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Vaccinating our daughters against HPV
By STEPHEN BARTLETT
Staff Writer
PLATTSBURGH — My daughter is 12.
She prefers hanging out with her girlfriends, though she thinks boys are cute. She doesn’t have a boyfriend and hasn’t had her first kiss yet, but the thought has likely crossed her mind.
I’m calling her pediatrician today to schedule her an appointment to receive the HPV vaccination.
The controversial vaccine was developed to prevent cervical cancer and other diseases in females caused by certain types of genital human papillomavirus (HPV), which is a sexually transmitted disease. Medical professionals recommend that girls get the vaccine before they are sexually active, and the FDA has licensed it as safe and effective.
At least 50 percent of sexually active people will get HPV, which can cause cervical cancer in women. Millions of people contract HPV yearly, while nearly 10,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer annually. Nearly 5,000 women die yearly from cervical cancer.
I’m not yet worried about my daughter experimenting, but I also know that when I worked on news stories that focused on teen sexuality, I interviewed a girl who first participated in unprotected oral sex at age 13.
So I’m not going to navigate fatherhood with my head in the sand, and if my daughter does make poor decisions where sex is concerned and suffers as a result, I will not be the dad who sobs each night that he could have saved his little girl’s life with a simple vaccine.
Yet there is unwarranted, intense debate over plans to require HPV vaccinations for girls 11 to 14 who attend public school. Religious groups fear requiring pre-adolescent girls to receive a vaccine against sexually transmitted diseases might slip some sort of perverse message into their subconscious that flies in the face of abstinence-based sexual education. Some Christian conservatives even believe that HPV is valuable as an obstacle to premarital sex.
Not surprisingly, proponents of the HPV vaccine are lending credence to such claims by saying they will allow parents to opt out of the vaccine for their girls on religious and moral grounds. I simply cannot be shocked in a country where only 12 percent of people believe in evolution, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence.
So, it appears, once again, organized religion is going to result in the avoidable deaths of innocents as it did during the Inquisition and witch trials. Even today, people are dying due to their religious beliefs, such as Islamic terrorists who kill infidels and themselves to receive rewards from God; Christian Scientists who forgo medical interventions, such as antibiotics; and Pentecostal snake dancers, who perish from poisonous snake bites.
I believe parents who object to the HPV vaccine for religious reasons are doing nothing more than rejecting rationality and therefore perpetuating a rather tragic state of being in which archaic myths take the place of proven science to the detriment, in this case, of our little girls.
Comments
Here, here Steve. Bravo!
The debate over the HPV vaccine should have nothing to do with sex. The idea that getting a shot makes you more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior is just rediculous. And besides, there's nothing about marriage that protects you from HPV anyway - women can get the virus from there husbands too.
HPV is a disease, just like measles, mumps, chicken pox, and a host of other diseases against which we vaccinate our children. Are you telling me that if a vaccine against AIDS were discovered tomorrow that these people wouldn't want their children vaccinated?
I'll preface the following by saying that parents must be the ultimate arbitors for what is right for their children, but, I believe that those who would argue against the vaccine are really more interested in punishing what they see as immoral behavior than protecting the health and welfare of children.
Posted by: Tim Dodd | February 26, 2007 3:51 PM
I agree with pretty much everything you said, Steven, including the idea that the HPV vaccine should be more or less mandatory. At the very least, it should be available easily and for free to all those who would benefit from it.
Unfortunately, Christian conservatives aren't the only group to have muddied what should be a crystal-clear question. As I understand it, the drug company that makes the HPV vaccine lobbied heavily in Texas to make the vaccine mandatory. Now, their greed doesn't actually make the idea any less valid, but in a time when many people believe drug companies would do anything for a buck, the company would have done better to stay out the debate.
Posted by: Andrew Pulrang | March 17, 2007 10:34 AM