I felt a responsibility to address the misguided information given by Caitlin O'Conner on human papillomavirus and Gardasil.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, HPV is so common that it has been described as a virtual "marker" for having had sex. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 20 million people are currently infected with HPV and at least 50 percent of sexually active individuals will acquire the virus at some point in their lives.
Yes, Gardisil protects against sexually transmitted strains. However, HPV spreads through genital-to-genital contact, which can occur even without "having sex."
O'Conner thinks it's easy to prevent HPV infection, presumably through abstinence from the waist down. Even if a girl is completely abstinent until marriage, she has no way to guarantee that her future husband had no genital-to-genital contact with females before her. She also has no guarantee that she won't be date-raped or molested at some point in her life. It is naive to suggest that it is "a new level of wrong to vaccinate 11-year-olds." They are vaccinated because they will most likely have sex someday, and the key is to prevent infection before children become sexually active.
If the chicken pox vaccine is now required, I think Gardasil should be too. Ideally, though, women would educate themselves about sexually transmitted infections and be more realistic about their own sexual health before denouncing a lifesaving vaccine.
