HPV Vaccines: Another Social Conservative Myth Implodes
by David Atkins
Remember how conservatives fretted that giving teen girls HPV vaccines would lead to increases in risky sexual behavior and somehow end society as we know it? Like almost everything social conservatives say, that was all basically bullshit:
Since public health officials began recommending in 2006 that young women be routinely vaccinated against HPV, many parents have hesitated over fears that doing so might give their children license to have sex. But research published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics may help ease those fears.
Looking at a sample of nearly 1,400 girls, the researchers found no evidence that those who were vaccinated beginning around age 11 went on to engage in more sexual activity than girls who were not vaccinated.
“We’re hopeful that once physicians see this, it will give them evidence that they can give to parents,” said Robert A. Bednarczyk, the lead author of the report and a clinical investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research Southeast, in Atlanta. “Hopefully when parents see this, it’ll be reassuring to them and we can start to overcome this barrier.”
Not likely. The sort of people who have these “concerns” are the sort of people who don’t believe in evolution and think tax cuts magically pay for themselves. A scientific study isn’t exactly going to dispel their ignorance.
But the rest of us can mock them all the same, even as we drag them kicking and screaming into modernity–a modernity that hopefully has a lot less cervical cancer in it, even for them and their children.
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