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Tue 27 Feb, 2007 01:16 am
Vaccine makes sense, but heart's not in it
By Margery Eagan
Boston Herald Columnist
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 - Updated: 12:22 AM EST
So, among Deval Patrick's new budget proposals is $25 million more for childhood immunizations, including one for human papillomavirus for 72,000 girls between9 and 18. The new vaccine prevents most strains of the sexually transmitted disease that cause cervical cancer.
About everybody thinks this is a great idea.
Why am I so squeamish?
Even social conservatives, the abstinence crowd, are OK with this. Who can disagree with disease prevention, they say, as long as nobody mandates it?
Which means the vaccine is optional. Which means parents have options. To vaccinate their sweet little 9-year-old, or not, against an STD she might acquire way off in her future. At least you hope it's way off in her future.
"You're squeamish because you look across the breakfast table at your little girls," said the mother of a 9- and 11-year-old yesterday, "and wonder how you'll explain why you're hauling them off for their three shots. You're not gonna say, you know, ?'OK, sweetie, you need this so you won't get diseases if you have sex with the entire high school football team.' "
"Why don't boys (STD carriers) get vaccinated too?" said a mother of a 14-year-old. "It's just like the Tom Brady [stats] thing. Everybody blames girls . . . But if my daughter's sartorial proclivities are any indication of her future behavior, she may need double vaccines."
I mean, va-va-va-voom.
Now these two mothers, like me, are social liberals: pro-choice, pro birth control, pro-sex-ed in the schools. Yet we're not wild about government mandating brand-new vaccines either, despite what we hope are well-intentioned efforts by state Sen. Richard Moore (D-Uxbridge)who wants one.
On the other hand, a mandated vaccine would most certainly let us off the hook. Have you spent much time around sixth-, seventh- or eighth-grade girls lately? Have you noticed the tart-i-fied outfits, the precocious makeup? "Hooker dressing" some call it. It's terrible. Terrible. We fight it. We're losing.
A mandate, see, would avoid parents' fear that by singling out a preteen or barely teen-aged daughter for an STD vaccine, you are, however subtly, conveying to her that because she dresses like Ms. Va-va-va-voom, you think she isMs. Va-va-va-voom. Surely you don't want her to think you think she is Ms. Va-va-va-voom. Then she'll become Ms. Va-va-va-voom.
Then - big trouble.
It's a wussy, cop-out reason for a mandate, I admit. I'm just trying to be honest here.
Before I had children, I knew everything, of course. I vowed I would never throw one of those little sex pamphlets at my children, then run from the room at 80 mph. I said my children would never be subjected to the likes of Miss Crispo, The Living Fossil, who warned my high school classmates not to swim in the YMCA pool: a rogue sperm might impregnant you.
No, my sex talks with my children would be honest, open, matter of fact. Then I had children and realized: it's one thing to be honest, open and matter of fact about sex when they're little. It's another thing entirely when they're heading off to the school dance with their lip gloss and skin-tight Solo pants and those belly-hugging shirts that you hope keep covering their bellies once they're grinding to and fro on the dance floor or sneaking into the bleachers, etc., etc., etc.
Bottom line: my head tells me this vaccination is a great preventative measure to combat what could happen should your sweet, precious, adorable little thing grow up and have sex not with the entire football team - at least one hopes not - but with that wrong guy on the football team who winds up infecting her.
But my heart says something else. My heart hates the whole damn idea.
Boston Herald
Quote:"Why don't boys (STD carriers) get vaccinated too?" said a mother of a 14-year-old. "It's just like the Tom Brady [stats] thing. Everybody blames girls
I wondered this too, when I read the statistics in the thread that Edgar posted- which stated:
Quote:A recent study found that 90 percent of cervical cancer cases could be eliminated if boys and girls got the vaccine. If only girls get it, just more than three quarters of cases would be eliminated.
The cynical part of me would guess that these decision makers grasped the fact that targeting boys as well would tip the scales into the fiscal and political realm of the negative in the minds of constituents- although it would almost totally eradicate the disease.
But the fact is, women have always had to bear more of the burden in terms of the repercussions of STD's and unwanted pregnancy- and it wouldn't be productive for anyone to teach their daughter that's not a fact and it is not incumbent upon her to take responsibility for her own body. Because despite how unfair it might seem- that's the way it is- without question and unavoidably by biological design.
The whole cultural thing makes me sad too. Although you'd think if we could expend the energy and brainpower to develop antidotes to disease as well as to vaccinate an entire generation of young women) against disease, we could somehow manage to create a culture and environment that didn't encourage and inspire the very behavior that leads to the disease we're developing vaccines to eradicate.
It all seems kind of crazy. I guess it's always easier to give a shot or a pill though, than to try to change what really needs to be changed.
aidan wrote:I guess it's always easier to give a shot or a pill though, than to try to change what really needs to be changed.
Well said! (Or to built more prisons instead of looking in what's behind the crime rate, or ... ... ...)
I hope no one here is naive enough to think you can stop people from having sex. You can't.
You can educate, you can inject morals, you can keep your children on a tight reign, you can reason, you can talk til you're blue in the face. Whe they're reqdy to do it they're going to period.
Reproduction is the prime biological directive. That's why it feels better than anything else.
Give everyone every vaccine and prophylactic they come up with that will prevent sex related problems because sex is here to stay.
Quote:Give everyone every vaccine and prophylactic they come up with that will prevent sex related problems because sex is here to stay.
Yeah, well I hope so, otherwise we'd be in danger of being one of the last generations of humans. I'm not worried about women having sex, and actually, as far as I'm concerned, it's their own business when and how and who they have it with.
What I was referring to was the sexualization of young girls that is happening earlier and earlier. I don't know if you have a daughter, but from about the time mine has been eight years old, I've had to search for clothes that didn't focus attention on the fact that she was a sexual being. And at eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve....until whenever it is she's ready to become sexual-she shouldn't have to dress like she is-but there's less and less in the stores these days for little girls that looks like it was made for little girls instead of post-pubescent women- take a walk through the preteen girl's section of a department store someday-or better yet Old Navy or the Gap.
And in terms of cervical cancer due to the papiloma virus, the earlier sexual intercourse begins and the more partners a woman has increases her chances of contracting the virus during her lifetime exponentially.
There are all sorts of pressures for girls to become sexually active before they're ready-the peer pressure to be a certain way is excruciatingly specific and unrelenting for adolescents these days. There are girls in junior highschools (12-14 years of age) having various forms of sex in janitor closets and bathroom stalls in schools- and it aint because they're feeling any "prime biological directive".
The changes in attitude and culture I was talking about are more about making it okay for little girls to look and feel like children as long as they need to-not outlawing sex. Although I think that we're seeing the repercussions of earlier and earlier sexual exploration in the advent of asexual and celibate young adults. I mean they've already done it all with everyone by the time they're eighteen. It's old hat-what else is there to look forward to?
What I was referring to was the sexualization of young girls that is happening earlier and earlier. I don't know if you have a daughter, but from about the time mine has been eight years old, I've had to search for clothes that didn't focus attention on the fact that she was a sexual being. And at eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve....until whenever it is she's ready to become sexual-she shouldn't have to dress like she is-but there's less and less in the stores these days for little girls that looks like it was made for little girls instead of post-pubescent women- take a walk through the preteen girl's section of a department store someday-or better yet Old Navy or the Gap.
[/quote]
As far as the close things - thank you - I have the same complaints. I was looking for a dress for my 8 year old to go see the Nutcracker (not go to some night club). She had a gift certificate for Target. There was not one dress that I would allow her to wear in the entire store. She liked some of them, but I would not allow her to wear such outfits. It was so disheartening. You either have to buy something for a little girl very cutesy like for a three year old or something for an older teenager like 18.
Quote:sex is here to stay.
Is there a vaccine against incest?
Quote:She had a gift certificate for Target. There was not one dress that I would allow her to wear in the entire store.
Egan has said the very same thing in the press and on her radio talk show ( 12pm-3pm daily).
We haven't had a doctor's appointment with my eight year old since this vaccine was developed. I will probably defer to my doctor. She seems to have a good head on her shoulders and has a very good sense about how to handle things. Both my girls just love her.
If my daughter were to ask what the vaccine was about - I would simply give her the basics like any other shot. It will help prevent you from getting sick.
Quote:sexualization of young girls that is happening earlier and earlier
And as a result, young girls are being put on the pill, at an earlier and earlier age. At the same time, and perhaps related to this is the dramatic rise in the incidence of autism.
I hadn't heard about that correlation-that's interesting.
Autism manifests itself much earlier than when a girl would be put on the pill -- unless you're talking about putting girls on the pill at age 3 or 4....
I think she means that a personal history of BCP prior to pregnancy might be correlated to the increase in autism diagnosis. There are a number of theories about what might be contributing to an increase in autism, there are no definitive answers yet, that I know of.
According to ICD-10, autism mainfests before the age of three - might well be that something new is found, but it least nothing is in the published literature. (The English as far as available here in Germany)
The only somewhat hard and fast correlations I've heard are the use of the drug tributaline during gestation (to halt premature labor) and a family history- there seems to be some genetic predisposition- although it affects vastly many more boys than girls, so even that is somewhat tricky.
I've also heard about environmental and viral links, which would explain the explosion in autism cases in the past ten or fifteen years.
The birth control link would be interesting and make sense because when you think about it, the use of any drug that produces changes in chemistry or cycles over long periods of time and beginning from childhood when cells are still rapidly dividing and DNA is most vulnerable to alteration, is questionable at best and down right scary.
That's why these crazy lives we're asking our kids to live, with the attendent dependence on mood altering and anti-anxiety medications just seems so wrong and dangerous- like a time bomb waiting to go off.
aidan wrote:I hadn't heard about that correlation-that's interesting.
Also interesting is the correlation between TV viewing and autism:
Is an Economist Qualified To Solve Puzzle of Autism?
By Mark Whitehouse
Word Count: 2,210
In the spring of 2005, Cornell University economist Michael Waldman noticed a strange correlation in Washington, Oregon and California. The more it rained or snowed, the more likely children were to be diagnosed with autism.
To most people, the observation would have been little more than a riddle. But it soon led Prof. Waldman to conclude that something children do more during rain or snow -- perhaps watching television -- must influence autism. Last October, Cornell announced the resulting paper in a news release headlined, "Early childhood TV viewing may trigger autism, data analysis suggests."
WSJ online
Interesting.
There are SO many theories. One other theory I've seen is that there isn't actually a greater incidence of autism, it's just that it is more readily recognized/ diagnosed than it has been in the past. (I think it wasn't even recognized as a disorder with a name and everything until fairly recently.)
As in, the same percentage of people have the same symptoms as ever, it's just that the number of DIAGNOSED cases of autism have skyrocketed.
Dunno. I'm skeptical of a whole lot of the theories though. (That it's related to childhood vaccinations, etc., etc.)
(In fact, according to something Dagmaraka found, she, ehBeth, patiodog, Chai, Caribou and I [a few more people too I think] all have a form of autism.)
sozobe wrote:Autism manifests itself much earlier than when a girl would be put on the pill -- unless you're talking about putting girls on the pill at age 3 or 4....
We were talking about the woman who's on the pill prior to her pregnancy and the influence that could have on the development of autism in her child developing in utero, but expressed in later life following birth.
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