What is it about health prevention that gets our moral value panties in a bind????

The article (as always from the New York Times) linked to today's blog concerns the recent FDA advisory board's unanimous approval of a vaccine for HPV. For those of you not in proverbial "KNOW" HPV is human papillomavirus, two strains of which (those included in the vaccine) are known to cause the majority of cervical cancer. HPV is an STI (If you missed the CDC changing from STD to STI, you're not alone. I have no idea when that happened!!) and is passed through unprotected sex. Being a virus it can't be treated with antibiotics and testing just became available for it in the last 20 or so years.

Anyway, conventional wisdom is that recommended use of the HPV vaccine (i.e. vaccinating girls at a young age, long before they would be sexually active and making it part of the standard vaccination protocol, eventually including boys as well ~ although the efficacy of the vaccine on males has not been proven, vaccinating males would be necessary to create herd immunity) will most certainly be shot down by the moral majority. Most likely the same people who are keeping plan B medication from becoming available over the counter and the same folks who support a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense birth control if it goes against his or her value system.

Nice.

It's really tempting to go all "femi-nazi" here and start screaming about how these same pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control on the basis that they believe sex should only occur for procreation don't seem to have an issue with dispensing cialis or viagra without requiring assurances from those patients that they are using the medication specifically to impregnate their wives. Let's not even mention at this point that there's some question as to whether some of these drugs cause decreased fertility as well!!

We'll just stay on point. Vaccinations, right? Hepatitis B. That would be a virus that is bloodborne and primarily sexually transmitted. It had been screened out of the blood supply long before anyone was recommending the vaccine for persons outside the healthcare arena. Now it's a standard part of the childhood vaccination series. Now think with me here. It's no longer in the blood supply, so no one's getting from a transfusion. It would appear the only way to get it is from unprotected sex!! OH. MY. GOD. We're vaccinating babies against an STI! So what? Do you think we just slipped that one past the Christian Right? It is plausible since they've never struck me as particularly bright or scientifically informed.

But let me toss out a better explanation. Only half the population can get cervical cancer. That would be the people who actually have a cervix. Now let's think about those big mouthed overzealous leaders of the religious right and the moronic neo-conservatives who are running this country into the ground ~ cervix or no cervix? Need I say more?