INTERESTING TIMES

As you may know I lean libertarian. I am skeptical whenever government authority is imposed. There has to be a good reason for government to exist, or to do anything at all. So it could come as a surprise to you that I think universal HPV vaccination is worth considering. I am sensitive to the argument by Andrew McCarthy that the state should not be "encouraging sexual promiscuity by socializing its cost." HPV is easy to avoid. All you have to do is keep your mucus membranes away from everyone else's sexual equipment. Easy? To ask humans to abstain from sex, at any age, is a losing battle. Teens especially. You may get your kid convinced that saving her virginity is important, but another kid might change her mind. Those who are abstinent may be vocal, but they are a small minority.
( What are we looking at here? )

The media is getting more excited about possible vaccine side effects, enough that Katie Couric did a two minute spot about it (see the Mercola link below). She puts "a human face" on it buy giving 2 second personal stories about a bunch of girls who were paralyzed or otherwise had problems after the vaccine. I find the media angle just as biased as the manufacturer's.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/10/02/treeman.wart.skin.disorder/index.html

Fascinating story here about a man with an immune system defect such that HPV-2 caused him to grow immense warts all over his body. And we thought HPV just caused genital and oral warts and cancers....

It appears that young men are getting mouth, throat, tonsil and tongue cancer, perhaps because they are being exposed to the virus via oral sex. So the vaccine manufacturers are now working on bringing this to public consciousness so that they can effectively market the vaccine to males as well as females. The incidence of both the female and male versions of the cancer are however low, and infection is completely in the control of the individual.
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on GARDASIL from http://www.gardasil.com/:
( looking again at what they're selling us )