Teh Stupid
The really, really stupid.
According to the People story’s teaser, Winokur “learned the cause of her cervical cancer and now makes sure other women know how to prevent it.”
The sole cause of cervical cancer is human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted disease.
So Winokur contracted cervical cancer due to sexual promiscuity, or to put it as ambiguously as possible, said Winokur, “I learned about a year ago that HPV, a common virus, causes cervical cancer.”
The “prevention,” according to Winokur? No, not a chaste lifestyle. “There’s a vaccine, which can be given to women before they’re sexually active,” she said. “I’ll encourage my friends’ teenage daughters to get vaccinated.”
Aside from the fact Winokur has no business telling other people’s children about “precautions” to avoid pitfalls of promiscuous sex, her advice stinks. Let’s not address the real cause. Let’s try to avoid the ramifications of the cause.
Winokur or People magazine are fueling the exploitation and health demise of women by refusing to acknowledge the only full-proof way to avoid HPV or cervical cancer: abstinence.
There is only one good reason a virtuous young woman should consider getting the HPV vaccination. That is if the man she plans to marry has had sex with other women, meaning he could be infected with HPV or an array of other STDs. I don’t know why a virtuous young woman would want to marry such a man, but there you go.
IOW, punish women who have sex or marry a man who has had sex with increased likelihood of cancer.
January 31st, 2007 at
Argh! Stupid people annoy me. I mentioned this in a comment last time you blogged about HPV, but it’s important so I’ll say it again. By the time they get to college, one in five women has been forced to have sex. One in five. Virtuous women can be raped as well.
A doctor friend of mine asked me to post an HIV anecdote on my blog:
The level of arrogance and self-righteousness in Stanek’s column is staggering. “I don’t know why a virtuous young woman would want to marry such a man…” I guess if you’re not a virgin, you’re a piece of trash.
February 2nd, 2007 at
I received an email the day my column was posted from a pregnancy care center worker, stating in part:
If a man or a woman has turned away from promiscuous behavior and is committed to following God, who are we to continue to throw the past in his or her face? God’s desire is to give us life, to give us beauty for our ashes, not for His followers to be the continuous accusers.
There are certainly potential reasons why a virtuous young woman might not want to marry a guy, but how can a past that is radically different from the present be one of the them?
I instantly felt bad and realized the last sentence of the paragraph most problematic to you all was merciless. I posted her email in the comments section of my blog and agreed. I’m sorry.
Of course I believe in forgiveness, from above and toward each other. And I believe in second chances. Lord knows I’ve been given more than two.
The point of my column, as Archpundit gleaned, was that Winokur focused not on the cause of HPV but how to try to avoid just one consequence of the cause, which was wrong of her. (The HPV vaccine only guards against 4 of over 100 HPV strains, for instance.)
February 2nd, 2007 at
First, thanks for the clarification–while we are no closer to agreeing on the issue, I think this is an important point. People change, but more than that they sometimes have bad things happen to them with varying degrees of control.
The point of the HPV vaccine isn’t that it protects against all strains, it’s that it protects against the strains most likely to lead to cervical cancer. The CDC points out that the vaccine:
“The vaccine, Gardasil®, protects against four HPV types, which together cause 70% of cervical cancers and 90% of genital warts.”
That doesn’t mean it’s perfect and no one should present it as perfect, but it should decrease the number of cervical cancer cases significantly. And if people make unwise choices, there are many consequences of those choices not necessarily related to cervical cancer, but I’d rather them not have to face a far lower likelihood of that outcome even when the may make really dumb decisions.
November 17th, 2007 at
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