Religious right would kill to stop safe sex (HPV Vaccine)

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/ or direct link
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/05/vaccine/index.html

Here's more so-crazy-it-can-only-be-a-bad-dream-and-not- the-actual-country-that-enfranchised-us news for women: As we get closer to approval for a vaccine that will prevent human papillomavirus (HPV), the STD thought to cause around 70 percent of cervical cancer cases, some sectors of the religious right have begun to make protest noises. Apparently, disease-prevention of this nature -- in addition to leading to improved health for our mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, friends, and selves -- could mean just the green-light we've all been waiting for to go out and rut like bunnies.

HPV, which doesn't always produce symptoms and often goes undetected, is a terrifyingly common condition. According to the CDC, over 50 percent of sexually active men and women contract it in their lifetimes, and by age 50, more than 80 percent of women will have had the virus. While many cases of genital HPV disappear of their own accord, it's the main risk factor in contracting cervical cancer; in other words, most of the 10,370 American women who the American Cancer Society predicts will be diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer in 2005 got it because they had been infected with HPV.

Because it is a wily virus that can slip past condoms, HPV has long been a darling of the abstinence-only brigade, which uses it as Exhibit A in its argument that there is no such thing as "safe sex" short of abstaining entirely.

SNIP

If the vaccines got approved, there is the possibility that HPV would cease to be a threat to women, and the right would lose one of its major weapons in the war against premarital sex. Perhaps that explains why some groups are in such a bad mood over such good medical news.

I fear this will get tied up in the FDA like over the counter EC. It saves the Dominionists from having to pass a law to allow them to stone women guilty of "unchastity before marriage"

[Tux]

1. OK

We can now prevent a horrible disease but some guy's opinion from 2000 years ago appears in a book and that stops it?

Can anyone explain to me how and why we are letting our nation be so divided over a book?

[TwentyFive]

2. Religious views are usually weird. I don't have a problem with that.

I've seen Amish using horses & buggies, and other religious people withhold lifesaving medicine and surguries for the own kids. Religious fundamentalism is weird. I feel sorry for them.

But - when they start getting their hands on our government - my pity quickly turns to anger. The republican party has become one really weird, cultish church....and must be voted completely out of power...ASAP.

[Shallah Kali]

3. If they want to subject themselves to that fine. Just don't make me obey

their religious rules. I don't force them to do my thing so it makes me furious that they want to shove their rules down my throat. Then they whine they are oppressed because people like me have the nerve to complain about them trying to turn America into a Christian version of Afghanistan.