http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCFceBY5DbA

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) blasted Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) for approving a mandatory inoculation against the human papillomavirus (HPV).  Bachmann accused Perry of doing the bidding of Merck Pharmaceuticals, the sole manufacturer of the HPV vaccine.  Perry's defense was he only took $5000 from Merck, whereas he raised $30 million, so Bahmann's nuts if she thinks he can be bought off for a mere five grand.  Perry indicated Merck could take their five grand and hit the bricks.  You gotta come up with at least $2000 before Perry will give you the time of day!  So he can be bought off...

Winston Churchill: Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Lady: Yes.
Winston Churchill: Would you sleep with me for 10 pounds?
Lady: Mr. Churchill, what do you think I am?
Winston Churchill: We've already established that, now we're just arguing the price.

Something like that.

Furthermore, the HPV vaccine hits several hot button political issues at once:
Vaccines, children, sex, children and sex, government mandates in healthcare, government and sex and kids, parental control versus government control, and more sex and kids.

I didn't see a Youtube of it yet, but this week Michele Bachmann told an anecdote to the press in which she claimed a woman approached her in tears and said her daughter received the mandatory HPV vaccine when she was nine years old and has been mentally retarded ever since.

Even Rush Limbaugh had disabused her of the idea that the HPV inoculation could cause retardation.   Bachmann's camp claimed Michele didn't say HPV inoculation caused retardation, only that a woman claimed her daughter developed retardation subsequent to the inoculation.  Technically, she wasn't lying.  Big weasel!

The continuing moral outrage against the HPV vaccine is this:
Health professionals recommend inoculating female children in sixth grade, generally eleven or twelve years old.  HPV is a sexually transmitted disease.  The moral hysterics declare the inoculation gives little girls a green light to go sleep around.  Right-wingers with daughters don't want their daughters to think about sex until they're 21 and married, and then only to do the wifely duty; they will lie back and think of the good of the country.  I'm sure many of Catholic brothers and sisters are on board with this, but I'm not.  It's a lot of tommyrot.  

According to the CDC, there is no test for HPV in men.  HPV in men is generally asymptomatic.  Thus, it's very dangerous.  1/3 of sexually active Americans carry the virus at any given time.  The virus can cause sterility in women, and even worse, cervical cancer.

Now, married people (married now or now divorced or widowed) waited until you were married to have sex?  How many of you were quite certain your spouse was 100% chaste before your wedding night?  How many of you never had an extramarital affair? (no, no, no need to raise hands!).  In other words, if you have had sexual intercourse with six different partners (at different times or at the same time) there is a good chance you have contracted HPV.  This inoculation for girls prior to the start of their sexual maturity is very important.

I'm just saying the standards the moralists and fundamentalist set for living a pure life are entirely unreasonable.  I don't have kids, but if I did, I certainly would not want my 13-year-old daughter to have sex; however, I would want her to get the HPV inoculation.  She might very well decide to explore sex whether I like it or not.  I would not want my daughter to have to pay for youthful indiscretions with a death of cervical cancer, and I'd want her to be able to have children of her own someday if she chooses.  HPV could cause the cancer or the sterility.  

It goes to myth #1: If sex is kept dangerous by absence of education and contraception, the kids will choose abstinence.  Nuh-uh.  This has never been the case.  Never.

I don't see the unfounded rumors of mental problems subsequent to inoculation as the real objection.  The real objection is uptight parents don't want their little Katie or Ashley to get knocked up by some ex-con in the eighth grade and end up with three illegitimate brats in a van down by the river!

Okay, if you must have your church ladies terrify the girls about the dangers of premarital sex, then do so, but let them have the inoculation for chrissakes.  When the girls are sixteen, they're going to despise all your moralistic consultations anyway.  

Myth #2: Unless shamed and frighted away from it, kids will be able to go out and have sex as soon as they reach sexual maturity.  Mmmmaybe...but NOT necessarily:

They raised the same kind of panic in the eighties about condoms in schools.  Condoms were going to send teens into spontaneous sex orgies!  

"Really?" Thought I when I was fifteen.

So I got myself a Trojan and I stuck it in my wallet where it stayed for three years.  I had a permanent round indent on my buttock!
:-[

You know, Ms. Bachmann, they used to tell us masturbation caused blindness and hairy hands.  If there was any truth in that, I'd be a Ray Charles Wolfman!

If you lie to kids about made-up dangers, they won't take you seriously about real ones.  If kids realize smoking pot doesn't drive you psychotic like you said, they might figure you lied about LSD as well, and try acid, which can induce temporary psychosis in some cases.

Excellent post Max

this stuff shows the tea partiers are pretty much right up there with the fluoride paranoids. it's always the same lot thinking the gubmint is trying to inject the population with soporifics as think fluoride is a hypnotic agent and that planes are mysteriously spraying us with depopulation agents.

that said, am i right in thinking perry was mandating the HPV vaccines for 12- and 13-year-olds? if so, i'm not entirely comfortable with that. the vaccine should be readily available and free, but mandated? i dunno. i really think the left could take away a lot of the bluster on the right by not being so strident on the flagrant nanny-state stuff like helmet laws, seat-belt laws, mandatory vaccines, etc. for infectious diseases like mumps and measles it makes all the sense in the world, but the government shouldn't be in the business of forcing people to do things for their own good.

also, though, i think girls should be allowed to get the HPV vaccine at school free, and without parental notification. i also think birth control and abortion should be available to underage girls without parental consent. this is precisely because there are so many parents like max describes, who fear sex and will punish their children brutally for engaging in it.

As a mother of a 10 year old girl, I'm all for it.  I want my children to be healthy and if this is something that will prevent a disease then I want her to have it.  Do I need to explain exactly what the vaccination is for?  No.  At that age they are still minors and the parents decide.

My parents were of the mind-set that you must be a virgin when you get married...blah, blah, blah....BUT they never had "The Talk" with me.  I won't tell you how young I was when I had sex for the first time but I wish I had parents I could talk to. 

I know my kids are going to do stuff and I want them to be prepared.  I would much rather educate them, keep them healthy and if need be get them the birth control they need.

This vaccine is now automatically given in the UK.  Elizabeth will be vaccinated sometime in the next year or so.

I love how these teabaggers want government so small that it fits into a woman's virgina-or in this case, girls. I once had a discussion with an ultra-conservative I know about health care. She told me that she might need a procedure but was weary about it because of the cost. I said that if she needed the procedure she shouldn't HAVE to pay for it-which is why we need universal health care. She said that she didn't want some idiot in Washington in her medical life. I told her that I agree with that statement-just send the bill to Washington. Then we had a similar discussion about abortion. And I used the same argument. How come it is ok for an idiot in Washington to say that it is ok or not for a woman to have an abortion but yet, it is ok for someone without insurance not have any procedure they need to stay alive-and people cheer?

As for this vaccine, I don't really know too much about it. I would definitely do research on it if I or any of my kids needed it. I don't have a problem with parents thinking it is a good idea for their kids and I don't have a problem with parents who opt out of it for whatever reason-religious, medical, whatever. I DO have a problem with some bozo in Austin who makes it mandatory so his buddies at Merck can profit-in return for a lot of campaign $$$$$$$$ And it was A LOT for than $5000.  

Contributions from Merck PAC to Texans for Rick Perry, 2000-2011
Donor Donation Location Contribution Date
Merck PAC $1,000 Washington, DC 11/2/00
Merck PAC $5,000 Washington, DC 9/18/02
Merck PAC $10,000 Washington, DC 10/18/04
Merck PAC $1,000 Washington, DC 12/30/05
Merck PAC $5,000 Washington, DC 10/16/06
Merck PAC $2,500 Washington, DC 10/14/08
Merck PAC $5,000 Washington, DC 10/29/10

http://www.texastribune.org/texas-newspaper/texas-news/records-fact-checking-perrys-merck-contributions/


I never thought that I would say this but I agree with Michele Bachmann in a sense.  :o :o :o :o  Get out those ice skates because Hell is freezing over.  ;D ;D ;D ;D



Cat

Merck also donated $380,000 to the Republican Governor's Association.  The Republican Governor's Association, in turn, had donated $4 million to Perry's campaigns since 2006.  One hand washes the other.  As Ben Smith points out in his HuffPo column, Perry was mostly absent in the discussion and implementation of the Gardasil mandate.  All that mattered to Perry was keeping the Merck money coming.  If that means the government gets to inoculate your daughter without your consent, so what?  Small government when it benefits us, and big government when it benefits us.

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/13/jerk.gif

Bachmann's pseudoscientific fearmongering is yet another example of Crank Magnetism.  Doesn't matter whether you're a loopy new-age hippie fruitbat, or a hard-nosed defender of Flat Earth Creationism against the hordes of Godless Russian Communism.

For further reference, orac said it better than I could, and addressed every salient point that could possibly come up in any debate over this issue.

Bachmann's pseudoscientific fearmongering is yet another example of Crank Magnetism.  Doesn't matter whether you're a loopy new-age hippie fruitbat, or a hard-nosed defender of Flat Earth Creationism against the hordes of Godless Russian Communism.

For further reference, orac said it better than I could, and addressed every salient point that could possibly come up in any debate over this issue.


Bachmann did not call it an HPV vaccine, she called it a "government injection."  A big red commie syringe marked Big Government penetrates your daughters vital organs with an 18-inch needle and from that day forward she is enslaved to the elitist liberal agenda!


General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream!

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Lord, Jack.

Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?

Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.

Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?

Ripper: Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.

Mandrake: Hmmm...

Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.

Mandrake: Hmmm....

Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.

Mandrake: No.

Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.