Modern medicine

So, this is exciting. Lance Armstrong is coming to town for the XTerra bike race. And that dove-tailed so neatly with an article I was reading recently at the CDC website that I have to tell you about it. (I have that plague 'thing', so I stop by there regularly to check up on the latest about y. Pestis---weird, I know, but that's just me!) As you probably know, Lance is hero to many people, because he fought testicular cancer and won. The particular type of cancer he had was caused by a virus that's transmitted sexually. And now there's been a medical breakthrough---a vaccine is available, that will keep young men from getting the virus, and no young men will ever have to suffer this particular cancer again, or lose their chance to have children! The CDC is recommending that they get it young, long before there's any chance of them being sexually active, since it's useless after they contract the virus.

Ah, see? It's a different story, isn't it? People would flock to get this vaccine for their sons.

I just made it up, by the way, as an exercise. I always do this when I hear about something happening to girls. I imagine it was a boy. Then how would it go? You'd be shocked at how often just changing the gender changes the whole scenario!

Because people would flock for a testicular cancer vaccine for their sons, but their daughters can just... Well... Suffer.

Thanks for that, Michelle Bachman. Not only are you ignorant, and sexist, but you have just done harm to an entire generation of girls. I lay every case of cervical cancer to occur over the next generation directly and squarely at your feet. nice work. I hope you are proud of it. There's you, and there are the religious zealots in Pakistan, who prevented us from eradicating polio from the entire planet, as we did for smallpox. As polio moves back into China, and India, and eventually back across the globe, I hope you think a little harder about the ground on which you've chosen to set your feet. Vaccines are one of the great achievements of human-kind. And anyone who doesn't think so needs to go back to school and read the accounts of pandemics, epidemics, and even just simple, ordinary instances of people being crippled for life by disease. If not for vaccines, you could never be so complacent as to think they weren't necessary.