Um… CollegialMom, Hanna’s last line, “Or so I gather,” is in reference to those who think that a proper moral upbringing will prevent a girl from getting HPV. Her point was that no proper moral upbringing can prevent some methods of getting HPV - rape, faithless husband, etc. Or how about a husband who says that he’s a virgin but isn’t? Or a husband who is a virgin but messed around enough to get it? </p>
<p>Her point was that no amount of moral upbringing shields you from other people’s actions. Through no fault of her own, a girl can get HPV.</p>
<p>I don’t care about moral arguments. If this vaccine is recommended/required by the government, it will, like other vaccines, be covered by insurance and well-child care for many people. Then it will be a choice for those who could not otherwise afford it. </p>
<p>Many people decline “required” vaccines. There are people who have moral objections to MMR, tetanus, whopping cough, and polio vaccines and don’t get those, either. Making an HPV vaccine “mandatory” will not force anyone to have it.</p>
<p>i don’t think anyone INTENDS to get the flu…but we all take flu shots because we don’t want to contract it. after we take flu shots, do we stop washing our hands regularly? no…it doesn’t make us any less careful.
i think this HPV is a great idea. no one goes out and tries to get a disease, especially an STD. for young women it’s especially important. you don’t want to take chances. even for girls who are not going to have sex before marriage. don’t you want to be protected in case of rape or in case your husband isn’t clean? you never know. it’s always good to be as protected as possible.
if religious families are afraid that a mere injection will cause their children to lose/forget their values, then i think the family needs to examine how well it has gotten those values across to the kids.</p>
<p>It’s not just religion. This is a new vaccine that is not trying to protect against a disease that is spread through the modes that other diseases are that are required. It should, at this point, be up to the parent and the individual to decide. In addition, the use of Pap smears later in life can detect early cervical changes.</p>
<p>In many school districts, it is not very easy to refuse only specific vaccines. Often, one can refuse ALL vaccines for religious reasons, etc, but NOT selective vaccines. Some parents, for instance, would like to only refuse the varricella vaccine, but it would mean their child is excluded from school.</p>
<p>As to Hanna’s post, I take what parents say at face value, as twisting and turning medical facts leads only to misunderstandings. It is not up to me in this or any setting that is dealing with serious situations to try to figure out if there is sarcasm involved, or to review someone’s posts. I now think, when it comes to health and illness, I should really deal in “real life” where I do make these decisions all day long, with meaning. I was just trying to be informative to a nebulous, ever-changing internet audience. Won’t work for me!</p>
<p>“If religious families are afraid that a mere injection wll cause their children to lose/forget their values, then I think the family needs to examine how well it has gotten those values across to the kids.” </p>
<p>You are not the first person to state this. I find this statement to be utterly arrogant (sorry). For some reason people without religious values feel free to make moral judgments about decisions people with religious values have the RIGHT to make for themselves and their children all the time. In fact, they are quite self-righteous about it, using their concern about people’s “health” to justify their attitudes. Whereas, those same people would scream bloody murder if a religious person dared criticize their choices for themselves and their children in the realm of sexuality.</p>
<p>For the most part, I have only seen religious people asking for protection for their <em>individual rights</em> to raise their children as they wish. I have not seen them demanding others live by their chosen values. Look around you - do you think we live in a morally restrictive, puritanical society?</p>
<p>hereshoping, i come from a very religious family and i have religious values–i’m the leader of my youth group for goodness sakes. i dont know what you are talking about. my family has instilled in me a lot of respect for myself. i truly believe in the concept that my body is a temple, and i intend to keep it as clean as one until i get married. but anyway, my point is, there is nothing “religious” about a vaccine. and i believe that it is terribly irresponsible for a parent to deny a child a health protection. condoms are a whole different story–if you give your child a condom, it means you are assuming/submitting to the fact that he/she is going to have sex. that’s out of the question for me and my family.
but a vaccine? to protect yourself in case of rape? my parents would feel extremely guilty if they could not provide me basic healthcare precautions along with a hearty dose of religious teaching.
we all have the right to raise our children as we wish. but this doesn’t extend to vaccinations and mandatory health care. i do agree that we ought to teach our children religious values…but to deny them bodily protection is foolish and paranoid.</p>
<p>Wow. You pretty much came out and said that we are “people without religious values.” I am deeply committed to my religious values, and I’m sure that’s true of people whose opinions are all over the map on the topic of the thread.</p>
<p>Well, now we know how you really feel. If I don’t share YOUR religious values, then in your eyes, I have no religious values at all. And you’re calling US arrogant?</p>
<p>“…but to deny them bodily protection is foolish and paranoid.”</p>
<p>It seems that some of you who want mandatory HPV vaccines keep using the risk of rape as your reason to take away family autonomy. Well, rape has another serious consequence: pregnancy. Should all girls, then, be forced to take birth control at the onset of menses? </p>
<p>Regarding the freedom to exempt your child from mandated vaccines: You can be denied admission to school if you choose that route. In the case of air borne diseases, it is a public health risk to have non-vaccinated kids in the classroom. Whooping cough was seeing a significant resurgance when the Pertussis vaccine side-effects became the subject of much media coverage & parents were refusing to vaccinate in large numbers.</p>
<p>pregnancy is completely different from HPV/STDs. a fetus is not a disease. there is no reason to punish an unborn child for the rapist’s action by forcing girls to take birth control. the point is not to prevent all outcomes of the rape. it is to protect the mother from undue bodily harm, and last time i checked HPV is a bodily harm, and a baby is a blessing.</p>
<p>and also, what does this have to do with “family” autonomy? just because a family gave a child life does not mean the family owns the child’s life. that is astoundingly unfair and controlling. i believe kids should take vaccines, and that’s that. this pseudo-religious nonsense is the wrong battle.</p>
<p>Hanna: I was thinking of specifically Catholic values (the only ones I’m familiar with) while trying to avoid getting back into the whole “Catholic” debate. Agree I should have phrased that better, sorry.</p>
<p>jimbob: I believe that the presence of an STD in a child has long been used as a way of determining whether or not a child has indeed been molested. Being so quick to jump the gun on a vaccine (as young as 9!) gives more power to the molester/predator (good old Uncle’s word against a young girl’s for instance).</p>
<p>***? so we should let children get STDs from shady characters just so we can find the perpetrator? so the child is not only molested, he or she is now DISEASED? nice method, hereshoping. ah, what values. deliberately let a child get sick because it’s a clue.</p>
<p>I was 18 when I went to college and 23 when I started law school. Clearly old enough to make my own decisions. Yet, I was still FORCED to have a slew of vaccinations. I somehow missed Hep B for secondary school & college, so I had it before law school. </p>
<p>I was old enough to make my own decisions. I was old enough to know that having that vaccine doesn’t mean that I’ll start shagging half the East coast. Yet still required to have it.</p>
<p>What is the fundamental difference between that requirement and the HPV vaccine? Far as I can tell, it’s quite simple: only women are affected by cervical cancer, and the sex moralising falls disproproationately on females. </p>
<p>(For the record, I’ve often said that the great failure of feminism is that it did not, in its search for equality, tell men to act better, but instead made it socially acceptable for women to act as badly as men.)</p>
<p>jimbob: I am just stating a fact to add it to the mix of debate. You may want to go back and read StickerShock’s posts to learn more about the progression of the disease.</p>
<p>Also, I think it’s just something you “get” or don’t get and no one’s mind will be changed by posts on a message board (nor am I even trying to change anyone’s mind, btw); if someone wants to get their own children vaccinated I have no objection to their own decision whatsoever! I would just hope that the people who don’t want it will have the right to refuse it.</p>
<p>It’s really an academic discussion IMHO, because I doubt that we’re going to see this vaccine made mandatory for anyone except licensed sex workers in Nevada. Maybe the politics will be different 15 years from now, but I’ll be shocked if even local communities make it mandatory without a specific opt-out. And as for the federal government requiring it? No way. I’m pretty surprised that it got approved at all.</p>
<p>“there is no reason to punish an unborn child for the rapist’s action by forcing girls to take birth control. the point is not to prevent all outcomes of the rape. it is to protect the mother from undue bodily harm, and last time i checked HPV is a bodily harm, and a baby is a blessing.” </p>
<p>jimbob, I’m really having trouble following this. Birth control prevents conception: thus no child is conceived. No unborn child to punish.</p>
<p>IMHO, an unwanted pregnancy would not be viewed as a “blessing” by a rape victim. This is a much more serious health and emotional consequence of rape than HPV. The virus does not automatically sentence a girl to certain cervical cancer. Many women have HPV and control the risk of cervical cancer with dilligent medical care.</p>
<p>THis has everything to do with family autonomy. Until a child raches independent adulthood, his parents are responsible for all aspects of his upbringing. They have the right to raise him within their own moral framework and religious tradition. It is not “pseudo-religious nonsense” to object to government encroachment in these highly personal family decisions.</p>
<p>My point is simple: Pregnancy is a much more serious consequence of rape than HPV. If you insist on mandatory HPV vaccines to lessen the risk of contracting the virus in the event of rape, then logically you should mandate birth control for all girls at the onset of menses. </p>
<p>Ariesathena: The vaccines you are FORCED to get prevent diseases that are impossible to avoid. You are a health risk to all those around you if you should be a carrier. That is why schools can refuse to admit you if you are not vaccinated. HepB can be transmitted through non-sexual routes. HPV cannot. If you carry HPV, I can sit next to you, you can breath on me, even bleed on me, and I will not be at risk. Only having sexual contact with you is risky. This is why a mandatory vaccination makes no sense.</p>
<p>Well, as a woman who tried to take birth control for health reasons (i.e. as a method to diagnose endometriosis), I cannot take it. Quite frankly, the side effects were so horrible that I think I would honestly rather die. </p>
<p>That is not an uncommon experience with the Pill. I know many friends who were horribly depressed as a result of taking it. Are such side effects around for the vaccine?</p>
<p>Why can’t Plan B be used?</p>
<p>Finally, some families would legitimately rather keep the baby conceived from a rape than use birth control in violation of their religious beliefs. I’ve never heard of any religious belief that prohibits vaccination against cancer.</p>
<p>From CAngel’s link, “Of the more than 100 types of HPV, over 30 types can be passed from one person to another through sexual contact.” So I’m not sure how this is an STD. What about the other 70 types? </p>
<p>"How is hepatitis B spread?
It is NOT spread by sneezing, coughing, hugging or using the same dishes, forks or knives. </p>
<p>It spreads from person to person when body fluids are passed between people. The kinds of body fluids that spread hepatitis B are: </p>
<p>blood,
breast milk,
semen and
fluids in a womans vagina.
Here’s how hepatitis B can be spread: </p>
<p>During sexual intercourse.
From sharing needles during drug use.
From infected needles, for example in a tattoo shop or when you have your ears or other parts of your body pierced.
From a woman to her baby during birth, or when she is pregnant.
From a woman to her baby during breastfeeding.
From sharing toothbrushes or razors (when blood has been in touch with the toothbrush or razor).
Between people who live under the same roof, when one person has hepatitis B."</p>
<p>So Hep B is NOT spread through coughing, sneezing, hugging, etc. Seems to me like that would be every bit the STD that HPV is. I’m sorry, but the science doesn’t support the distinction you are making. Pertussis is airborne; Hep B is not. Avoid drugs and random sex -> no Hep B. Yet it is required, without nearly the yelling and screaming that you see over HPV. As I said, I think it’s a woman thing.</p>
<p>HepB is blood borne. It can be passed through means other than sex (or drug use.) If an infected teen, for example, bleeds on a teen with an open wound in a basketball game, HepB can be contracted. The odds aren’t great, but it’s possible. Health care workers on the other hand, are at an extremely high risk of contracting Hep B. Who said HepB is spread by coughing, sneezing, or hugging? Not me. MMR, Polio, and DPT can all be spread that way. And when HepB vaccines were being considered as a mandatory public health precaution there WAS an great deal of controversy. Perhaps you were unaware of that fact, but it is still a fact.</p>
<p>HPV is a virus that has many strains. It includes the “common” warts that people often get on their hands. The genital varities pose varrying levels of cervical cancer risk. Genital HPV is only spread through sexual contact. These are the strains the vaccination is battling. It is most assuredly a STD.</p>
<p>You have at least seen how absurd it would be to mandate birth control as a way to eliminate the risk of pregnancy from possible rapes. I don’t see why you can’t recognize the absurdity of mandating a vaccine for a disease that is spread EXCLUSIVELY from sexual contact.</p>
<p>I think there is a fundamental difference between forcing someone to take a pill every day of her life which has a profound effect on her entire system and a single vaccine. </p>
<p>The monitoring of that would be horrific and certainly an infringement on Constitutional rights.</p>
<p>Pregnancy is also NOT a disease. </p>
<p>There is no reason to extend that to the Pill for women and not into other arenas, based on the fact that you see no problem with vaccines for things over which you have no control. There is no logical distinction between requiring the Pill if you require HepB and requiring acne medication if you are going to require the chicken pox vaccine. Frankly, your logic cannot be used to undermine the HPV argument so much as undermine the entire argument against having vaccines in the first place. </p>
<p>Finally - hepB and HPV are spread in pretty much the same way. HPV can be spread without sex - any genital contact will do. My point is that if you are going to require HepB, you should require HPV. I really have no desire to point this out again, but most women will get HPV in their lifetimes; ergo, most men will, too. It is a disease that is very reluctantly classified as a STD, mainly because it is so communicable.</p>
<p>The LOGIC behind the HepB vaccine has nothing to do with random contact with blood and everything to do with preventing communicable diseases. If you require HepB, I see nothing wrong with requiring HPV. The differences are miniscule; the similiarities, almost eerie. </p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I guess I’m just too pro-life to hear much whining and screaming about this. For YEARS, we have hoped for a way to stop cancer. We can’t stop all of it, but we can stop one form of it. Yet there is wailing and gnashing of teeth over this one. It’s not a sex issue; it’s a health issue. Those 4,000 women every year are just as dead as people who die from non-sex related causes.</p>