Gardasil - Rant Warning!!

This article got me going today. It seems some "experts" are trying to imply that providing the Gardasil vaccine, young girls and women will have no control over themselves, will make them abandon all common sense and just start having unsafe sex. The wont understand what the vaccine will protect them from and what it wont.

Where as if they weren't given this needle, they would all remain chaste virgins until their wedding day.???? Well in Texas they think so. "Texas was about to become the first U.S. state to offer the vaccine but the order was overturned in May by the state legislature after social conservatives complained it would lead to sexual promiscuity."

AARRRGGGHHH!!!

I would love to know how educating and protecting our daughters by having access to this vaccine will some how "have unintended negative consequences for individuals and for society as a whole". Right.

The article goes on to say that grade 8 girls are too young to need the vaccine. Well if they want to vaccinate the majority of girls before they are sexually active, lets consider some facts should we? Let's take into consideration the following. (1) The legal age of consent in Canada is 14 (2) The average age that a women/girl has sex for the first time is 16.5 . (3) Girls are not encouraged to have their first pap test until after they have become sexually active... so wouldn't that be too late?

I want to know why there is nothing being done to "educate" the boys/ men? They are the ones that pass it on to the girls. Why is there no vaccine for them so that they cannot be carriers? Maybe it is impossible, but I doubt it.

What I cannot believe is that the article quotes Lippman saying "there is no urgency for a massive vaccination in Canada, where deaths from cervical cancer have been declining". Oh, so not enough women die of the disease to warrant a vaccine? I know more than a handful of friends who have had to have the precancerous cells removed. Maybe that isn't important enough.

My grandmother had cervical cancer. She is dieing of ovarian cancer.

I know that I will be taking my daughter to have the vaccine that may prevent her from contracting HPV, the virus that causes 70% of cervical cancer. I will discuss with her what the vaccine is meant to protect her from and what it doesn't. But not only that, I will be ensuring that there is a lot of frank discussions is our house, about Sex, so that there is no "misunderstandings". The best thing we can do for our kids is to talk to them, give them the facts.

Pretending that ML won't have sex if I don't give her this vaccine, don't talk to her about safe sex, is a disaster waiting to happen.