When the fall season rolls around, most people go out to get flu shots. The thought of missing a half-week of work or school due to headaches, body aches, etc. is scary enough to send most people to their local doctor's office or health department.
While influenza can prove deadly for the elderly, babies and those with compromised immune systems, for most, the flu is merely an inconvenience. Yet at the threat of missing a few crucial days of normal life, millions of Americans get vaccinated each year to arm themselves against the flu.
In August, a vaccine that not only combats a common illness, but also an often-fatal cancer, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Gardasil, a vaccine manufactured by the drug and vaccine powerhouse Merck & Co., protects women from the human papillomavirus, a common infection that can lead to genital warts and can cause cancer.
The creation such a vaccine should have been heralded by all as small medical miracle. But it wasn't.
Instead, a controversy brewed around this potential lifesaver, muddying the waters of innovation because the vaccine prevents a sexually transmitted infection.
Back up for a minute. Not to sound like an STD pamphlet at your local clinic or anything, but let's take a look at some numbers.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6.2 million people in the United States contract HPV each year, and 50 percent of the sexually active population will acquire the disease in their lifetime. HPV, which is the most common STD, is the leading cause of cervical cancer — which has about a 30 percent mortality rate.
What's more, HPV is most rampant in sexually active adults in their late teens to early 20s.
So what is so wrong with preventing this deadly disease?
The CDC recommends girls get vaccinated at about age 11, hopefully before they become sexually active. This is a problem, though, for religious conservatives who think that touting abstinence instead of safe sex will lead to fewer kids getting it on in the backseat of a car.
These people disparage the use of the HPV vaccine because they say it will make women feel sexually invincible and thus, turn them into, well, sluts. But are they concerned about public health, or are they more worried about the issue of pre-marital sex — a notion indoctrinated by many religious sects.
If dispensing the HPV vaccine has the potential to turn teenage girls into tramps, maybe we should ban the use and production of condoms in America. Condoms, as we all should know, allow people — young and old, married and unmarried — to protect against STDs, many of which can be fatal. Though they are neither fail-proof nor foolproof, condoms will never be banned, and they never should be.
Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a society where the religious right didn't sit poised to pin women with a scarlet "S"?
However, the people who stand against the HPV vaccine and other promotions of safe sex seek to ignore the cold, er, hard truth: humans have sex and they like it, regardless of whether or not they are married. It is hard-wired into all living things to perpetuate their species; humans are no different.
The stigma of premarital sex is a bane to public health, and such ignorance will ultimately prove deadly if this vaccine is not dispensed to all adult women in the U.S. and abroad, and especially to girls in their preteen years.
This vaccine is very new, and there are still several unknowns surrounding it, like how long it prevents infection, and whether it can prevent men from carrying the virus.
Despite these more long-term questions, it is undeniable that we should take advantage of the HPV vaccine's promises rather than risk the lives of thousands of women each year.
University of Wisconsin Health Services currently provides the HPV vaccine on campus; while students and UW faculty and staff still have to pay for the vaccine — and it isn't cheap — it could be a matter of life or death.
Carolyn Smith ([email protected]) is a continuing student at UW.
