Political foo, social foo
Feb. 7th, 2007 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alpharaposaTexas Governor Perry Stands Firm On HPV Vaccination Mandate For Schoolgirls
Other than the level of personal embarassment, what is the difference between this and just asking all high school girls to come in to the nurse's office for mandatory pap smears? If the concern over STDs is so high that you'd require all girls to take this vaccine (but only girls, not boys), then shouldn't you take every step necessary to make sure they received proper medical care? And, of course, even if they say they don't need it, you know they're lying, because they're embarassed to admit how much sex they're having. Everybody knows how active these teens are, but oppressive parents keep us from learning the truth, doncha know.
It's kind of the same mentality that would decide that, because some people commit crimes, we have to punish everybody. Maybe they don't want to 'single out' the ones who actually need this care. Then again, maybe looking at how many actually need the vaccine might make us reconsider the whole 'sex is good, and more sex with more people is better' vibe.
When I was in high school, there was a presentation from somebody who'd picked up HIV. She talked about getting it in the first place, then sticking in a bad relationship because they both had it and thought that they couldn't make things worse. She talked about getting treatment. And then she told us one thing- even with the best prevention, the best condoms, everything, you still have a five percent chance to get HIV when you have sex with somebody who has it. That's the best case, everything done right scenario- 1 in 20. Talk about risk.
(I play lots of games that use a twenty-sided die. You roll a 1 from time to time on it. Sometimes, it's the only roll of the evening.)
And yet, according to the herpes treatment commercials I see on TV, that's perfectly okay. It's just fine to have herpes and have sex with people who don't, because there are medications that reduce the risk of passing it along. Not prevent it. Just make the odds a little better. The folks who design those commercials are saying that you don't have to give up sex- just take a pill and you've fulfilled any moral obligation to not infect somebody else.
And now, a mandatory vaccine for a virus that can only be tranmitted through sex. Sure, some versions of hepatitis can be passed on in other ways, but this one is restricted to sexual contact. So, it's okay to go out and have lots of sex, because you're protected now. And anybody who isn't protected must come from some weirdo family that has a hangup about sex, which is completely uncool.
So, yeah. When are we going to start with the mandatory pap smears? I mean, only people who have weird hangups about being touched by doctors could possibly object, right? We're all so much more mature as a culture than to let little things like privacy and embarassment get in the way.
*growl*
Other than the level of personal embarassment, what is the difference between this and just asking all high school girls to come in to the nurse's office for mandatory pap smears? If the concern over STDs is so high that you'd require all girls to take this vaccine (but only girls, not boys), then shouldn't you take every step necessary to make sure they received proper medical care? And, of course, even if they say they don't need it, you know they're lying, because they're embarassed to admit how much sex they're having. Everybody knows how active these teens are, but oppressive parents keep us from learning the truth, doncha know.
It's kind of the same mentality that would decide that, because some people commit crimes, we have to punish everybody. Maybe they don't want to 'single out' the ones who actually need this care. Then again, maybe looking at how many actually need the vaccine might make us reconsider the whole 'sex is good, and more sex with more people is better' vibe.
When I was in high school, there was a presentation from somebody who'd picked up HIV. She talked about getting it in the first place, then sticking in a bad relationship because they both had it and thought that they couldn't make things worse. She talked about getting treatment. And then she told us one thing- even with the best prevention, the best condoms, everything, you still have a five percent chance to get HIV when you have sex with somebody who has it. That's the best case, everything done right scenario- 1 in 20. Talk about risk.
(I play lots of games that use a twenty-sided die. You roll a 1 from time to time on it. Sometimes, it's the only roll of the evening.)
And yet, according to the herpes treatment commercials I see on TV, that's perfectly okay. It's just fine to have herpes and have sex with people who don't, because there are medications that reduce the risk of passing it along. Not prevent it. Just make the odds a little better. The folks who design those commercials are saying that you don't have to give up sex- just take a pill and you've fulfilled any moral obligation to not infect somebody else.
And now, a mandatory vaccine for a virus that can only be tranmitted through sex. Sure, some versions of hepatitis can be passed on in other ways, but this one is restricted to sexual contact. So, it's okay to go out and have lots of sex, because you're protected now. And anybody who isn't protected must come from some weirdo family that has a hangup about sex, which is completely uncool.
So, yeah. When are we going to start with the mandatory pap smears? I mean, only people who have weird hangups about being touched by doctors could possibly object, right? We're all so much more mature as a culture than to let little things like privacy and embarassment get in the way.
*growl*
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 05:37 am (UTC)As someone that has had to deal with HPV and has had someone close to her have it develop into full blown Cervical cancer leading to a full hystarectimy (it's late I'm not goning to sit here and figure out if I spelled that right). I find it hard to not react to being equated with a criminal.
Every Partner I have ever had has been tested before we did anything. And even then we use condoms. Including the one that gave me HPV. Thing is that there is no known way to effectively test for HPV until you have an outbreak. And since males do not tend to show symptoms, there is nothing that someone can do to prevent this short of complete abstinence even with spouses.
Being "embarrassed" about a vaccination that is mandatory in your school system because you are a girl is like being embarassed about buying pads when you are in your late teens. It is ridiculous. Look you have breasts, guess what that means you likely have a period, and in this case, that you would have had the HPV vaccine.
No the Vaccine doesn't cure it, and no one should take it as a blanket okay to go have sex. But really if you are or aren't, from what I remember of high school, had next to nothing to do with whether you were on the pill or using condoms or not. The ones bright enough to take the precautions were not generally the ones having sex. (myself included).
And as I understand it, the FDA guidelines percribe the vaccine only for women. So the vaccination guidelines of a school district would follow that.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 10:49 am (UTC)And saying that there's no way to prevent HPV infection at all is untrue. To both contract HPV and to pass it on requires that you have sex with at least two different people in your lifetime. (It is rarely passed on through childbirth, and that can be avoided by a C-section.) Your statement that it requires complete abstinance, even with a spouse, assumes that either everybody has multiple partners before marriage, or that everybody has open marriages, or that everybody will ignore their marriage vows at least once.
Those are some pretty broad assumptions.
And I'm not going to apologize about the line of criminal/punished, because I wasn't equating having sex with committing crime, except in the sense that bad things can come of it which may require other people to act upon the results. Perhaps it would be better to say it would be like treating all people who drink as if they were alcoholics?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 11:59 am (UTC)*headdesk*
I don't have the energy to repeat it all, either. I'm just going to go curl up somewhere else for a while.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 03:58 pm (UTC)Except that wouldn't work, either, thinking it over.
It's as if the government assumed all high school students to be alcoholics. Even the ones who never touched a beer.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 02:02 pm (UTC)And, my initial reaction to the idea of mandatory pap smears is that it seems reasonable to me to be required to either (1) get an annual pap smear or (2) pay higher medical insurance premiums.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 03:56 pm (UTC)Schools do require vaccines (or good reason for the lack thereof) already, but all of those vaccines are for virii that are highly contagious, catchable just by being in close proximity for a day. Measles, mumps, chicken pox- all of them possible to pass on with a sneeze in the wrong direction. HPV (or hepatitis B) is catchable only through sexual contact. (Hepatitis A, which causes cold sores, is similar to mono in its contagiousness, but also will not saddle you with a lifelong medical condition.)
The point is that the government has equally no purpose in requiring a vaccine for a virus that you catch from sex, than it does requiring teenagers to have pap smears in order to attend school. If you can find justification for the vaccine, then there is little difference besides squeamishness to keep from the pap.
This isn't a question of private insurance or the like. This is a question of a) do what the government tells you, b) get your parents to persuade a court it isn't necessary, or c) don't attend public school. They're not making the vaccines available, they're making them mandatory. The assumption is that all students will, at some point, have enough sex to be exposed to the virus. Or, if not all students, then a high enough percentage to require the same sort of steps taken to wipe out polio and small pox.
Personally, if I had my school tell me I was going to be treated like I was going out and having sex with lots of different boys, I'd have been livid.