Require HPV for School
Michigan legislation would require girls to get the HPV vaccine.
I think this is an excellent idea, and I don't want to hear whining about “Legislating vaccinations is not a good idea.” Come on. I had to get required vaccinations in order to enroll at a private Catholic college.
“Don’t tell me how to raise my kid!” Know what, parents? You don’t own your kids! You do not have the right to tell them what religion to belong to, what political party to belong to, or what diseases you think they should be protected from. They have an inherent right to be protected from all diseases.
People are always pointing at scientists and screaming, “Why don’t you find a cure for cancer?” Well, now that scientists finally have, loopy-loo fundies deny the treatment for their daughters! Screw them. Not only should this vaccination be required for all young girls, any parent who seriously thinks that this “encourages immorality” should have his or her children taken away. They aren't fit to be parents.
How about that?
UPDATED: Because of my being metioned at UDreamofJanie, I actually got a mention at Aetiology. Whoo-hoo! The anti-flapdoodle superheroine Dr. Tara! Thanks, JanieBelle and Corporal Kate. (And boy, did it tick some people off.)
I think this is an excellent idea, and I don't want to hear whining about “Legislating vaccinations is not a good idea.” Come on. I had to get required vaccinations in order to enroll at a private Catholic college.
“Don’t tell me how to raise my kid!” Know what, parents? You don’t own your kids! You do not have the right to tell them what religion to belong to, what political party to belong to, or what diseases you think they should be protected from. They have an inherent right to be protected from all diseases.
People are always pointing at scientists and screaming, “Why don’t you find a cure for cancer?” Well, now that scientists finally have, loopy-loo fundies deny the treatment for their daughters! Screw them. Not only should this vaccination be required for all young girls, any parent who seriously thinks that this “encourages immorality” should have his or her children taken away. They aren't fit to be parents.
How about that?
UPDATED: Because of my being metioned at UDreamofJanie, I actually got a mention at Aetiology. Whoo-hoo! The anti-flapdoodle superheroine Dr. Tara! Thanks, JanieBelle and Corporal Kate. (And boy, did it tick some people off.)
posted by Kristine | Wednesday, September 13, 2006
21 Comments:
I say take 'em away!
We've actually already discussed this with our 13 year old daughter and her pediatrician. While she's not active now, we're not so naive as to think that she won't be in the next several years (although, when she is, I rather get the impression that whoever she chooses to share that experience with will be sensible and responsible because I think that she is - but, of course, I'm biased). At any rate, I think she'll be getting the vaccination at her next Dr's visit. She'll be 14 then and she seems to understand why we're interseted in having her do it.
That Mrs. Pi is definitely doing something right having opened this line of communication, I must say.
Good for you and Mrs. Pi.
I do not understand using something like HPV to “scare children moral.” Pretty shaky morality. One thing that my mother said to me is, “Women, on average, live into their seventies. You have the rest of your life to have sex. You do not have the rest of your life to be a kid.” And how true that is!
My parents made it clear that they had dreams of at least one child going to college, and I wanted that for myself. So I was a nerdy bookworm hell-bent on college, and I didn’t like boys my age anyway (had a crush on Carl Sagan something fierce, though), and yes, not very popular back then, but hell with it, my beauty-queen classmates all middle-aged farts now and I turned out just fine. (I just got carded again last night.)
I would say that parents teaching kids to be passionate about studies or something else constructive is the best protection against kids doing the nasty too early—and I do agree that they’re getting into it way too early. That’s one concern I do share with a lot of conservative parents. Definitely.
I agree. Being active and interested in something - anything - is the best remedy for filling that time with something that could destroy a life in so many different ways. Em's a gymnast and is at the gym four times a week, which sometimes seems like a lot - and is very expensive - but when compared to the alternatives, it's way worth it to me. Intersting that Christians believe tht they have some monopoly on morality when we two non-believers - as do many of the others that I've begun to encounter here in the blogosphere - seem to think it matters so much.
And congrats on being carded! Do you think they'd card you if you showed up with your Medusa hair?
I did!
Drank a beer, ate a cheeseburger, and studied. My profile photo shows my normal hair, before my brain on collection cataloging.
This is my hair, with my brain on collection cataloging. Any questions? (Tired of the MF snakes...)
Yes. Can I see your I.D., please?
Yeah, sure thing, Nymph. Are you even old enough to serve me alcohol?
What, are they hiring toddlers as waitrons, these days?
I do not understand using something like HPV to “scare children moral.” Pretty shaky morality.
Naw, the "morality" thing is just an excuse. They're really trying to scare children into being receptive to the general fascistic subjugation that's going to be targeted at them for the rest of their lives.
The HPV=permission-to-whore thing goes way beyond run-of-the-mill evangelical slut-shaming. Nobody threatens children with early death just for the sake of the appearance of morality.
BTW, piguy, I love the avatar image.
You're scaring me, Dan. I think I said something similar regarding creationism, but we're talking about parents doing that to their own children. But, come to think of it, parents foist creationism on their own children. So, you're right.
Gack. The poor kids.
On Topic,
This thread at AtBC
Off Topic,
Did you see you got a mention at Aetiology???? You rock big, girlfriend!
Also off topic, Javison's pic at his request.
I like beer (and cheeseburgers!) and must agree that Dennett is a little easier to deal with that way. Just finished reading Dangerous Idea in the last month of the summer and plan to get Breaking the Spell soon. I might need to wait until after the semester as homework has been pretty tough. Judging from your Medusa pic, yours has, too (you sure clean up nice, though!). Congrats on being carded.
dan: Thanks. I've thought that your pic is pretty swell as well. And tying to jani's link, it scares me, too, that parents indoctrinate their kids with fear. I've never thought about it as abuse but it sure isn't compassionate. It's as though they don't believe that their kids would respect them enough to be good people without the threat of eternal punishment. UFB
Well, Amused Muse, I must say as a parent, I think you are being a bit rash. First of all, your basic attitude sounds chillingly like the well-meaning whites who decided it would be a good idea to take children out of Native American families and educate them in boarding schools, because they believed the parents were just ignorant savages who didn't understand the benefits of their children assimilating into the white culture. The Native American boarding school experience teaches us that systematically taking children away from their parents is next to genocidal. Second, as a home schooler I have had occasion to observe some "fundy" families met through home schooling networks. Generally speaking, they are good families and the kids are fine. They have weird ideas about evolution and many other things, but in general they deeply love their kids and attend to their needs. Those "fundy" parents are not the main threat to their kids -- the commercial, objectifying, dehumanizing, militaristic society at large is the threat, and "fundy" families often do a good job of protecting their kids from all that for awhile. And the kids don't necessarily adopt their parents' world view as adults -- if they have been protected a bit in a reasonably healthy household, I think most of them are healthy enough to make their own choices as adults. The kids that you should be worried about are not usually the kids of "fundy" families, but instead kids who grow up in households where there is a lot of drugs, alcohol, and violence, without a single healthy adult capable of loving them and protecting them. Unfortunately, there are way too many kids in that situation; some may be in "fundy" families I guess, but most are not. Finally, I think you are way too enamored of the medical establishment. In fact, we have been lied to so many times by medical experts, including about the benefits of vaccinations (example: the chickenpox vaccine), that a healthy skepticism about the latest wonder vaccine would be wise. Medicine is largely a for-profit enterprise in this country, after all. On the other hand, I must say this vaccine sounds worthwhile, and I intend to read about it and see if it would be a good idea for my 13-year-old daughter. So thanks for educating me about it a bit -- I remember hearing about it somewhere but had lost track. Oh, and one last thing, as a parent of teenagers, I must say it's pretty clear that giving them lots of information about sex and sexual choices is the wise and responsible thing for parents to do -- but actively getting them the means to have sex safely, while at the same time telling them not to have sex, is not as easy a choice. It does have the feel of a double message; or a message that you don't trust them. I think a parent can finesse that with good communication, but it's not so easy to have great communication with your teen, especially about sex. So that kind of thing can indeed be a bit of a dilemma. One good thing about requiring the vaccination for school, is that it gets the parents off the hook in a way -- you could say you trust them not to break your rules and have sex at a young age, but they have to get the vaccine anyway, because it's required. Anyway, enough said -- blog on, Amused Muse!
Crap, that link to Aetiology wound up being a link to the AtBC thread.
Sorry. Here's the link...
This is Going To Tick Some People Offthread.
What can I say, I was a little excited.
:)
Thanks, JanieBelle. I owe my mention at Dr. Tara's to you! I'm very excited to be mentioned by such an anti-flapdoodle superheroine!
Thank you too, Phil, for your comments. However, we are not talking about Native Americans. Who was the elder who said, "Take from the white man that which is valuable and leave that which is not?"
I don't doubt that fundies love their kids, but look at Randall Terry--talked a woman out of an abortion and adopted the child that resulted, only to kick her out of the house after this girl got pregnant! Believe me, I grew up around alcohol and drugs--most of the kids who were into that were white, well-off children of deeply religious parents.
As for me being "way too enamored of the medical establishment," you and I are going to have to disagree on that. My surgeon was an A-One asshole, and yet he saved my eyesight. (For that matter, my own mother diagnosed what was wrong in the first place.) In Europe, the medical establishment is not a for-profit enterprise, and they are not pushing prayer/"alternatives" at their citizens, but providing top-notch medical care. I believe in that. I believe in vaccines. A lot of the "mercury" scare is just that. (Are there droves of children dying of "mercury" from vaccines in Europe?) My father died under top-notch care that he received from his union, not the V.A. (he was a veteran).
I say, let's provide peer-reviewed, tested medical care to all Americans first, and then people can supplement with whatever their beliefs offer. I wouldn't take children away from those who have reasonable objectsions, but this "slut" argument is out of bounds. It's abusive. And it's only ever applied to women.
But anyway, thank you for visiting.
And I just want to brag off-topic here a moment, and say that I'm still not banned at Uncommon Descent (I'm trying not to be banned, unlike other people), even though I used the name "Dembski" and the phrase "cha-cha-cha" in the same sentence!
You're braver than I am, then. I can't even bring myself to read UD, banned or not.
Phil,
Well said.
Kristine,
Lumping all "fundies" together and casting a blanket judgment that they don't love their kids is a gross sweeping generalization. It appears that you are basing this on your limited and biased experience with kids of "fundy" parents.
Being a fundy myself, I am biased of course. Having taught for a couple years in a Christian school, I observed many kids who had parents who really loved them (and were not hesitant to discipline them). I also observed some parents who were not so good/wise. Generally, the worst parents were not the parents who were too strict; it was the parents who did not pay enough attention to their kids and who, for whatever reason, did not discipine their kids consistently and fairly.
Neglect is one of the worst things that way too many parents do. (Well, you don't really do neglect, do you?).
Having said all that, refusing a vaccination because the vaccination encourages immorality does seem kind of wack. But, only in the worst case scenarios should we ever even think about taking a child away from his parents. And since the medical community isn't perfect, I think we need to give parents the right to use discernment when it comes to what vaccinations their kids need and what they don't need.
And I am mighty uncomfortable with the notion of zealous, leftist, socialist secularists judging whether or not a parent is "good enough" to continue parenting. Sounds like secular tyranny to me.
Not to say that you are leftist or socialist. I don't know that much about you. You definately seem like a secularist. And that's bad enough. God is real. Secularism makes it really tough for you to hear His voice.
As for creationism, how are you so sure that there is no God and/or that He didn't create the world?
I had a lively debate with an agnostic about this. Check it out: meditationsofdan.blogspot.com. I promise; it's not just me saying, "The Bible says so" (even though that really is good enough). I get pretty scientific in my case for intelligent design.
Have a wonderful weekend. Even if you disagree with me, I propose a friendly exchange of ideas. Peace.
Concerned engineer, thanks for stopping by.
I would never have pegged you for a fundie!
;-) But having said that, I have known a lot of fundies. It's true that there is a wide diversity; I don't think a lot of them that I know would deny this vaccination for the "immorality" reason. I totally think that that reason is whack.
You definately seem like a secularist. And that's bad enough. Yep. I'm an atheist--and what can I say, I was the best in my Sunday school classes, studied the Bible for almost two decades, and haven't believed in God since I was nine. (It's like me not being able to do a backbend; people tell me, "Well, if you try hard enough..." Not gonna happen, sweetie.) But whatever, I'll check out your site. I'm a constant reader of UD.
Yes, absolutely, I'm for peaceful debates. In college, I was always hanging out more with the Republican/ROTC crowd than the lefties, anyway. Have a great weekend yourself.
Kristine, I urge you to reconsider this rather superficial and knee-jerk opinion.
The logic behind statements like this one:
“Don’t tell me how to raise my kid!” Know what, parents? You don’t own your kids!
is too close to the opinions expressed by the right-to-lifers and other sanctimonious crap spewers to be taken seriously in the context of an intelligent argument.
Plenty of concerned, informed parents balk at the idea of administering a new vaccine to our children - not just those with a skewed sense of morality.
You don't own your kids, zealous. I don't know how to put it more clearly. Objecting to this vaccine on the basis that it "sends a message to young girls premarital sex is okay" is what I am railing against. It is these parents who are whack.
What are the other objections, then? I'm not aware of any (unless it's mercury again--dang, that has been refuted over and over). Should my mother, on the basis that only she and my father could determine what I needed, have not brought me to a surgeon? I would be blind in one eye. Are you aware that my aunt is a Jehovah's Witness? She doesn't believe in blood transfusions, and I fiercely disagree with her. And that make me comparable to a right-winger? I think two people here on opposite ends of the political spectrum agreed, and one of them wasn't me.
Should I not have gotten my innoculations to go to the College of St. Catherine? I'm becoming confused about what people are opposed to.
By the way, polio has made a resurgence in Minnesota because some people (mostly Amish) oppose the vaccine. This is good, why?
I haven't read all of the other comments, was just doing a quick google on this cuz I am from Michigan and this affects us. On the radio yesterday they were discussing this issue. A few callers stated their OB's told them if it were their OWN children, that since the vaccine is so NEW, just approved in June, that they'd opt OUT of getting it. Additionally, no long term study has been done on the vaccine, to see if there are any effects on reproduction. Therefore, if even OB'S are leary of giving something with no track record and no length of time to on the market, I think I would opt out also.
no long term study has been done on the vaccine, to see if there are any effects on reproduction.
Okay. That's a reasonable objection. I was not aware that no long-term effects have been studied.
As I've said, I'm directing my ire at those who object to this vaccine "on the basis that it 'sends a message to young girls premarital sex is okay.'"
If there are real medical concerns, then I certainly agree with holding off for now. That's holding off, not just forbidding the treatment forever'n'ever, amen, due to some us-against-them mentality against the "medical establishment."
However, I think it's clear that those who raise this stupid "objection" about morality have rocks in their skulls. Either that, or it's an excuse, as Dan points out.
Day Girls schools provides students with many important rules and important tips like how to behave with others, what should be the dressing style, how to interact with the third person, way of gestures, how to promote something. These things are very necessary for life.
http://www.teensprivateschools.com/
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