When ignorance and dogma team up to cause harm to children

The argument goes something like this :

“If we vaccinate you against a virus that may cause you genital cancer later in life, you will run off immediately and have sex with anyone who doesn’t climb up a tree at the count of three. Because the chance of getting cancer is the only thing that prevents people from fucking like rabbits all the time.”

Because preventing cancer magically causes promiscuity. In Catholic schoolchildren. Say the microbiology cracks from the Catholic church in Alberta, Canada, most prominently Bishop Frederick Henry of Calgary. These clowns have managed to get a ban for the Gardasil HPV vaccine instituted in the Calgary Catholic School District, which means that thousands of schoolchildren are being put at risk of aquiring a preventable neoplastic disease of the genital or throat area later in life.

In addition to a letter from Alberta Health Services providing information about Gardasil and where to get vaccinated, Catholic school students were sent home with a letter from the six bishops advising parents to protect their children from “counterproductive influences and potential abuse.”

The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, called Gardasil, prevents the four strains of the sexually transmitted virus that most commonly lead to cervical cancer.
We saw this decision by the Catholic school board as affecting all children, but really affecting the most vulnerable children

“Although school-based immunization delivery systems generally result in high numbers of students completing immunization, a school-based approach to vaccination sends a message that early sexual intercourse is allowed, as long as one uses ‘protection,’ ” it said.

There is no evidence at all that giving children a vaccine against a virus that can lead to cancer of the cervix, anus, penis, tongue, tonsils and throat later in life, has anything whatsoever to do with promiscuity. This just does not follow. Men and women can carry this virus in or on their genitals or in the oropharynx without any symptoms for years, which means that even the most devoted Catholic husband may unknowingly give his equally devoted Catholic wife cancer, just by having sex, or pick up cancer, by having sex, in particular oral sex. This is not a matter of promiscuity at all, but one of reducing the prevalence of a sexually transmittable disease. Sexually transmittable between husband and wife, mind you, no risky or promiscuous sexual behavior required.

Which is why this whole campaign by the Catholic church in Alberta is so breathtakingly harmful and stupid.

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