Moral Confusion and Public Health Illiteracy

"If Republican presidential candidates want to debate sexual health and hygiene, it would be nice if they displayed more collective knowledge and judgment than your average eighth-grade family-life class. During the Tampa debate, a viewer longed for a blunt, part-time football coach — or whomever they draft into teaching health classes nowadays — to mount the stage and present the facts of life.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) is a nasty, sexually transmitted disease contracted by about three-quarters of Americans at some point. You can have it, and spread it, without knowing it. In some women, the virus causes abnormal cells in the lining of the cervix that can develop into cancerous lesions. Virtually all cervical cancer is caused by HPV. There is, however, a vaccine that is highly effective against the most dangerous HPV strains. The main side effect, as you’d expect in a procedure involving a needle, is fainting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all girls should get it anyway."

Read the Washington Post, A dose of reality for the HPV debate, which imagines "a parent-daughter conversation about sexual restraint and maturity that includes the words: 'Honey, I’m going to deny you a vaccine that prevents a horrible, bleeding cancer, just as a little reminder of the religious values I’ve been trying to teach you.' This would be morally monstrous. Such ethical electroshock therapy has nothing to do with cultivation of character in children. It certainly has nothing to do with Christianity, which teaches that moral rules are created for the benefit of the individual, not to punish them with preventable death."