HPV vaccine (reminded by pegkerr)

[mrissa]

pegkerr reminded me that I've been thinking about the HPV vaccine. The Strib ran an article Sunday talking about parents not wanting to get their daughters vaccinated, in case it gave them the idea that it was okay to have sex. This is just one of the articles I've read recently.

And I very quickly became very, very upset at this. What I said over at Peg's was: I was upset nearly to tears over the article in the Strib about this on Sunday. If it was doubts about the safety of the vaccine, I'd have to look at the data, but that's not what these people were saying. It boiled down to, "I wouldn't want to save my daughter's life if it meant she might have sex I disapproved of." Or even, "I wouldn't want to save my daughter's life if she was raped by the wrong person." I very quickly lose the ability to discuss this attitude rationally.

Seriously and in specific now that I have the article in front of me: Debra Blaschko, 47, of Mankato, is quoted as saying, "It's not that my kids can't make a mistake. But I want them to strive for the ideal." So to sum up: it's not that her kids can't make a mistake, it's that they should die if they do. Or if they marry someone who once made a sexual choice she wouldn't approve of. Or...etc. You can think of the situations yourself, I'm sure: all the ways in which the children -- the daughter, as men rarely get cervical cancer -- of Debra Blaschko, 47, of Mankato, could behave exactly as she instructed them and still benefit from this vaccine. And then there's the fact that no kid ever behaves exactly as their parents instructed them, because they are their own people with their own choices.

This is not what we call loving parenting.

At pegkerr's, I chose to use the icon with my dad in it, like I'm doing here, and went on to say: My dad was pretty traditionally daddy-protective when I started dating, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that protective behavior was -- is -- about my whole person and what he hoped would make me healthy and happy, not about control. I wish every kid could say the same. (The same is true of my mom, except that she wasn't the one who got dating-protective.)

Comments

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree completely. I think this HPV business shows the anticontraception crowd up for what it is--it's all about being punished for having sex, whether it's by a pregnancy, by AIDS, or by cancer. Generally, both the pro- and anti- positions around any of the sexually charged political issues (abortion, gay marriage, etc.) seem to have bought into the punishment idea. They are either arguing that people should experience "consequences" of their actions, or they are arguing that people should be free of "consequences". My own two cents is what if these are not "consequences". What if they are just things that happen? Could we deal with them on their own terms and not try make them into a personal morality tale?

My big question about HPV is why aren't boys supposed to be getting it? I think the shape of this debate would be greatly changed if the vaccine were recommended for both boys and girls, or even for boys only. I'll bet that those same sanctimonious parents who want their daughters to die if they have sex with the wrong person would be more than happy to protect their son from a sexually transmitted virus that he caught from a "bad girl" so he can't give it to his wife. Me, I say vaccinate them all--boys, girls, everybody. If a new strain of HPV evades the vaccine, we can make more.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See this, folks? This is the designated conservative on my friendslist. (Not the only one. But still: definitely not a liberal.) Because this isn't a liberal vs. conservative issue, it's a decent parenting issue.

One of the letters to the editor in New Scientist this year suggested that HPV might be able to live in the skin around one's cuticles -- yes, on the fingers. Which makes all the moralistic posturing look even dumber, if that was possible.

I don't know -- I'm not sure that the people who aren't concerned with their daughters would be concerned with their daughters-in-law. I know my parents-in-law don't want me to die of cervical cancer (or any other kind!) through any mechanism, but they don't want seagrit to, either.

I agree that vaccinating everybody looks like it might be a good solution overall, but frankly if we don't have enough for everybody everybody right away, starting with the people who bear the major burden of the disease seems sensible to me, and then expanding the program to boys once we've got it entrenched enough and manufacturers producing enough vaccine and so on.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

But we still have a double standard. Even among very conservative Christians, it's somewhat more acceptable for a man to have premarity sex than a woman. You're right that if there is not enough vaccine to go around, it might make sense to give it only to girls. On the other hand, although this intuitively makes sense, it may not be the best way to ration the vaccine. You can model these things on computers, and if you ran all the parameters, it might turn out that vaccinating *boys* only would result in fewer cervical cancers ten or fifteen years from now because men on average have more partners than women, and can spread the virus more widely.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Good reason to model the thing on computers, then.