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Please vaccinate our children
By Devon Wiesend
The $360 for the full series of vaccinations is no match for the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars that cancer can cost you.
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a sexually transmitted disease that recently found a nemesis. I’m sure everyone has seen the commercials that educate women about the link between the virus and cervical cancer. The commercials bring to light a fact that was mostly unknown to the general public until now: cervical cancer is preventable.
The opposition to the new HPV vaccine has been from the religious right and their rampant fear that a vaccine preventing the STD will promote promiscuity — in 9-year-old girls.
I think the opposition may have a point. When I was nine, the only reason I didn’t have sex was my fear of cervical cancer. If this vaccine had existed when I was young, I could have realized my childhood dream of a life of unsafe sex and prostitution.
Damn.
I think that too many people are looking too deeply into this subject because they just want a reason to disagree with technological and medicinal advances. If we can lower the chances of young women dying from cancer, we should jump at the opportunity. Sure, the drug is pretty expensive, but the price of the vaccine is nothing compared to the price of cancer treatment.
Let’s not even discuss the non-monetary costs: the emotional pain, fear, losing the ability to bear children, even the lives lost. No, let’s just discuss the money involved. The $360 for the full series of vaccinations is no match for the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars that cancer can cost you.
HPV is not an uncommon or incurable disease. Often, after a few years, the body will cure itself, but within this time, cancer can develop. HPV is so common that there is an 80 percent chance that you, female reader, will have it at some point in your life — if you don’t have it now. Unfortunately, no one has come up with a way to test men for the virus, so that number is unknown.
How is it possible that so many women have this disease, you may ask? There are 100 types of HPV, over 30 of which are sexually transmitted. About 10 of these strains can lead to cervical cancer. Many of these strains have no signs or symptoms — a silent killer passing from lover to lover, mother to child; unknown, unseen. One needn’t be promiscuous or having unsafe sex to contract HPV.
This disease can pass from one monogamous partner to another while using a condom. This is one of the reasons this disease is so deadly. Any possible way to prevent contracting this disease is a big step for humanity.
No young woman should suffer from a disease that is fully preventable. In a society where people pray every day for a cure for cancer, how can anyone say prevention is a bad idea?
I highly doubt that the regular administration of the HPV vaccine is going to tell young girls that they are ready for sex. A good, supportive parent can prevent that thought in a child.
Perhaps instead of fighting the use of this vaccine, the morally self-righteous should try helping out parents who simply can’t do it all.
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