Conservatives oppose HPV vaccine

From Dan Savage's Nov. 9 column

As I mentioned a few months ago, a vaccine for two of the most common strains of HPV, the virus that causes genital warts, is currently moving through the federal approval process. HPV can also cause cervical cancer in women, and the cancers caused by the virus kill 4,000 American women every year. Who could possibly be against the introduction of a vaccine—one that has proven 100 percent effective in clinical tests!—that will save thousands of women's lives every year? Those "culture of life" assfucks, that's who.

In a Medscape article, Jack Sobel, MD, treading dangerously near my trademark phrase, calls the opposition "beyond belief".

A discussion of the opposition appeared in web.morons.org post entitled "Why Does the Extreme Right Love Cancer?":

The Family Research Council is concerned that vaccinating against HPV might encourage kids to have sex. This is probably a legitimate concern-- I know that when I got a tetanus vaccine, the first thing I wanted to do was to run out and play on rusty manure-spreading farm equipment in an effort to get as many puncture wounds as possible....

Physicians Consortium director Dr. Hal Wallis says he has mixed feelings about the vaccine, saying "This has the potential to be a wonderful medication that is going to prevent a lot of heartbreak, but I do have a concern about the message we send." Allow me to help clarify things: the message we send is "there is a disease you could contract some day that we'd like to protect you from." That's it. That's what a vaccine does. That's the message it sends.

Abstinence Clearinghouse founder and president Leslee J. Unruh asks, "If you tell a 13-year-old, You are protected against this STD, will she suddenly start thinking she is protected against all STDs, and therefore does not worry about having premarital sex and becomes sexually active?" Maybe if your 13-year-old is no smarter than Ms. Unruh. Yet, when I was 13 and vaccinated against tetanus, I strangely didn't start thinking I was also vaccinated against HIV and syphilis.

No mention is made of the biggest recent accomplishment of the abstinence-only movement: an increase in sexually-transmitted disease transmission through oral and anal sex.

The increasingly political behavior of the Religious Right has me almost looking forward to being left behind by the Rapture.