Pharyngula

PZ Myers. 2005 Nov 01. I thought we drew the line at human sacrifice in this country. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/i_thought_we_drew_the_line_at_human_sacrifice_in_this_country/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Tuesday, November 01, 2005

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

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?

Posted by PZ Myers on 11/01 at 08:16 AM
Politics • Rethuglicans • 3 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink

Well put
#: Posted by hbr on 11/01 at 08:30 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 08:31 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.
#: Posted by Jim Lippard on 11/01 at 08:34 AM
I hate the way they make us almost hope that one of their wives or daughters gets it so they'll turn around.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 08:36 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 08:42 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!"
#: Posted by Tim O'Keefe on 11/01 at 08:43 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.
#: Posted by Adam Ierymenko on 11/01 at 08:44 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.
#: Posted by Orac on 11/01 at 08:51 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 08:53 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.
#: Posted by Kristine Harley on 11/01 at 09:02 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:09 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?
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:16 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.
#: Posted by John on 11/01 at 09:17 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.
#: Posted by Alon Levy on 11/01 at 09:28 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:32 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?
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:33 AM
Even Glenn Reynolds has called the fundies 'objectively pro-cancer' on this one.
#: Posted by protected static on 11/01 at 09:36 AM
Question -- is the vaccine only against the cervical-cancer strains of HPV, or will it also protect against warts in general?
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:43 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:47 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.
#: Posted by alkali on 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:53 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?"
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:55 AM
NB on my previous comment -- The protective effects of birth control are from progestin, not estrogen as I said.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 09:57 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?
#: Posted by Alon Levy on 11/01 at 10:14 AM
Humor me for a minute

Sorry, I don't have the time. If you don't see catastrophe in STDs and unplanned births, then it would take a lot more than a minute to explain.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 10:22 AM
I 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.

Not quite sure what the point of the last comment is. But just to make my own position clear (and I thought the context would do it):

There is nothing wrong with informing kids of the various risks associated with sex, including cervical cancer. In fact, we ought to do so. What's deeply twisted is to discourage the universal use of a vaccine that would prevent cancer, because one wants to keep alive the fear of that cancer in order to discourage teenage sex.
#: Posted by Tim O'Keefe on 11/01 at 10:33 AM
STD's are a disease, not unlike any other disease. I don't see a catastrophe in the flu or the common cold either. But I do see your point.

Does it work--no. I wouldn't call STD's a catastrophe, but a public health issue that needs to be addressed.

I also hesitate to call any human being born, no matter the reason a catastrophe. The births may be unplanned but the humans are not catastrophes.

But again these are matters of disease. Not sex in and of itself. The vast majority of people never contact an STD desptite, currently having quite a few sexual partners.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 10:35 AM
chlamydia and gonorrhea historically could be devastating to a culture if spread unchecked. They eventually render you infertile. Infertile = no kids = end of that culture.

And, in regards to the question about the vaccine and warts. No, it only protects against the strains that cause about 80% of cervical cancers. It does nothing for the strains that cause genital warts.

Which brings up a particularly fucked up thing about HPV- the strains that cause cervical cancer are basically undetectable in a male,but he can still pass them to his partner, while the ones that are detectable (i.e. cause warts) don't generally lead to cancer.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 10:37 AM
Gh - you seem to dempnstrate an ignorance of history re: diseases. They historically have not been the minor inconveniences that you seem to think of them as. Smallpox, scarlet fever, typhoid, plague, etc, and yes, even the flu, have killed many, many people.

Regarding lots of unplanned children - leads to famine in times of limited resources (crop failure, drought, etc.) exacerbates poverty. Many parts of the world are suffering from having too many children beyond their ability to support them. OTOH, you can always sell them, I suppose.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 10:43 AM
GH: Would you call AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa a catastrophe? Or are you disputing that sex is the primary means of transmission? Would you call the historical scourge of syphilis catastrophic? Syphilis is now under control, and we can hope that AIDS will one day be. But the consequences of these diseases in the absence of mitigation are clearly catastrophic.

Would you call it a catastrophe--albeit smaller--when a young woman bound for college drops everything to care for a child she wasn't ready for, resents this otherwise promising young life, and perpetuates the cycle of "quiet desperation"--lives that just never have any chance at fulfillment and are frittered away in just making do.

I honestly don't get what position you're advocating. We can get into some kind of semantic pissing war over the meaning of "catastrophe" (though in the case of the African AIDS epidemic, I don't see another word for it). Do you think that we ought to be doing our best to mitigate the harmful consequences of sex? Or should we just deny that these exist?
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 10:48 AM
I'm not ignorant of it, there is simply little evididence for what the other fellow said. I think I am being misunderstood.

STD's are harmful, no one said they are not. They need to be controlled. But by viewing sex as the problem instead of the disease you can actually work against yourself. Sex is not catastrophic, but disease is.

As to unplanned children, as mentioned, they are not a catastrophy but again I agree and said as such, overpopulation is a problem. Hence the need for BC.

Asking people not to have sex is in some manner equivalent to no asking them to breathe. It's a basic, necessary human function and should not be viewed as dirty or unnecessary. Blaming sex for disease is like blaming pneumonia on breathing.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 10:52 AM
Regarding lots of unplanned children - leads to famine in times of limited resources (crop failure, drought, etc.) exacerbates poverty.

Not to mention the acute risks of dying in childbirth or afterwards from infections (anyone remember puerpural fever?), strokes, other comorbidities of pregnancy. As well as the chronic ones of being a 30-year-old woman in a 60-year-old's body, after the stresses of bearing enough children. Perineal tearing, fistulae, etc.--Paul's right that the acute and chronic risks of pregnancy would take a lot more than a minute to explain.
#: Posted by Raven on 11/01 at 10:52 AM
I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think there is a huge difference between opposing vaccines because you want the disease to live on (as in this case) and opposing vaccines because you think they will harm your child. And truthfully, I think most parents considering not vaccinating their children are open to logical persuasion, but because of the political climate they get branded as "anti-science" and get flamed. Add this to an unfortunatly very reasonable distrust of the medical establishment, and you get most of the current anti-vaccination crowd. It's about time scientists and doctors talked to them instead of shouting. And maybe even admitted that not everything is black-and-white (e.g., it's stupid to vaccinate day-old babies if you get almost the same effect and less side effects vaccinating them a month later).
#: Posted by Rahel on 11/01 at 11:00 AM
About the smoking reference.

I didn't make that post, but I think the point was that knowledge of the risk of getting cancer from cigarettesw has not done much to stop teenagers from smoking. See here:

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/research_data/youth/hssdata.htm

This pretty much invalidates any point the fundies might be trying to make about a risk of cancer causing teens to not have sex when they otherwise would.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:08 AM
BH: "Sex is not catastrophic"

I don't recall saying it was.

Owning stocks is not catastrophic, but having all your assets in one stock exposes you to catastrophic risk. This risk is mitigated (in part) by diversifying over statistically uncorrelated investments. Owning a home is not catastrophic, but homes are almost always flammable and cannot easily be moved, so home ownership also involves exposure to catastrophic risk from fire and natural disasters. This risk is generally mitigated by purchasing insurance.

Sex also has catastrophic risks that can be mitigated. The only difference is a sizeable contingent of people who apparently think it's better to leave their children fully exposed.

What I mean by catastrophic risk is simply a set of harmful circumstances that fall far outside the range of your normal contingency plans and require you to make major changes in response. You can argue with my use of the term, but I think if you talked to someone who had just lost all their money or lost their house, had an incurable disease, or had to give up a lot of future plans to care for a child, they might feel as if they had been hit by catastrophe.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:13 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."

I am not sure that will work in this case, though clearly it will be of major benefit to young women to have it. Do we do any mandatory vaccinations? How do Christian Scientists react? I can certainly see an argument for mandatory vaccintion, but forcing people does cost them some liberty even if it saves their lives.

But the point of encouraging sex is totally ludicrous - if aids hasn't discouraged it, this certainly will not.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:14 AM
'GH: Would you call AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa a catastrophe? Or are you disputing that sex is the primary means of transmission?'

Yes, sex is the primary means of transmission. But controlling sex is not even an option. It has never been simply because it doesn't work. Thats why vaccines and such are so important. It's the disease not the sex itself that matters.

'Would you call it a catastrophe--albeit smaller--when a young woman bound for college drops everything to care for a child she wasn't ready for, resents this otherwise promising young life, and perpetuates the cycle of "quiet desperation"'

No I would not. If she does an admirable job of raising said child into a productive adult I would not call that a catastrophe at all. Again, with proper BC that scenario doesn't occur. BTW, this same scenario plays out for wman in many other ways. The woman who doesn't have sex until she is married only to give up a prmising career to raise her kids.

Your woman/college argument is rather lame just for the fact that by percentage of the population only a minority graduate college and of those that attend birth rates are much lower. It's not like childbirth is preventing women from graduating college. And frankly graduating college doesn't make everyone 'fulfilled'.

'Do you think that we ought to be doing our best to mitigate the harmful consequences of sex? Or should we just deny that these exist?'

It is semantics to some degree. I just see it as a matter of disease. Sex is a normal function through which disease can be spread.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:14 AM
The Family Research Council is on record as opposing the use of the vaccine and has yet continued to use HPV as a reason that condoms are bad in their emails. Expecting these guys to be rational about sex is like expecting the ID folks to admit that ID is just a front to get religion into the science classroom.

FOF, FRC and the other patriarchical groups always try to hide their overt sexism with attempts to show that they are not trying to install a thecracy or return society to the 16th century, but these group should not be trusted as not once has anyone of these groups ever admitted that their approach to something was wrong or bad. They continue to advocate their sexist, anti-science, anti-rationality by plying the victim and discrimination card. The last time I checked not one of the churches in our areas had people outside protesting people entering them.

Let's also remember that any honest study about sex education has shown that giving people the full information about sexuality, including information about the proper use of contraception, has shown that that it delays sex and when they do get active they are using proper protection.

The sexaphobes are always around, but they never want to admit their hypocrasy. Kinsey found that out back in the 40's.
#: Posted by Scott on 11/01 at 11:19 AM
GH - referring to your post at 46436 - thanks for the clarification of your views.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:23 AM
PaulC:

I think we are talking around each other a little.

If I have sex with a GF, I am not taking a risk. Or if I am it is likely minuscule. If I have sex with a prostitute without protection my risk is greater. Protection reduces the risk.

In any event sex itself is natural, like breathing. What we are controlling is the disease and it's spread. When people foucs on sex it seems to me they miss the larger point that this issue is about disease.

Focusing on sex lends people to the type of thinking prevelant among some that 'if he would have kept it in his pant he wouldn't have got herpes' or 'if she wouldn't have slept around she wouldn't have HPV' or 'gays deserve AIDS'. It takes the argument from where it should be, eliminating disease, and places it on a subjective view of a natural human behaviour like sex.

It's akin to saying 'If he would have kept his mouth closed he wouldn't have gotten influenza' or 'if she just hadn't breathed that contamiated air she wouldn't have pneumonia'.

It's about disease. Sex isn't going away, and who would want it to.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:25 AM
"Do we do any mandatory vaccinations? How do Christian Scientists react? I can certainly see an argument for mandatory vaccintion, but forcing people does cost them some liberty even if it saves their lives."

I think the point is not that it protects the people who recieve the vaccine, but rather that it protects other people by eradicating the virus. Same reason you have to turn on your lights at night. However, making you turn on your lights doesn't effect your bodily autonamy, and that's very dangerous territory these days.
#: Posted by Rahel on 11/01 at 11:30 AM
Again, with proper BC that scenario doesn't occur.

No, with proper BC, that scenario occurs less often. You can never totally detach sex from risk, so you can never totally eliminate the risks of pregnancy and STD.

That's not an anti-sex argument, by the way; it's a pro-sex, pro-education, pro-contraception, pro-treatment argument.

I too appreciate your clarification; your original phrasing: "What catastrophic consequences has sex had? To many children?" sounded just a little too facile in light of public health history.
#: Posted by Raven on 11/01 at 11:32 AM
But controlling sex is not even an option. It has never been simply because it doesn't work.

Yes, but risk mitigation through condom use is an option, as is the attempt to develop vaccines against AIDS, and improve treatments for it. And these are precisely the mitigation options I am advocating.

So can you explain again what it is that you're advocating, because you appear to have picked a fight with me and I'm still trying to comprehend what the fight is about. OK, you hate the word "catastrophe." Please feel free to substitute "catastrophic" with "deleterious" and "catastrophe" with "significantly worse than optimal outcome." It will not substantively change my point.

Your woman/college argument is rather lame just for the fact that by percentage

By percentage of the population, the number of houses that burn down is quite small. And yet, rather than just dismissing this tiny percentage of homeowners as irrevelant, we actually require everybody to buy fire insurance. How "lame" is that?
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:32 AM
No, you don't understand.

The fundies learned their lesson, that it was considered gauche to say that AIDS was God's punishment for sexual sin. They are trying very hard to avoid saying that now that cervical cancer is the disease at issue. So they bleat that it's for the CHILDREN.

It's not that they want to see their kids safe and clean and happy. It's that they don't want to thwart the will of God in horribly punishing their children should the children step out of line.

I used to be a fundamentalist and I assure you that this is true, even if the nicer sort prefer not to think of it in terms as blunt.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:47 AM
GH: "I think we are talking around each other a little."

This has been obvious from the beginning.

"If I have sex with a GF, I am not taking a risk. Or if I am it is likely minuscule. If I have sex with a prostitute without protection my risk is greater."

I could probably find a spot to build a house that had neglible risk from earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding. With some care, I might even reduce the risk of fire substantially.

None of this contradicts the statement: Home ownership has historically exposed the homeowner to risk of devastating, irrecoverable loss. (Which is why we have, among other things, insurance.)

Note that I am not saying home ownership is icky, or bad, or suggesting that every homeowner is exposed to the same risk. I am not advocating that we teach our children to steer clear of home ownership. I am not denying that having a place to live is a natural human need and that home ownership has been one of the most popular ways to go about it.

I am merely saying that as a general category, home ownership entails substantial risk.

"Protection reduces the risk."

Yes, that was my point. What was yours again?
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 11:52 AM
If the fundies want to try and stop Americans from getting cancer vaccines, and prevent drug companies from making money, they're more than welcome to try. My guess is, there won't be enough of 'em left to bury.

This sanguine remark aside, every member of the Pro-Cancer Right should be put in cryogenic suspension until a cure for sociopathy is found.
#: Posted by Phila on 11/01 at 11:54 AM
From the "umbrellas cause rain" school of numb voodoo hackitude.

If Dobson's for it, I'm against. Yes, it is that knee-jerk. I don't care if it's puppy kisses and Granny Smith cobbler ala mode, if Dobson likes it, I pee on it. From now on. Period.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 12:05 PM
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, I am currently reading Michael Fitzpatrick's MMR and Autism - What parents need to know, which makes it clear that Wakefield never was into thimerosal, but instead he was targeting the MMR vaccinations. This hasn't kept the thimerosal-autism groups from refering to him all the time.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 12:13 PM
And truthfully, I think most parents considering not vaccinating their children are open to logical persuasion, but because of the political climate they get branded as "anti-science" and get flamed. Add this to an unfortunatly very reasonable distrust of the medical establishment, and you get most of the current anti-vaccination crowd. It's about time scientists and doctors talked to them instead of shouting. And maybe even admitted that not everything is black-and-white (e.g., it's stupid to vaccinate day-old babies if you get almost the same effect and less side effects vaccinating them a month later).

But Rahel, it is black or white, or more literately life or death. 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.
Doctors, scientists and profesionel health care people have tried to make this clear, and have spent many resources looking for the existence of a link between childhood vaccinations and a number of diseases and ailments. They have tried to be in dialogue with the anti-vaccination people, and while it might have convinced some, a large group seems beyond reach. As Fitzpatrick wrote in his book (debating the active resisters to vaccinations):

First, parents were concerned about the risks of adverse consequences of immunisation, which they felt had been played down in the official information. These fears drew attention to the paradox that, as the risk of the disease that immunisation protected against became more remote (and folk memories if these diseases faded), the risk to any individual child of adverse effects tended relatively to increase and certainly came to loom larger in parental concerns.

Second, these parents expressed sceptical views towards "biomedicine" and an openess to alternatives, particularly homeopathy. Holistic and homeopathic concepts were a significant influence on their resistance to immunisation, which was regarded as potentially damaging to the immune system and to babies' naturally acquired immunity.

Third, they were suspicious of the apparent convergence of interests among the medical profession, the government and the vaccine manufacturer in the promotion of the MCI programme.

While the first issue they raise can be addressed, it's very hard for doctors, scientists etc. to address the other issues. Yes, there is an overlap between the people who make the vacine and the people who decide it should be used. This has something to do with the fact that vaccine is not a very profitable issue, but it's very important for the general health, hence it's often governmental agencies that makes vaccines. However, while this might be explained, it won't calm the people who believe that there is some kind of cover-up/conspiracy.
One good example is the Danish state owned agency, Statens Serum Institut which makes childhood vaccines in Denmark. People connected to this institute have made a lot of studies showing that there are no detectable connections between thimerosal and autism. This led people to claim that there were a conflict of interest, since the institute would be liable in case that there were a connection. A quick study of Danish law shows that not only is Statens Serum Institut required to carry out such studies, but there is no way that they would be liable for anything in case of a thimerosal-autims link (I've explained this much more fully at a guest post at Orac's place).
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 12:15 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.
#: Posted by Brad R. on 11/01 at 12:16 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 12:31 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 12:48 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 12:53 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.
#: Posted by on 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 01:00 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.
#: Posted by Orac on 11/01 at 01:01 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?
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 01:08 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 01:10 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 01:18 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).
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 01:20 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 01:54 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 02:37 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.
#: Posted by Jeff on 11/01 at 04:14 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.
#: Posted by arensb on 11/01 at 05:10 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.
#: Posted by Ereshkigal on 11/01 at 05:43 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.)
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 06:05 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.
#: Posted by Jonathan Badger on 11/01 at 08:12 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.
#: Posted by on 11/01 at 08:23 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.
#: Posted by ekzept on 11/01 at 08:34 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.
#: Posted by Orac on 11/01 at 09:32 PM
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.
#: Posted by on 11/02 at 01:25 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)!
#: Posted by on 11/02 at 10:08 AM