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Zealots find risk of death preferable to teenage sex
By Sue Hutchison
Mercury News
Those of us who keep up with dispatches from the war against cancer know that 2006 should be an encouraging year. When researchers announced recently a vaccine has been found that knocks out the virus that causes most cervical cancer, it was the sort of news that should have been greeted with hallelujahs all around.
But it turns out that even a cure for cancer has managed to run afoul of the morality police who have increasing influence on public policy.
The vaccine, which should be available next year, prevents human papilloma virus, known as HPV. Because HPV is sexually transmitted, social conservatives object to putting the vaccine on the routine list of immunization shots that girls receive before puberty. The self-appointed family values crowd fears that recklessly protecting a girl's health in this way could encourage promiscuous behavior. Or, to put their message another way: The cervical cancer vaccine could turn your daughter into a tramp.
Imposing penalty
Never mind that cervical cancer strikes more than 10,000 women in this country each year and kills more than a third of them. The subtext of the morality-police edict seems to be that the risk of death is an acceptable penalty for premarital sex.
You have to wonder if these people have ever had contact with teenagers or remember being one themselves. Do they really believe that a girl is going to go through a mental checklist of vaccines she has had before deciding whether to surrender to temptation on prom night?
There is already scientific evidence showing that this just isn't the way young women think. Prompted by a similar controversy over whether the Food and Drug Administration should approve over-the-counter purchase of ``morning after'' birth control pills, a study was conducted last year to see if more access to the drug would affect sexual behavior.
Results of the survey of 2,000 California women and girls ages 15-24 showed that improving access to the emergency contraceptive known as Plan B does not increase unprotected sex or sexually transmitted diseases. But the study and even the advice of an FDA advisory panel have not dissuaded the agency from blocking over-the-counter access to Plan B. The potential-teen-tramp theory remains one of the major arguments against making the drug more widely available.
Doomed to failure
Now, by opposing the standard vaccination of girls against HPV, social conservatives have upped the ante. ``They're saying, `If people are going to have sex outside the boundaries of what we say is permissible, they're going to get punished,' '' said Dr. Marty Klein, a sex therapist in Palo Alto who has written and lectured extensively on public health policy regarding sexuality. ``But to try and shape sexual behavior by withholding medical treatment is just nuts. It's well known in the scientific community that it doesn't work.''
Fran Combe, a certified pediatric nurse practitioner who works at the school health clinics of Santa Clara County, has seen up close how it doesn't work. She's a big proponent of sexual abstinence for teenagers, but she often talks to girls who aren't. And they aren't likely to change their sexual behavior because of a vaccine that they probably won't know anything about whether they have it or not.
``Getting cancer later in life is a terrible price to pay for making a bad decision as a young adult,'' Combe told me.
Still, the morality police are content to risk having young women play Russian roulette with their health in the name of preserving chastity. Since when is that a family value?
Contact Sue Hutchison at shutchison@mercurynews.com.
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