not going to make them want to have sex any more than they already do. Besides, I would think that the benefits of protecting against cervical cancer outweigh the risks of your kid going out and doing it because they won’t get one STD. Big whoop. If they’re smart, they’ll realize they’re still at risk for hundreds of other STDs. And then they’ll either abstain or use a condom. But keeping kids from being vaccinated won’t keep them from having sex.

Funny, isn’t it, how parents can be more naive than kids when it comes to sex. But it seems that the majority of critics of this order aren’t objecting because of the tiny chance that their kids will have sex. Instead, they’re claiming that the mandatory vaccine interferes with their right to make medical decisions for their children. Funny how almost no one objects to tetanus shots, though. There are no serious side-effects to Gardasil. The chance it will promote premarital sex is very, very slim. But the benefits are huge. A single HPV infection in a woman’s teen years can raise the risk that she will have cervical cancer later in life. Prevent HPV infections and her chances of cancer of the cervix go down a lot. What, I ask you, is wrong with that? Stupid people, of course. Stupid people who can’t see past their religious dogma and ficitious rights (such as the right to prevent your kid from being healthy because you don’t agree with vaccination). Ah, but what else is new?