Pharyngula::I thought we drew the line at human sacrifice in this country

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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

I thought we drew the line at human sacrifice in this country

PZ Myers • 72 Comments (last page)

Unbelievable. We have a vaccine that is almost 100% effective, and conservative kooks don't want us to use it.

A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teen-agers could encourage sexual activity.

Although the vaccine will not become available until next year at the earliest, activists on both sides have begun maneuvering to influence how widely the immunizations will be employed.

Groups working to reduce the toll of the cancer are eagerly awaiting the vaccine and want it to become part of the standard roster of shots that children, especially girls, receive just before puberty.

Here's a disease that kills about a third of the women who get it. It turns their reproductive tract into a nest of tumors that can spread and shut down the kidneys, metastasize to the lungs, the gut, everywhere, that sterilizes them and can cause horrible agony. The treatment involves radical hysterectomy, bilateral adnexectomy and lymphadenectomy, words I'd rather my family never even have to learn.

And it's preventable.

Yet these sick, evil people want to be able to hold this horrible disease as a threat to their daughters, their friends' daughters, their neighbors' daughters—they want to be able to say to their kids, "If you don't obey my rules, your womb will rot and dribble out your private parts, and you'll thrash in pain for a while before you die and go to hell." They like the idea of a disease that they can say is not prevented by condoms, so they can continue to preach abstinence with threats.

How would it feel to have an opportunity to protect a child from this affliction, to turn it away out of some sanctimonious sense of misplaced propriety, and then to have her die in front of you of this preventable disease years later? Would it feel like vindication? Or a senseless waste?

"Culture of life," my ass. These people are barbarians. Can we please just agree that the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family are the equivalent of the old women taking bits of broken glass to their daughters' vulvae and get these monsters out of civilized public discourse?

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Comments:

#46394: hbr — 11/01 at 08:30 AM
Well put

#46395: — 11/01 at 08:31 AM
I actually try very hard to resist demonizing "the other side." But I have to agree on this one. This is sick and evil, and I want nothing to do with any person who would advocate limiting this vaccine.

#46397: Jim Lippard — 11/01 at 08:34 AM
I don't see anyone quoted in the news article cited saying they oppose the vaccine, only that they oppose making it legally mandatory. There is a difference.

The quote from Reginald Finger (MD formerly of Focus on the Family) makes it clear he's a nut, though.

#46398: — 11/01 at 08:36 AM
I hate the way they make us almost hope that one of their wives or daughters gets it so they'll turn around.

#46401: — 11/01 at 08:42 AM
The sad thing is that this isn't the only vaccine that extremist groups are avoiding. Note the polio outbreak in Minnesota. Also I had a recent scare close to home when I found out that a child in my daughter's daycare wasn't fully vaccinated. This only came to our attention when the child got sick and the child's parent first reported that the fever was related to a German Measles infection. Fortunately the fever was related to a Strep infection, but the entire incident brought the danger of the anti-vaccine movement far too close to home. People need to understand that these anti-science, anti-conventional medicine/public health groups aren't just fighting some meaningless rhetorical battle, but they are actually putting all of us in danger.

#46403: Tim O'Keefe — 11/01 at 08:43 AM
I agree that the whole idea of using the threat of cancer in order to discourage sexual activity is deeply twisted. But leaving that aside, do these folks seriously think that teenagers who otherwise would abstain from sex are going to go ahead and do it because they've been given a vaccine for cervical cancer? "Woo hoo! No worry about cervical cancer way down the road! Without that in the way, now I can go ahead and obtain all that commitment-free pleasure I've been dreaming about!"

#46404: Adam Ierymenko — 11/01 at 08:44 AM
I think this (along with warmongering) really exposes the "culture of life" for what it is.

"Life" obviously has nothing to do with it, or they would be against aggressive war and against the death penalty. The Pope at least is pretty consistent in this regard. The American right is not.

The Bible also has nothing to do with it. There are harsh words about usury and money changers in general in the Bible, but you don't see anyone weeping at the steps of the towers down in your local financial district. Usury even causes families to break up! The Bible is just a rationalization.

No... what these people are really all about is authoritarianism. They have this pyramid-shaped authoritarian view of the world: patriarch of the family -> the state -> God. Anything that permits women greater choice is a threat to that order. It's about power, nothing more.

#46405: Orac — 11/01 at 08:51 AM
Watch for the fundamentalists opposing this vaccine to start using the same bogus arguments that anti-vax loons. When they realize that their present argument (that we shouldn't vaccinate because it will either encourage teen sex or at least take away one bad consequence of such activity) isn't gaining any traction, they'll start exaggerating the chance of adverse effects or trying to downplay its effectiveness or both.

I really hope this vaccine doesn't have thimerosal in it as a preservative, or we might see the whole mercury-autism crowd joining the fray.

--
Orac “A statement of fact cannot be insolent.”
http://oracknows.blogspot.com

#46406: — 11/01 at 08:53 AM
Another angle on this: In cases where a monogamous woman has a partner who cheats on her, gets infected and passes the virus on to her, opposition to the vaccine amounts to a call for punishment of the innocent.

It should be unconscionable for any physician to oppose use of the vaccine. Doing so is a statement that his/her particularly medieval form of religious morality overrides his/her concern for the patient's health.

#46407: Kristine Harley — 11/01 at 09:02 AM
So, what prevents a woman from getting cervical cancer after she's married after abstaining from premarital sex, anyway? Especially since men in fundie culture have permission to sew their oats, as long as they apologize tearfully (if caught) like Oral Roberts?

I don't think a lot of people realize how big a problem venereal diseases and AIDS are in the fundamentalist community, or how pervasive this double standard is.

#46408: — 11/01 at 09:09 AM
"I don't see anyone quoted in the news article cited saying they oppose the vaccine, only that they oppose making it legally mandatory. There is a difference."

Not really. The whole point of vaccines for things like this is to vaccinate everyone, so that you can essentially eradicate the virus. There's a small crisis going on in the UK at the moment because some parents are refusing to give their children the MMR vaccine, giving the separate viruses a far larger population to prey on and thus greatly increasing the risk of an outbreak.

#46409: — 11/01 at 09:16 AM
I've often thought that if somebody invented a 100% effective contraceptive, that also blocked all STDs, was 100% reversible, had no side-effects, did not destroy embryos after conception, and cost little to manufacture, that the fundies would come up with some reason to try and ban it. The quoted statement is strong evidence of my suspicion.

The "culture of life" has nothing to do with the sanctity of human life--which ought to be clear from their break-a-few-eggs approach to foreign policy. As far as I can tell, their core principle is that sex, which historically has had some catastrophic consequences, must forever continue to have catastrophic consequences. I might note that this is putting the cart before the horse--we would not have sexual mores in the first place except for the risks involved--but more to the point, it's frankly insane, evil, and disgusting.

Note that even my hypothetical device would not rule out social and emotional catastrophes, so there are plenty of reasons for responsible people to be careful about intimacy. But it's unconscionable that "incentives" should be set with the threat of derailing one's education through an unplanned pregnancy or dying in some grotesque manner. How do these people sleep at night?

#46410: John — 11/01 at 09:17 AM
I think that cases like this reveal the true colors of the American right-wing movement. It is not about the "culture of life" or the "sanctity of marriage" in any meaningful sense. It is about control, especially over the lives of women, and rolling back the clock to a time before the rights of persons other than white males were enforced.

#46411: Alon Levy — 11/01 at 09:28 AM
If you want to take a utilitarian view of this subject, then the conservatives' actions here are exactly murder for sex. It's illegal to shoot any teenager caught having sex, so instead conservatives opt for indirect forms of murder in order to control the population.

#46414: — 11/01 at 09:32 AM
Humor me for a minute:

'As far as I can tell, their core principle is that sex, which historically has had some catastrophic consequences, must forever continue to have catastrophic consequences.'

What catastrophic consequences has sex had? To many children? I would argue if more people had sex and if it wasn't so damn victorian in America we'd be better off.

'I might note that this is putting the cart before the horse--we would not have sexual mores in the first place except for the risks involved'

It's no about risks, but rather procreation. Sexual mores have more a basis in the reproductive state and making sure your offspring are your own than any disease fear.

#46415: — 11/01 at 09:33 AM
This is the same logic that spurs some pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control, despite the critical fact that rates of ovarian cancer amongst women who have not used estrogen-containing birth control for sustained periods are three times higher.

Ever see a woman die of ovarian cancer? No one should ever have to die that way. Yet such considerations are to some people secondary to, let me be frank, a man's ability to control the behavior of women.

Of course, the ovulation-ovarian cancer link is (as a medical issue) historically recent, since infant mortality rates necessitated a woman undergoing considerably more pregnancies to produce even a relatively small family. So if we just cut out childhood vaccines and brought back polio and TB, then we wouldn't need to use hormonal modulation to reduce cancer rates. Think Leon Kass would go for that?

#46416: protected static — 11/01 at 09:36 AM
Even Glenn Reynolds has called the fundies 'objectively pro-cancer' on this one.

#46418: — 11/01 at 09:43 AM
Question -- is the vaccine only against the cervical-cancer strains of HPV, or will it also protect against warts in general?

#46419: — 11/01 at 09:47 AM
Truly despicable.
Some cancer deaths are worth it so that you can continue to use a threat of disease to stop your children from having sex?

That is evil.

Even if it were true. The fact that it is false only makes it deliberately evil.

#46420: alkali — 11/01 at 09:53 AM
Can we please just agree that the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family are the equivalent of the old women taking bits of broken glass to their daughters' vulvae and get these monsters out of civilized public discourse?

There is a difference. The old women don't know any better.

#46421: — 11/01 at 09:53 AM

agree that the whole idea of using the threat of cancer in order to discourage sexual activity is deeply twisted.

Yeah, and it's worked so well with lung cancer discouraging kids from smoking, hasn't it?

Oh wait, this is fundamentalist republicans we're talking about. They are objectively pro-cancer. Never mind.

#46422: — 11/01 at 09:55 AM

But it's unconscionable that "incentives" should be set with the threat of derailing one's education through an unplanned pregnancy or dying in some grotesque manner. How do these people sleep at night?

"I sleep peacefully and contentedly. The sleep of the just!"
"Yeah, well maybe the just might have a few things to say about that, huh?"

#46423: — 11/01 at 09:57 AM
NB on my previous comment -- The protective effects of birth control are from progestin, not estrogen as I said.

Trackback: The irrational fear of seatbelts Tracked on: Ablogistan (216.193.252.187) at 2005 11 01 10:13:04
There is a point when those doing the most damage to a cause are its most fervent supporters. When an ideology becomes associated with its most fanatical believers, the entire movement loses credibility. It happens on the left when Greenpeace...

#46426: Alon Levy — 11/01 at 10:14 AM
Yeah, and it's worked so well with lung cancer discouraging kids from smoking, hasn't it?

Oh wait, this is fundamentalist republicans we're talking about. They are objectively pro-cancer. Never mind.

I'm sensing a snipe at liberals, but I don't really understand it. Would you care to explain?

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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

I thought we drew the line at human sacrifice in this country

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