Wednesday, February 29, 2012

HPV Vaccine for Boys

Juniper Russo reports on the Gardasil vaccine being offered to boys:

http://news.yahoo.com/hpv-vaccine-boys-important-step-health-future-generations-161900269.html

Parents who worry about "telling boys it's okay to be 'gay'" need to wake up and smell the coffee. Most young men aren't going to be "gay," whether they're told it's okay or not; protecting them from HPV would be a way to protect their wives, and thus their children--their parents' grandchildren.

I have mixed feelings, though, about the idea of urging yet another vaccine on the parents of the very young. All vaccinations carry some risk. Having yourself vaccinated, when you are in fact at risk of having or carrying a life-threatening disease, is a responsible, ethical decision to make. Having someone else vaccinated, when that person is not necessarily at risk for the disease or when the hazards of the vaccination may be more life-threatening than those of the disease, is ethically unacceptable to me.

For boys as for girls, the position of this web site has to remain: HPV is not transmitted by anything that can legally be done at school, so the HPV vaccine should not even be mentioned (much less required) at public schools.

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