The Daily Background
| Republicans against vaccination
by Arlen Parsa
I need a health/science section or something.
A doctor/professor from New Mexico wrote an Op-Ed for the Times the yesterday about the horror of cervical cancer, and the miracle of a new treatment in the form of a vaccination. He doesn’t mention how he feels, although it is painfully obvious, about the conservative Republicans who claim that vaccinating kids for HPV (responsible for almost all cases of cervical cancer) makes them more eager to have unprotected sex. Which is a stupid argument of course.
Science and medicine have found a vaccination for a gruesome deadly disease, and these Republicans don’t want to allow kids to be vaccinated, because they think it will encourage irresponsible behavior? Honestly, this approach is absolutely heinous. They would rather have people suffering and dying from a now-preventable disease, just to make a point, and serve as a warning for everybody else.
Not to want to protect Americans from a terrible, terrible, deadly disease on these grounds goes squarely against any remaining premise of a culture of life that these people brag about.
hpv is not only an std. it can also be passed by rubbing a hand up against someone else’s. all that’s needed are tiny abrasions in the skin that don’t even expose blood.
I think Martha just actually made a good point. This isn’t only an STD. It’s a virus that can circulate in other ways besides sexual contact.