The American Taliban: Honor Killing on the Installment Plan

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-- The American Taliban: Honor Killing on the Installment Plan

Posted by DaveSZ on Oct-07-2005 01:33:

The American Taliban: Honor Killing on the Installment Plan

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050530/pollitt

Virginity or Death!

Katha Pollitt

Imagine a vaccine that would protect women from a serious gynecological cancer. Wouldn't that be great? Well, both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that they have conducted successful trials of vaccines that protect against the human papilloma virus. HPV is not only an incredibly widespread sexually transmitted infection but is responsible for at least 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer, which is diagnosed in 10,000 American women a year and kills 4,000. Wonderful, you are probably thinking, all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty, and HPV--and, in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer--goes poof. Not so fast: We're living in God's country now. The Christian right doesn't like the sound of this vaccine at all. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.

I remember when people rolled their eyeballs if you suggested that opposition to abortion was less about "life" than about sex, especially sex for women. You have to admit that thesis is looking pretty solid these days. No matter what the consequences of sex--pregnancy, disease, death--abstinence for singles is the only answer. Just as it's better for gays to get AIDS than use condoms, it's better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage. It's honor killing on the installment plan.

-more

Posted by pkcRAISTLIN on Oct-07-2005 01:38:

^^ is why i cry til i laugh when americans talk about the wonderous freedoms inherent in their democracy.

Posted by DaveSZ on Oct-07-2005 01:53:

quote:
Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
^^ is why i cry til i laugh when americans talk about the wonderous freedoms inherent in their democracy.

The American Taliban is fundamentally anti-democratic - indeed they are theocratic - so it's largely a moot point.

Regardless, I suspect that the fundies in the current FDA will probably block this life-saving vaccine (from approval).

Posted by St_Andrew on Oct-07-2005 12:40:

Wow, the narrow minded US christian fundamental right never cease to suprise me.

Glad to live in Sweden

Posted by MrSquirrel on Oct-07-2005 19:12:

From what I have heard (need to do a little more research to be sure) this vaccine is not a permanent immunity, it wears off after a number of years. So saying someone who is vaccinated at age 10 being immune at age 50 or 60 is probably a stretch on your part.

Even if their reasoning is faulty, you cannot make an argument against theirs based on poor assumptions.

MrS

Posted by Reverend_Trance on Oct-08-2005 09:59:

Well, people have sex any way. Condoms will cause sex to happen. Oh, the pill is bad. Not this shot, too!

People will do it until the world ends. Get over it!