I advocate strongly for mandatory HPV vaccines for all pre-teen girls (and after the trial gets done, boys). The vaccine prevents the type of HPV that causes 80% of the cases of cervical cancer, a disease that afflicts 12,000 young women every year in the United States and kills a quarter of them. The vaccine is expensive still but is totally worth the cost.
Despite the common sense of this, conservatives have made it a mission to prevent mandatory vaccinations because they feel that it will encourage young women to become sluts. How a good little girl will turn into a raging nympho because of 3 shots isn't really clear but damned if they care if it makes any sense. Additionally, some liberals are ostensibly opposed to it because its new and they don't like big Pharma but I've got the feeling there's a little puritan fear in most of them as well. All this is brought up in an article on Slate.com in which the author makes a very good point:
"...fears about the health risks of Gardasil have obscured the hidden moral calculus of the conservative opposition to Gardasil: that in the end, it may be worth it for several thousand women to die from cervical cancer every year as collateral damage in the war against premarital teen sex. Because, of course, even if the vaccination did encourage promiscuity, it's not clear that it's OK for women to die as a result."
Reading that made my stomach turn. It states the real moral balancing act that is being performed by conservatives who oppose Gardisil.
Apparently the idea of human sacrifice isn't so foreign to Christians after all.
Matthew 5:46-48: "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
