If you had the chance to vaccinate your daughter against a
disease that kills hundreds of thousands of women each year, would
you? Some social conservatives are hoping your answer is
“no.”
That’s because some conservatives, seeking to uphold
parental rights and the antiquated standards of abstinence-only
education, are rallying against putting vaccines against human
papilloma virus (commonly called HPV) on the list of required
immunizations for school-age girls.
Vaccines developed by two pharmaceutical companies have been
shown to be 100 percent effective in clinical trials in preventing
HPV, an extremely common sexually transmitted disease that can
cause cervical cancer in women and genital warts in men and
women.
Cervical cancer kills an estimated 275,000 women worldwide each
year and is lethal to more than a third of its victims in the
U.S.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 6.2 million new
infections occur among sexually active people each year, and 80
percent of women will become infected with HPV by age 50.
The disease is spread by skin-to-skin contact, not the exchange
of bodily fluids, so it can be transmitted through sexual contact
other than intercourse. And even the use of condoms does not
entirely reduce the risk of becoming infected.
Makers of the vaccines, Merck & Co. and GlaxoSmithKline,
advocate vaccinating girls between ages 10 and 14, when immune
response is the strongest and before girls are likely to be
sexually active and at risk for HPV.
However, some social conservatives do not see requiring HPV
immunization as what it is ““ a public health move designed to
save women’s lives. Instead, they say the vaccine will
encourage promiscuity and that teenagers may interpret vaccination
as a license to engage in premarital sex.
Some parents feel that requiring the vaccine for school
attendance infringes on their rights to educate their children as
they see fit and without government intervention.
But parents must also realize that keeping their children safe
is one of their primary responsibilities as parents, and this
includes vaccinations against preventable, not to mention lethal,
diseases.
Opponents of the immunization also say the vaccination will
promote risky behavior by giving people a false sense of security
in sexual encounters.
But it is in fact the same people who are against HPV
vaccination who choose to keep schoolchildren in the dark about sex
by pushing abstinence-only education.
Pretending STDs and teen pregnancy are imaginary issues has not
prevented anything. How can you expect people to take precautions
when no one told them there is anything to be cautious about?
Advocates of abstinence-only education have long fought against
comprehensive sex education in schools and emergency
contraceptives, claiming they increase sexual activity ““
despite scientific studies that have disproved this.
Results of a California study last year showed that
over-the-counter access to the emergency contraceptive Plan B did
not increase unprotected sex or the occurrence of STDs. It seems
reasonable to assume that protecting our children against cancer in
the same way we do against measles and chicken pox is not going to
turn them into tramps, either.
But withholding effective medical treatments for diseases with
high mortality rates just might kill them.