News Flash: Jesus Still Wants you to Die of Cancer!

Y'know, there is just so much outrageous shit out there to blog about, and such a fucking limited amount of time in which about it to blog, that I literally don't know where to start. So, in the spirit of self-promotion, I'll go with the theme that will allow me to make reference to an earlier post.

Said post, of course, being "News Flash! Jesus Wants you to Die of Cancer." In which I went on and on about the HPV vaccine, and how some Aussie fundies wanted to make sure that adolescent and pre-adolescent girls (the very population to whom it makes most sense to give the vaccine) wouldn't have access to it. Allow me to quote myself:

Here's the scoop: cervical cancer kills something like 5000 women a year in the US, with (natch) a disproportionately higher rate in the post-colonial world. I imagine the incidence and mortality figures in Australia are something like ours.

So now, those clever scientists in their white lab coats have come up with a vaccine that appears to be 100% effective in preventing infection by the viruses that appear to cause cervical cancer. You would think this would be a good thing, yes?

Well, no, apparently not if you're talking about women. Women who might have sex. Women who [horrors] might even have pre-marital sex. These epidemiological geniuses down under have decided that rotting to death of cancer is a fit punishment for better than suffering the indignities of pre-marital sex.

Notice how I used the clever, "fundamentally indicative of irony," tired blogging cliché strikeout font there to indicate that that's what they were thinking even if they couldn't bring themselves to say it? Because the closest I could find to anyone coming out and saying "You don't want cancer? Keep your legs together, slut!" was "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."

Well, it seems now that the FDA has caved and allowed overwhelming scientific evidence and the virtually unanimous opinion of the public-health community to trump religious fanaticism (what is this country coming to, I ask you?), it seems that now it's time for the gloves to come off.

See, now, the closest I can find to someone actually saying "You don't want cancer? Keep your legs together, slut!"is

"If you don't want to suffer these diseases, you need to abstain."

Yes, he really said that.

And no, that's no wacked out country preacher on a day pass from Leviticus-land, either. That's one Dr. Hal Wallis (That's "Doctor," as in "take care of people and try to prevent shit like them dying of an entirely preventable cancer, you sanctimonious fuck!") of the Physicians Consortium.

But Wait! boys and girls. For once, Uncle Bobby has good news. See, I have this annoying habit of actually running down the original sources for a lot of the damning quotes uttered by our wisdom-impaired cousins on the Far Right, and sometimes, every once in a while, (ok, I admit it. Twice.) I find out that the criticism is unjustified.

Or at least it was, but now it isn't. See, I actually bothered to Google the Physicians Consortium, and it seems that for some reasons, they've taken their ass-hats off and decided to re-join the reality-based community. I don't know if they've genuinely seen the light, if they got badgered nearly to death by the feminist blogosphere (yeah, right) or if they just realized they had some fundamentalist crackpots running the show who were making them look like idiots , but they have, as one says, changed their tune:

We welcome the development of this vaccine against cervical cancer as a great breakthrough that has the potential of saving the lives of millions of women worldwide...

As youth are unpredictable in their risk-taking behaviors, immunization with the HPV vaccine may be wise...

We recognize that this vaccine may obtain a universal recommendation and has the potential of becoming a required vaccine for entry to public school.*

...and they mention that they've also clued in that there are more ways than slutty fornication for a woman to get infected with HPV in the first place ("Dude! Didja know that some women get raped and contract STDs that way? And it's like, not their fault? " "No fuckin' way, Dudemeister! Next you'll be telling me that monogamous women can contract HPV from their husbands, who didn't know they carried it!")

Sigh. We can all relax now, I guess. At this rate, Plan B will be OTC this time next Tuesday.

Right?



*don't get me started on the issue of required vaccines. I tend to piss off everyone I know when I do that.