#46462: Brad R. — 11/01  at  12:16 PM
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.

Oh, this is the kind of idiotic wingnuttery I just looooove to rip apart.

There's a very good reason to tell kids that smoking will give them lung cancer- because smoking will give them lung cancer (not to mention lots of other nasty things). If there were a safer brand of cigarette that wasn't addictive and didn't have dire consequences for your health, most liberals would have no objections to it.

On the other hand, the anti-sex theocrats in the GOP aren't really concerned with the potential negative consequences that can come from having sexual intercourse- rather, they hate the act itself, and they'll sabotage any efforts at reducing its risks.

See, one of the things is an apple. The other one is an orange.

#46464: — 11/01  at  12:31 PM
This whole arguement about sex causing catastrophes is irrelevant. Where did you ever get the idea that Fundies oppose sex because it can lead to diseases and unwanted pregnancies? You're WAY off the mark. That has very little to do with why fundies oppose sex. The opposition is very old and comes from the early days of the church when sex was seen as hedonism. It also comes from the idea of women being the property of their fathers and that their virginity is an important asset that can be used to increase the power and influence of the family a women belongs to. Religious opposition to sex is almost entirely based on metaphysical principles such as "morals" and this idea of women being property and NOT based on trying to prevent "catastrophes". It is simply the opinion of most fundementalists that sex is evil IN ITSELF and not because of what it results in.

I am not saying STDs are not serious I'm just saying they don't enter much into the Fundementalist moral calculus - except as a tool to freighten people into submission.

#46468: — 11/01  at  12:48 PM

Where did you ever get the idea that Fundies oppose sex because it can lead to diseases and unwanted pregnancies?

I don't think anyone proposed this. But since I touched on these issues, I wonder if you're under the misconception that I did.

My point was that fundies seemingly favor an unmitigated risk of disease and unwanted pregnancy as a disincentive for having sex. On the face of it, this would sound kind of nutty, but considering the statement quoted in PZ's posting, and some rhetoric surrounding "abstinence only" programs, it is hard to escape the conclusion that a certain group of people views disease and unwanted pregnancy as salutary disincentives rather than deleterious (and often quite terrible) side-effects.

#46470: — 11/01  at  12:53 PM
Well, actually, 'we' (if by 'we' government is meant) do not require fire insurance. It's mortgage insurance companies that do that.

Just last night I started reading Offit's 'The Cutter Incident,' and while I haven't gotten very far, it looks as if it might be required reading for anyone posting on this subject. (Vaccines can kill, it turns out.)

Nobody here has mentioned mandatory childhood vaccination for hepatitis, although, according to my newspaper this morning, that's also being proposed.

Apparently, it is not a slamdunk, but as far as I can see, sex does not enter into the calculations.

#46475: — 11/01  at  01:00 PM
Well from briefly skimming through the comments it seemed that the arguement was the Fundies opposition to sex is rooted in a belief that having less sex will rid the world of the evils of STDs. This is not true. I see that I misread your arguement and I agree that fundies use STDs as a tool to promote their view but they are not the reason for that view.

Sorry about the misunderstanding.

#46476: — 11/01  at  01:00 PM
'"Protection reduces the risk."

Yes, that was my point. What was yours again? '

That sex in and of itself is not what the focus of the debate should be about, but rather disease. Couching the debate in terms of sex simply feeds the small minds who actually think being a virgin until your 30(or beyond) is some form of virtue. Never mind the fact that you'll be humping and tree and/or fencepost within a 5 mile radius in the meantime.

It's really not about sex anymore than the common cold is about respiration.

#46477: Orac — 11/01  at  01:01 PM
Kristjan,

I am fully aware of the difference between the mercury/autism activists and Wakefield's claims, which have now been thoroughly debunked. MMR never contained thimerosal, which would inactivate it. Of course, never let the facts stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory, as that little distinction hasn't stopped the mercury moms and other anti-vaxers from mistakenly lumping MMR in with vaccines that do (did, actually) contain thimerosal.

Rahel,

Kristjan is right. Doctors and scientists have been trying to "talk" to parents in a nonjudgmental way. They've been doing it for years, if not decades. Many parents can be persuaded, but no amount of reasoned "talking" is going to persuade the antivax activists and a fairly large segment of parents who agree with them. Unfortunately, these antivaxers drive the debate far more than they should. It is these activists, who are in essence unreachable by evidence and reasoned debate, that scientists get exasperated about, much as people like PZ get exasperated dealing with intelligent design. After hearing the same distortions, errors, and even outright lies enough times, it takes the patience of a saint not to start to get frustrated.

#46478: — 11/01  at  01:08 PM
Doesn't the whole attitude remind you of Leon Kass's take? Nature wants women to suffer by making sex more dangerous. What about the teleological meaning of cervical cancer?

#46479: — 11/01  at  01:10 PM
Well, if you believe that "the wages of sin is death", you're just proceeding according to form.

Mind you, Pat Robertson would be a smoldering pile of ashes by now.

#46481: — 11/01  at  01:18 PM
GH: "That sex in and of itself is not what the focus of the debate should be about,"

My focus was intended to be on the bass-ackwards notion of intentionally leaving risk unmitigated as a disincentive. It's not my fault if the fundies apply this idea primarily to sex and not to other kinds of behavior.

BTW, I agree that sexual mores may have more to do with establishing paternity than reducing the spread of disease. I regret muddying my point with any speculation about this. My point was that if you've succeeded in mitigating all the risks, it's not obvious why you'd miss having them as disincentives unless you thought the behavior itself was intrinsically wrong--so wrong in fact that the harmful outcomes are fitting consequences.

But clearly, the fundies do believe this, and the extent to which they're willing to expose children to risk is what makes their viewpoint truly evil.

#46484: — 11/01  at  01:20 PM
Since Orac is too modest to do that, I'd suggest that anyone who would like to get more informed about the anti-vaccination crowd could do worse to browse Orac's blog.

SupportVaccination.org, run by is not a bad place either (and be sure to check out the few blogs he has on his blogroll if you are interested in the issue, especially with a focus on the vaccination-autism link).

#46495: — 11/01  at  01:54 PM
I think religions have a difficult time with diseases that are spread by stuff (such as sex) that it would rather not think about rationally; or think about at all. I see no way else to explain the diametrically opposite ways they deal with HIV.

On the positive side - In India, where I live, the Catholic Church has done a good job in taking care of people who have AIDS -I mean real help (think Third World here for a moment) like getting drugs for people who cannot afford it, starting the first hospices for AIDS, taking in HIV positive kids who had been expelled from their schools and taking in HIV orphans whom no state institution would let in.

On the negative side, here as elsewhere, they fight relentlessly against condom use, (and any other effective method of family planning or STD prevention), making it more likely that their faithful are going to be hit by the disease.

The reason is that, helping the sick is familiar territory for them, they are trained to feel compassionate.

The bit they have difficulty with is helping the healthy who are at risk for the disease - the prevention part. This part means having to think about pre-marital sex, promiscuity, 'unnatural' sex, adultery, and other great sins that they themselves have been indoctrinated to abhor, and indoctrinated to teach their followers to abhor. For many of them, caring for a HIV positive infant may be easier on their minds than having to actually consider whether their faith and their training is helping or hindering the fight against the disease.

And not thinking means not coming up with rational responses - which means Prevention is satanic but caring for the inCurable is a sign of virtue.

#46522: — 11/01  at  02:37 PM
'On the positive side - In India, where I live, the Catholic Church has done a good job in taking care of people who have AIDS -I mean real help (think Third World here for a moment) like getting drugs for people who cannot afford it, starting the first hospices for AIDS, taking in HIV positive kids who had been expelled from their schools and taking in HIV orphans whom no state institution would let in.'

That is good, but often it comes with a boatload of indoctrination which I guess is acceptable if you needs drugs to stay alive.

#46557: Jeff — 11/01  at  04:14 PM
This isn't my area of expertise, and a few minutes worth of Googling didn't find the answer, so I thought I might find the answer quickest by asking here. Everything I read in my brief research said that sexual transmission was the primary means of spreading the virus. So my question is, by what other means can the virus be spread, and how often do those other means happen? I ask for this reason - if conservatives are opposed to this vaccine because they associate it with sex, why not try to break that association in their mind, showing them how their daughters could become infected even if they didn't have sex.

#46576: arensb — 11/01  at  05:10 PM
This reminds me a bit of Greg Egan's short story The Moral Virologist (which used to be online, but now I can't find it, so find his book Axiomatic at your library).

The premise there is that a fundie has built a custom virus that will kill adulterers, fornicators, and sodomites, and plans to infect all humanity with it. The story goes into detail about how it how it works, and the eponymous virologist explains how he gets around various problems.

Spoiler: at the end, he realizes that a flaw in the design means that if a baby is still breast-feeding at a certain age, the virus will kill the child. After a moment of horror at what he's done, he has a revelation from God, that mothers breast-feeding 9-month-old chilren are sinners, as evil as adulterers and fornicators.

#46586: Ereshkigal — 11/01  at  05:43 PM
...social conservatives who say immunizing teen-agers could encourage sexual activity

Oh, crap-- I'm too late. All of my kids are normal, complete with genitals and hormones. Those seem to be sufficient to encourage sexual activity.

#46595: — 11/01  at  06:05 PM
Yes; his solution to this tiny bug leading to mass child death is to go around holding up a sign:

`Adulterers! Fornicators! Mothers breastfeeding infants over the age of nine months! Repent and be saved!'

(He's notably modern-Republican, right down to visiting prostitutes on the side so he can avoid sleeping with them to show his moral strength.)

#46613: Jonathan Badger — 11/01  at  08:12 PM
"There are no evidence of adverse effects of normal childhood vaccinations like MMR, but there are certainly much evidence of the harmful effect of people not giving those vaccinations to their children. "

Yes, of course, but how do you *explain* that to people? The brother of my girlfriend is basically a neo-hippie who refuses to vaccinate his children. Pointing out studies that say there is no risk to vaccination are easily deflected by comments like "well, the biomedical profession is in the hands of the drug companies and so studies that the drug companies like get published."

The annoying thing is that he does sort of have a point -- drug companies *do* influence science far more than they ought to; it's just I don't think the corruption goes quite so deep to invalidate the scientific consensus.

#46615: — 11/01  at  08:23 PM
I contracted polio in October 1950. I thank (insert some deity here) that there were doctors versed in virology, based on evolution, that were NOT going to sleep until they found a cure so that future children would be protected from this fate! Imagine a cure that was derailed because some repugtard thought integrated swimming pools were responsible for the spread of polio and fast forward to the above discussion. The utter ignorance of these people to advances in medicine and immunolgy is amazing. They all want to go back to the "good ole days". Yeah, when polio was common and Rosa Parks had to sit in the back of the bus.

#46618: ekzept — 11/01  at  08:34 PM

So, what prevents a woman from getting cervical cancer after she's married after abstaining from premarital sex, anyway?

that, Kristine, is exactly the same thought i had about the entire abstince-to-prevent-VD idea. consider herpes. are the proponents really recommending that a spouse who discovers or contracts herpes from their spouse after marriage divorce them either for adultery or breach of contract? maybe the spouse didn't know. are to-be-marrieds supposed to insist their partners be virgins? is their even a consensus among teens these days what "virgin" means?

facts are, eventually clever viruses like herpes will spread to a big fraction of the population, and then what? do we create a caste of untouchables?

i like to consider the applicability of the H.G.Wells line:

... the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

from War of the Worlds to this matter. maybe the lessons should be of compassion for all and celebration of all life.

Trackback: Cancer's little helper Tracked on: PhaWRONGula (72.9.234.70) at 2005 11 01 21:00:21
A chancrous plague in society With a pustulant sense of propriety Has a pro-cancer ploy...

#46629: Orac — 11/01  at  09:32 PM
Jonathan,

It is indeed very difficult to convince the anti-vaxers, and one contradicts them at the risk of great hostility. Even more so than most, they do not like their anti-medicine and anti-pharma conspiracy theories challenged. Indeed, when I started debunking the bogus science that claims mercury causes autism, that single issue produced more hostility in the comments on my blog than any other.

#46642: — 11/02  at  01:25 AM
Greatest contributors to health since the industrial revolution started piling us all into the urbs:

Reticulated water and sanitiary drainage.
Vaccination.

And in one shining case, vaccination has been twice wonderful because it has proven able to deal with the morphing through the other great improver, sanitation, of the relatively tame Polio virus into a horror of civilisation.

Nobody would get away in my country with shitting and pissing in the gutters outside their house or with inviting public use of their private water catchment. They must connect to a reticulated sewer and town water supply when it is available and I don't know of any conurbation, from a country town of 50 houses to the capital city suburban sprawls where there is not a publicly mandated and controlled water and sewerage facility.
Those who do not comply with this most basic recognition that health is a community concern are prosecuted into compliance or made, with a greater or lesser degree of compassion, outcast.

I see absolutely no difference between this state of community recognition and the necessity for vaccination to be a mandated condition of belonging to a community.
If a person, as a Christian Scientist or any other recognised version of holding individual preference above community standards, will not vaccinate then that person is electing to become separate from a community that provides for community health.
This means that the person can't have public water or reticulated sewerage, but must look after themselves for these health affecting utilities. Of course the person will be prosecuted if they foul common space and property with runoff or transport of untreated waste and they will be denied any agency for treatment of any illness that arises from fouled surroundings if it is funded by any community input, since they have resigned from community participation by refusing vaccination.
This person's logical action will be to isolate themselves physically as well as morally from communities that provide for mass health measures and this will most likely achieve in the long run their own Darwin Award, along with any remaining virus, somewhere out in the sticks. Alternatively the person may return to participate in community after a suitable quarantine period in a community facility. How long this would have to be for the range of viruses I have no idea, but nobody with the community in mind could reject it as a consequence of their individual choice. Naturally, freedom to travel would also be restricted to community mandated disease-free areas, but that's just another cost of having an individual attitude towards community reponsibility isn't it? If individuality is valued highly enough to move people to extremes of ethics then I see no reason why these positions shouldn't have their fullest cost attached.

Public health officialdom has a task ahead of it in restoring a sense of community to us with the number of snake-oil salesmen out there who not only recognise the high herd immunity in which they may push their useless nostrums but also are getting such a free ride with all the secondary FUD industry out there.

I wonder if the Gates push for a malaria vacc could spare a mill or two for public education on all vacc?

The only way for this great HPV vacc to be used is as a publicly funded mandatory service.
And as early as possible in a girl's life; nobody has introduced rape or abuse or whatever term is doing the rounds for assault these days into this thread and with all other things remaining as they are, the sooner women are protected from the patriarchy the better.

#46694: — 11/02  at  10:08 AM
Why shouldn't the 'culture of life' include viruses & cancer cells ? They are alive, they reproduce & they actually form a culture (in a petri dish)!

Trackback: Girls, you get to DIE if you let a boy touch your naughty places, even though we could stop it if we Tracked on: Broken Nails (64.91.249.146) at 2005 11 02 12:05:49
Or at least that's what some people would like to see. PZ Myers over at Pharyngula said it much much better than I could 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 ...