Is everyone so consumed with the religious right / liberal left push and shove that no one is even thinking about the government MANDATING that we inject our children with yet another batch of brand new chemicals.

Should we not have the right to choose whether we comfortable with what drugs we shoot into our bodies and our children's bodies? How can we say 'a woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body' in the case of abortion, but she has no choice about her own body when it comes to whether to accept this injection which the medical community claims to be 'perfectly safe' (because we know they've never been wrong before...)

I heard the NPR coverage of this story, and it included a discussion of vaccinating boys, as well as a comment from someone on the religious right saying his group didn't oppose it because girls who waited until marriage to have sex could still get HPV from rape or a marriage partner who had previously acquired the infection. Of course, they didn't want it to be mandatory, which kind of undercuts the efficacy of a vaccination program, but still.

The story is as follows:

1) We are all pre-pregnant and should act accordingly.

2) An HPV vaccine is a bad thing because it will encourage us to have sex, like the sluts we are.

pre-pregnant/no-sex/pre-pregnant/no-sex...

BANG

whoops, my head exploded

In a previous post on Broadsheet about the FDA stalling Plan B there was a quote from a memo made by a high-up FDA person basically saying that if Plan B became available over-the-counter then teen sex cults using Plan B to prevent pregnancy would spring up all over the country. Commence outrage.

What would one do in a teen sex cult? I was a teenager all too recently and I have no idea. Would these be some sort of sex-centered pagan sects?

The term just baffles me. It sounds totally made up. I mean, yes, you can say that some things encourage teen sex all you like, guys. It may be totally inaccurate. But a cult of teen sex?

If your teenager was or is in a sex cult, I am all ears. Hey, I'm only 21, maybe I can still get in on this sweet deal. I'm on the pill, someday soon I'll get this HPV vaccine, and then I can have all the unsafe sex I want with no risk, right? No more diseases for me to contract!

The daughters of fundies won't get the vaccine. My daughters will (even if I have to take them up to Canada for it). It's interesting that people who fight so hard against the teaching of evolution will be proving it right.

Of course fundies will "stand to watch women die when it's easily preventable." If you don't have people in agony to minister to and look down upon as immoral, you really don't have a religion.

At some point even conservative upstanding christians won't stand to watch women die when it's easily preventable, right? RIGHT? RIGHT???????

I am sure the Merck folks will end up with it administered to guys as well, but the label and the clinical studies all address HPV infection in women.

To cite its use "off-label" at this point is prohibited by the FDA.

All I keep seeing in the news reports today is about the HPV vaccine for "girls", but no mention of giving it to boys!? Ugh! Sure, women are the ones most likely to develop a life-threatening condition as a result, but active virus in men is what typically passes it along... not to mention the boys who grow up to be gay men. The cervix isn't the only sensitive area.... I could be mistaken here, but my understanding is that this vaccine addresses the 4 most common HPV strains -- some of which are more cervical high-risk, and others that manifest as external warts. This is a public health issue and would be best addressed as such like all the other common vaccines.

I thought that the "condoms don't stop HPV" stuff had already been disproved by studies in the years since they started making that claim.

Not, understand, that I am saying they don't still use it. I guess just wonder why they won't keep using that old argument even with a vaccine available as in "Condoms don't stop the strains of HPV that the vaccine does not stop, therefore, we should not be using condoms or the vaccine. Also, aspirin can't cure cancer, so we should stop using aspirin as well."