HPV Vaccine Aphrodisiac
A recent The Herald article titled Churches’ anger against vaccine for cancer in girls stated that Scottish church leaders are opposing a vaccine that could prevent the development of cervical cancer, because it would be “giving the ‘green light’ to under-age sex”. Scotland is not the first country where the “cervical cancer vaccine” has stirred quite some controversy. One of the other countries, needless to say, is religiously fundamentalist USA.
Again, the religious leaders show a complete disregard for science and, more importantly, human life.
The vaccine with the brand name Gardasil immunizes a person against Human Papilloma viruses (HPV), a huge group of viruses (note: plural is not viri, meaning ‘men’ in Latin) in the family of Papillomaviridae. These viruses are known for causing mainly all kinds of skin warts (including genital warts) and many of the types are quite common among the general human population. Warts are benign, meaning harmless. However, some types of HPV are known to cause several types of cancer, not limiting to genital cancers. Especially HPV types 16 and 18 are well known because these two types in total are the leading cause of 70% of all cervical cancer. Shockingly, cervical cancer is responsible for the deaths of 10 American women a day!
HPV is predominantly transmitted through sexual activity. The Scottish church leaders are afraid that vaccinating women at a young age (9 and older) will give a signal that it is okay to just go around and have promiscuous relationships at such a young age. Besides the absurdity of the argument, the religious fundamentalists seem to overlook a simple reason for vaccinating so early in life: the girls are not sexually active yet!
The vaccine is prophylactic, not therapeutic. It prevents, not cures! You want to administer the vaccine at such a young age because (a) due to the age, the effectiveness of the vaccine on the immune system might be optimal and (b) the children are most likely not sexually active at this age. You prevent harm. You are not telling them “go ahead and get laid”!
The vaccination should become mandatory for school admittance (standard US practice for many vaccines), not only for young girls but also boys. Men transmit the disease too, obviously, and the vaccine also prevents many instances of genital warts, anal cancer and penile cancer. The penile cancer should do it for the Christian Reich. Treatment involves amputation and that is certainly unwanted by Christians: god seems to dislike men with defects.
Think about the impact HPV has on society and compare that to the remote, even non-existent chance that a vaccination might promote promiscuous behavior, and there can be only one conclusion: protect the children.
We have the opportunity to prevent a lot of suffering and, for greedy politicians, limit the economical impact of cervical cancer. We can limit the spread of this dreadful virus with a simple vaccination program. Are we truly denying our children the opportunity we never had because, for obviously religious reasons, we are afraid it will send the wrong signal?
Is religious reasoning truly so cruel as to deny the future generation the fruits of science?