HPV, the human papilloma virus, is a sexually transmitted infection which is responsible for 70% of cervical cancer cases. Cervical cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer among women in developing countries, killing 200,000 women each year – 4,000 in the US. It is one of the few things that condoms do not protect against.. So wouldn’t you think that a vaccine against HPV would be universally celebrated? Young people could be vaccinated before they became sexually active and within a generation, cervical cancer could be reduced by 70%.
According to an article in The Nation, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline have both conducted successful trials of a vaccine to prevent HPV.
Not so fast: We’re living in God’s country now. The Christian right doesn’t like the sound of this vaccine at all. “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful,” Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, “because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”
So, they would rather women ran a greater risk of developing cervical cancer than give up a weapon in their anti-sex armoury because that is really what it is about:
Although not as famous as chlamydia or herpes, HPV has the distinction of not being preventable by condoms. It’s Exhibit A in those gory high school slide shows that try to scare kids away from sex, and it is also useful for undermining the case for rubbers generally–why bother when you could get HPV anyway? In 2000, Congressman (now Senator) Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who used to give gruesome lectures on HPV for young Congressional aides, even used HPV to propose warning labels on condoms. With HPV potentially eliminated, the antisex brigade will lose a card it has regarded as a trump unless it can persuade parents that vaccinating their daughters will turn them into tramps, and that sex today is worse than cancer tomorrow
Article here: Virginity or Death!
