the politicized christian right vs. the cervical cancer vaccine

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Irvine511

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[Q]

Debate rages on use of cervical cancer vaccine

While almost 100% effective, some contend use condones teen sex

Rob Stein, Washington Post

Monday, October 31, 2005

Washington -- A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teen-agers could encourage sexual activity.

Although the vaccine will not become available until next year at the earliest, activists on both sides have begun maneuvering to influence how widely the immunizations will be employed.

Groups working to reduce the toll of the cancer are eagerly awaiting the vaccine and want it to become part of the standard roster of shots that children, especially girls, receive just before puberty.

Because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted virus, many conservatives oppose making it mandatory, citing fears that it could send a subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage. Several leading groups that promote abstinence are meeting this week to formulate official policies on the vaccine.

Officials from the companies developing the shots -- Merck & Co. and GlaxoSmithKline -- have been meeting with advocacy groups to try to assuage their concerns.

The jockeying reflects the growing influence social conservatives, who had long felt overlooked by Washington, have gained on a broad spectrum of policy issues under the Bush administration. In this case, a former member of the conservative group Focus on the Family serves on the federal panel that is playing a pivotal role in deciding how the vaccine is used.

"What the Bush administration has done has taken this coterie of people and put them into very influential positions in Washington," said James Morone Jr., a professor of political science at Brown University. "And it's having an effect in debates like this."

The vaccine protects women against strains of a ubiquitous germ called the human papilloma virus. Although many strains of the virus are innocuous, some can cause cancerous lesions on the cervix (the outer end of the uterus), making them the primary cause of this cancer in the United States. Cervical cancer strikes more than 10,000 U.S. women each year, killing more than 3,700.

The vaccine appears to be virtually 100 percent effective against two of the most common cancer-causing HPV strains. Merck, whose vaccine is further along, plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration by the end of the year for approval to sell the shots.

[...]

Conservative groups say they welcome the vaccine as an important public health tool but oppose making it mandatory.

"Some people have raised the issue of whether this vaccine may be sending an overall message to teen-agers that, 'We expect you to be sexually active,' " said Reginald Finger, a doctor trained in public health who served as a medical analyst for Focus on the Family before being appointed to the ACIP in 2003.

"There are people who sense that it could cause people to feel like sexual behaviors are safer if they are vaccinated and may lead to more sexual behavior because they feel safe," said Finger, emphasizing he does not endorse that position and is withholding judgment until the issue comes before the vaccine policy panel for a formal recommendation.

Conservative medical groups have been fielding calls from concerned parents and organizations, officials said.

"I've talked to some who have said, 'This is going to sabotage our abstinence message,' " said Gene Rudd, associate executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. But Rudd said most people change their minds once they learn more, adding he would probably want his children immunized. Rudd, however, draws the line at making the vaccine mandatory.

"Parents should have the choice. There are those who would say, 'We can provide a better, healthier alternative than the vaccine, and that is to teach abstinence,' " Rudd said.

The council plans to meet Wednesday to discuss the issue. On the same day, the Medical Institute for Sexual Health in Austin, Texas, which advises conservative groups on sexuality and health issues, is convening a one-day meeting to develop a position statement.

Alan Kaye, executive director of the National Cervical Cancer Coalition, likened the vaccine to wearing a seat belt.

"Just because you wear a seat belt doesn't mean you're seeking out an accident," Kaye said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/31/MNG2LFGJFT1.DTL#story

[/Q]
 
Politicizing and moralizing about CANCER is wrong, wrong, wrong in every possible way

How would some of these people feel to see a woman they loved suffer and die from cervical cancer? It is horrific. But it's more important to believe that it will encourage teenagers to have sex :|
 
We have truly stooped to new lows with this.

These people are ostriches.
 
I'm not sure this is a real issue, or one manufactured by the newspaper. The vaccine has nothing to do with sexual promiscuity.

Even one of the quoted "concerned conservatives" said:

Rudd said most people change their minds once they learn more, adding he would probably want his children immunized

I guess the mistake was simply asking the question.
 
Sounds like some of these folks have fallen prey to their own poor misguided sexual education programs. How will a shot that doesn't protect against HIV or pregnancy promote sex?

I think they should all be required to take a simple biology class, that way they can identify that that lump growing out of their ass is really their head.
 
You can bet a million dollars that if a men's cancer were linked to sexual activity and a vaccine were to be developed to provide 100% immunity, there would be no conservative debate about making it mandatory.
 
stammer476 said:
Let me guess . . . everyone one will agree this is wrong.

:yawn:



but i feel as if it is important to point out that there are political special interest groups, who have the ear of the president and were crucial in forcing Miers to withdraw her nomination to SCOTUS, who would actually put the lives of children at risk for the sake of this ultra-orthadox abstinence-only ideology.

it's less what this group says and more that these groups are taken seriously by people in Washington.
 
and let's broaden our worldview.

what if we got an HIV/AIDS vaccine?

would we see the same response -- that administering the vaccine was a license to have rampant, unprotected sex?
 
Yes. And you'd also probably hear about how this gives license to gay men to go nuts. And other related nonsense like it.

And I have to agree with martha. I tend to believe if we were talking about prostate cancer, this would never even be suggested.
 
Christians suck.

They want people to die.

Blah Blah Blah

Any group who ignorantly opposes this vaccnine represents a miniscule portion of the evangelical community. The article is nothing more than incendiary nonsense.
 
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martha said:
You can bet a million dollars that if a men's cancer were linked to sexual activity and a vaccine were to be developed to provide 100% immunity, there would be no conservative debate about making it mandatory.

odds are you are correct

and maybe Bush should just make that Dobson guy the head of the Department Of Health And Human Services

I really don't believe that anyone here believes that Christians "suck" and "want people to die" , but I believe Irvine is correct in saying that some of these conservatives have too much influence w/ the WH. Maybe their influence can override the fact that they are a minsicule minority.

When James Dobson is involved in conference calls w/ Karl Rove or others about a Supreme Court nominee, I don't see how that is not undue influence.
 
anitram said:
Yes. And you'd also probably hear about how this gives license to gay men to go nuts. And other related nonsense like it.

The AIDS virus did more to advance the gay rights movement than anything else in the 80's and 90's. Read last week's New Republic cover article "The End of Gay Culture" by Andrew Sullivan. A homosexual himself, Sullivan makes a rather convincing arguement illustrating how AIDS put a human face on homosexuality. As gay activists worked with politicians for solutions for handeling AIDS, it opened the door to address issues regarding gay rights.

http://www.tnr.com/thisweek.mhtml?i=20051024

Evangelicals who think that AIDS is the answer to eradicating homosexuality are idiots.
 
This Administration is really out of control. When one pundit wrote that Dubya will go done as the Country's worst President of all time I thought that may be a little harsh, I can see it now.
 
MaxFisher said:
Christians suck.

They want people to die.

Blah Blah Blah




oh for Pete's sake ... no one has said all Christians, and no one ever does, and many of the criticism of this particular group of Christians comes from Christians themselves.
 
nbcrusader said:
I'm not sure this is a real issue, or one manufactured by the newspaper. The vaccine has nothing to do with sexual promiscuity.

Even one of the quoted "concerned conservatives" said:



I guess the mistake was simply asking the question.

Thank you. Sincerely. When I open these threads, sometimes I cannot help but cringe. I wonder what on earth can be argued about when it is something so above and beyond political or religious viewpoints. To read this is nice.
:)
 
MaxFisher said:
Christians suck.

They want people to die.

Blah Blah Blah
You've just destroyed all credibility you may have had in this debate.


MaxFisher said:

Any group who ignorantly opposes this vaccnine represents a miniscule portion of the evangelical community. The article is nothing more than incendiary nonsense.
Yes it may be a small group, but it's a small group that Bush talks to and has Bush's ear. So yeah, it's a concern.
 
I'm sorry, but anybody who opposes this vaccine is a hopeless moron. End of story.

Men should get this vaccine too. This isn't a "cervical cancer vaccine" as much as a vaccine for a few strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer, which can still infect men.

Melon
 
Mandatory vaccinations are a scary thing to me. I simply do not trust our government on this issue. The following piece addresses the dangers of thimerosal which is no longer used in the manufacture of children's vaccines but which up until last year was still present in existing vaccines that were being shipped to third world countries despite the known dangers--and those countries are now experiencing huge outbreaks in autism. It makes you wonder about the bigger picture, what other lies the government is willing to perpetuate regarding other vaccines.

Sorry if this takes the thread in a new direction but I think it's relevant. I am appalled by the Christian right's reasons for not supporting a vaccination for cervical cancer yet I have concerns of my own.

Published on Thursday, June 16, 2005 by Salon.com
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0616-31.htm

Deadly Immunity

When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.


In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
...
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.
...
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed.
...
I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen." It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.
 
joyfulgirl said:
Mandatory vaccinations are a scary thing to me. I simply do not trust our government on this issue. The following piece addresses the dangers of thimerosal which is no longer used in the manufacture of children's vaccines but which up until last year was still present in existing vaccines that were being shipped to third world countries despite the known dangers--and those countries are now experiencing huge outbreaks in autism. It makes you wonder about the bigger picture, what other lies the government is willing to perpetuate regarding other vaccines.



very interesting stuff.
 
joyfulgirl said:
Mandatory vaccinations are a scary thing to me. I simply do not trust our government on this issue. The following piece addresses the dangers of thimerosal which is no longer used in the manufacture of children's vaccines but which up until last year was still present in existing vaccines that were being shipped to third world countries despite the known dangers--and those countries are now experiencing huge outbreaks in autism. It makes you wonder about the bigger picture, what other lies the government is willing to perpetuate regarding other vaccines.

"Mandatory vaccination" is generally a misnomer anyway.

Melon
 
I'm a bit lost here. What groups specifically have organized against this vaccine? Ralph Reed? Gary Bauer? James Dobson? Does anyone have any specifics?
 
Sherry Darling said:
I'm a bit lost here. What groups specifically have organized against this vaccine? Ralph Reed? Gary Bauer? James Dobson? Does anyone have any specifics?

Good observation. No evangelical Christian groups are mentioned.

Two individuals, however, are named. Both make reference to antecdotal comments about the proposed vaccine.

Not really enough to constitute the "politicalized Christian right" but enough for a good headline.
 
nbcrusader said:


Good observation. No evangelical Christian groups are mentioned.

Two individuals, however, are named. Both make reference to antecdotal comments about the proposed vaccine.

Not really enough to constitute the "politicalized Christian right" but enough for a good headline.



they have quotes from members of the ACIP who have worked for extremely influential "politicized Christian right wing" groups that have such an influence over the current white house that they can get SCOTUS nominees to withdraw their names.

witness:

[q]At the ACIP meeting last week, panel members heard presentations about the pros and cons of vaccinating girls at various ages. A survey of 294 pediatricians presented at the meeting found that more than half were worried that parents of female patients might refuse the vaccine, and 11 percent of the doctors said they thought vaccinating against a sexually transmitted disease "may encourage risky sexual behavior in my adolescent patients."

Conservative groups say they welcome the vaccine as an important public health tool but oppose making it mandatory.

"Some people have raised the issue of whether this vaccine may be sending an overall message to teen-agers that, 'We expect you to be sexually active,' " said Reginald Finger, a doctor trained in public health who served as a medical analyst for Focus on the Family before being appointed to the ACIP in 2003.

"There are people who sense that it could cause people to feel like sexual behaviors are safer if they are vaccinated and may lead to more sexual behavior because they feel safe," said Finger, emphasizing he does not endorse that position and is withholding judgment until the issue comes before the vaccine policy panel for a formal recommendation.

Conservative medical groups have been fielding calls from concerned parents and organizations, officials said.

"I've talked to some who have said, 'This is going to sabotage our abstinence message,' " said Gene Rudd, associate executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. But Rudd said most people change their minds once they learn more, adding he would probably want his children immunized. Rudd, however, draws the line at making the vaccine mandatory.
[/q]

[q]The jockeying reflects the growing influence social conservatives, who had long felt overlooked by Washington, have gained on a broad spectrum of policy issues under the Bush administration. In this case, a former member of the conservative group Focus on the Family serves on the federal panel that is playing a pivotal role in deciding how the vaccine is used.

"What the Bush administration has done has taken this coterie of people and put them into very influential positions in Washington," said James Morone Jr., a professor of political science at Brown University. "And it's having an effect in debates like this."
[/q]
 
Maybe religious conservatives should think of it less in terms of premarital sex and more in terms of STD prevention in case their loved ones happen to get molested or raped. HPV is the most common STD of them all.

Melon
 
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