(no subject)

[somedaybitch]

officers indicted in Atlanta search warrant shooting.

good.

Glenn says:

"I'm okay on giving cops -- and anyone else caught in a life-or-death situation through no fault of their own -- the benefit of the doubt. But this life-or-death situation was the cops' fault, for lying in order to get the warrant. Plus, I think that no-knock tactics should be reserved for cases where there's a serious threat to life or limb."

and i agree completely.

also, there's the debate over making the HPV vaccine mandatory.

while i find the "you can prevent it by behavior" argument ludicrous at best, malicious and petty at worst, i'm not sure i think the vaccine should be mandatory either. and yet....

thoughts?

finally, i am both heartened and dismayed by this.

Comments

[boofadil.livejournal.com]

On the HPV vaccine, I have to say that while I'm not a fan of mandatory vaccines, I'm not against it being mandatory. And that's pretty much the extent of my thoughts on that.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

i think that may be me as well. i'm more concerned that there is no vaccine for males.

[gingerwood.livejournal.com]

i'm more concerned that there is no vaccine for males

This doesn't make sense to me either.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

given that they're the carriers, wouldn't that just make sense?

[thevaliumsofalj.livejournal.com]

they can give the vaccines to males and in theory it would work the same, but due to the fact that the first testing they did on the vaccine was on women in a certain age range, those are the first groups approved to get it. We give it to guys that have partners with HPV, because even if they have one type of HPV it could, theorhetically, protect them against other strains. the only thing is insurance won't cover it, because unless it's FDA approved for that purpose, they don't have to and won't cover it.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

have they tested it, do you know?

[thevaliumsofalj.livejournal.com]

on males? They're in the process of doing a 3-yr run of research on males ages 16 and 23 and did experiements on boys aged 9-15 to determine the safety and efficacy in stimulating antibodies.

[sevathediva.livejournal.com]

I would like more information on potential side effects/adverse reactions.

Otherwise, I would absolutely give it to my 8 y/o. She's not even a kid, just a tall, good-hearted, wise-for-her-age baby. I trust her...I have no words for how much I trust her in regards to sexual/inappropriate situations. She's well educated.

However, I can't trust any of the 6 registed sex offenders living within a 10 mile radius of our house. And, those are only the ones that got caught. I don't trust the certainty that some (deleted) won't get his hands on her, be inappropriate with her, for all that I am vigilant and fiercely protective. There are all kinds of bad men in the world, and my daughter is (naturally) unusually pretty, and there are times when her safety is out of my control. At school, for instance.

This is a vaccine for a woman's cancer! Think of the lives saved, as well as the health care related costs the government will save in the long haul.

I can't help but feel, that if this were a man's cancer, related to, say, his penis or testes, there would be no debate.

seva

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

i think the debate is coming from good intentions, in that a) should the government mandate at all? and b) maybe there are more, i dunno, widespread, or more problematic diseases that should get vaccines. and i don't necessarily disagree with either point, but i would counter that those other diseases don't have vaccines and this one does.

I would like more information on potential side effects/adverse reactions.

me too, absolutely. while i want to see cervical cancer - and all cancer - eradicated, i don't want them to jump the gun. we've gone all this time without a vaccine, so really, what's the hurry? do it right.

There are all kinds of bad men in the world, and my daughter is (naturally) unusually pretty, and there are times when her safety is out of my control.

there are also all kinds of really good men in the world that don't know that they're carriers. this isn't the next ohmigodhivyouareaslut disease. it's asymptomatic. a dear friend has it and both she, and her husband, are monogamous and have been for years. he got it from one of the other three women he was with before her - that's 3 women over the course of his entire adult life mind you - and they could have gotten from who knows where and none of them knew it.

that's the difference.

I can't help but feel, that if this were a man's cancer, related to, say, his penis or testes, there would be no debate.


while the gender bias in medicine is certainly out there, i don't personally see that having anything to do with this. i could be wrong of course, but i just haven't seen any evidence of it.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

Well, any time abstinence gets brought up in a medical context (as opponents to the vaccine, not just to its mandatoryness, have done), there's the potential for gender bias to be a part of it. Abstinence's bad name comes from all of the incredibly creepy "Boys are gigantic hairy pimpled horndogs never to be trusted. Girls are innocent flower buds who will be ruined the moment somebody winks at them" doctrines floating around. Like, the lunatic fringe has injected an ugliness into a lot of abstinence discussions; so when people bring up abstinence in a medical context, the ugliness comes along for the ride.

I don't tend to agree with abstinence in the first place, since I take a utilitarian view of public health; but I'd find the concept a lot less icky if abstinence propagators would stop talking about my innocent flower, you know? (I'm sure many abstinence people are not creepy, but they have not yet managed to stuff socks into the mouths of those who are.)

[thevaliumsofalj.livejournal.com]

I'm pro making the vaccine mandatory, I see it the same as the mandatory vaccination of children against Hep B, which is helping reduce the levels of Hep B (blood borne virus that is transmitted like HIV, but lives outside of the body longer) amongst the population.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

have they done enough research for you? given, you know, that there are a BAZILLION doctors in your family and prolly have more access to this.

[thevaliumsofalj.livejournal.com]

For me? yeah, enough that I'm planning on getting vaccinated myself even though I don't fall into the age ranges that the original research was done in and would have to pay cash for it.

But, I can pull the links to the research for you and you can take a look at it yourself.

[gingerwood.livejournal.com]

even though I don't fall into the age ranges that the original research was done in and would have to pay cash for it.

Insurance logic just boggles my mind. It was the same when I wanted to get my teeth re-sealed a few years ago, I needed to pay for it out-of-pocket because I was over 18. Just because it's optimal to do something in a given age-range, doesn't mean that it's not affective at other ages.

Any idea when the trials will be complete? Assuming they come out as expected, I defintely would want to get my boys vaccinated.

[thevaliumsofalj.livejournal.com]

If I read the research right, it'll be another 2 years at least.

[itsazoo.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the mandatory part. I know one guy who had venereal warts. Just the name is disgusting enough to make any self-respecting young woman run to her doc for the vaccine on that basis alone (JMO) Don't say HPV, say venereal warts, which sounds grosser. More descriptive.

As to Texans feeling that getting the vaccine will make their children more inclined to have sex...WTF? It's not birth control, you moron. You can still get pregnant, get syphilis, get HIV. I'd bet dollars to donuts, those people's children know a lot more about sex than the parents realize.
"But it's not real sex, it's just oral sex".

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

Having seen photos of genital warts -- they're only marginally less disgusting than syphilis chancres! So yes, if your partner knows s/he's got it, and can be honest about it, yes.

But a lot of the time, there aren't obvious symptoms like warts to give one a heads-up: [link].

[itsazoo.livejournal.com]

I meant when the doctors and media talk about the vaccine preventing HPV, they shouldn't say HPV, which is just like saying CIA or HIV or something equally blank, they should say venereal warts, or genital warts (which is how I know them). Show pictures. Gross, disgusting pictures, that will horrify young women into getting the vaccine. A picture is worth a thousand acronyms or whatever abreviations are called. And certainly, if you have it, you must say so, no matter how embarrassing, but I can see people not telling, for obvious reasons. When you're in lust and just about to do the deed, this is not the time to say "Wait! I have genital warts! Do you want to continue?" LOL

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

> "Wait! I have genital warts! Do you want to continue?"

Agreed -- not the sexiest pickup line ever.

I think the reason people are not saying "genital warts" is that it's not technically correct to say so: from my quick check of Wikipedia, it looks like there are lots of strains of HPV, while only a few of them cause warts. Still and all -- who ever thought that the media would be unwarrantedly specific!

And, yes, photographs the most common STDs, in close-up, are pretty much the perfect justification never to have sex again! I used to edit sexuality textbooks, and I ended up putting Post-its over those photos in the books, because inevitably a coworker would stroll by, borrow a book, and manage to flip directly to the disturbing photos. There is only so much "Oh, YUCK!!" I can stand in the workplace!

[itsazoo.livejournal.com]

* Warning*

I did go look at pictures after I replied to you and, at the end of an article about the little devils, I was suddenly presented with a pic of some man's member with large pointy growths on the end. I tell you what... I think, at the age of 60, I have been scarred for the rest of my now- shortened life. I'm going to have to go look at recent pictures of that Harry Potter actor, or Colin Farrell, or Daniel Craig in order to get that image out of my mind.

"Let's talk about something fun! How about magic?"

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

:::offers you bleach:::

[arthurfrdent.livejournal.com]

this is what I wrote in part in the thread... if you spot something signed D, and the style of argument sounds familiar... :D you just may know the guy...

the biggest problem is how this has been allowed to be framed... This is a vaccination for the virus responsible for most cervical cancer. End of story. How you get the virus is NOT material. That is where the preventable by abstention argument is a bit red herring... because you have to retroactively have had the shot to have the protection, so the only other way to prevent is to have tests done for you and any partner to see if you have it...

and then what? If you find that a partner has it due to the test, then what do you do? Break up with them? My understanding is that the vaccine is far less effective [if at all] on an established case, but I could be wrong. And THAT presumes that everyone is willing to put off 'hooking up' till they go out and get STD tests... and then unless you are already a committed couple and get the test results together, it's pretty easy to lie. Especially if you know that having HPV might mean your partner heads for the door. There are a lot of scenerios there...
Ultimately it comes down to paying for a youthful indescretion by dying of cancer later for a certain amount of people. Meanwhile that person has passed the virus on to all her partners, and their partners and so on...

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

One of the things that gives me pause about making the vaccine mandatory, I mean aside from the paranoid waitaminnit I will put what needles I like in my body at the time of my choosing thankyew aspect(*), is that the vaccine belongs to Merck and Merck only. It's pretty tacky to make a profit on public health, you know? And I doubt they're giving the doses away.

* On the one hand, needles. Not of my choosing. Stuck into my tender and beloved hide. On the other hand, I had to prove I'd gotten an MMR booster in order to register for classes at a public university, so the reasoning and the precedent is there. (Because whoa nelly, rubella -- whooping cough -- on a college campus is no picnic.)