Fundamentalists and the HPV Vaccine
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008It takes a fundamentalist to ruin a medical breakthrough. Take, for instance, the recently developed HPV vaccine called Gardasil. The vaccine protects against the most dangerous forms of HPV (the virus that causes genital warts). It effectively nullifies the majority of strains that are likely to create cancer in women, and this is a good thing considering that statistics show that virtually 3 out of every 4 women will get HPV at some point in their lives.
But fundamentalists object to the vaccine for one very ridiculous reason: They think that it encourages sexual promiscuity. I guess, according to their reasoning, God put HPV on the Earth as a deterrent for people to be sluts, just as he put HIV on the Earth as a deterrent to be homosexual (nevermind that worldwide those at the greatest risk for infection are heterosexual females, and those with the least risk are lesbians).
I cannot comprehend such reasoning. In essence, these people think the prevalence of cancer-causing viruses is good simply because it prevents people from having sex. In their hierarchy of moral taxonomy, then, it would appear that having sex is a greater moral problem than, oh I don’t know, dying from fucking cancer. It takes a truly depraved mind to worry more that females might be out having sex than worrying that they might contract a cancer-causing virus, even within the confines of a wholesome, Christian marriage. Indeed, these same people who wield their Biblically justified screeds against natural sexual impulses would at the same time ignore the fact that Jesus himself spent much of his time healing the sick, curing lepers, and raising the dead. This is a man who protected a whore from being stoned to death in the very book they consider holy. And yet, still, helping to stop the spread of a cancer-causing virus is apparently not Biblical enough for these crazy fundamentalists, who seem to derive all of their morality from Old Testament injunctions against such heinous acts as having sex with members of the same sex, menstruating, wearing clothing composed of more than one material, and eating at Red Lobster. One almost suspects them to start campaigning for prohibitions of dancing and hanging accused witches, their morality is so primitively puritan.
Having said that, I was awed last night by the genius of the marketing behind the Gardasil vaccine upon seeing a commercial for the drug. Like any advertisement for a pharmaceutical product, it featured young, healthy-looking people running through fields and holding hands and shit, but what really struck me is that they did not market it as a vaccine against HPV. Genital warts and the virus itself were not mentioned at all, in fact. They touted the drug as a cancer preventative. This is framing at its best, because, really, that’s exactly what the vaccine does! It’s a lot more difficult for fundamentalists to object on puritanical grounds to a drug that prevents cancer than it is to object to a drug that is supposed to prevent a sexually transmitted disease and thus encourages harlots to enjoy perfectly natural functions outside the confines of a restrictive institution originally developed to treat women like a man’s personal property.
I can only wonder how the fundamentalists will react when the scientists finally cure AIDS. “But think of all the homosexuals and subsaharan heathen women who will live as a result!” they’ll cry. But there’s a perfectly natural solution. The fundamentlists can simply refuse the cure for themselves whenever they get AIDS, because, after all, it must be God’s will. And according to Michael Behe, God intelligently designed all those irreducibly complex viruses as part of his perfect, awe-inspiring plan to be a vindictive, assholish fascist.
