All posts tagged "Cervical Cancer"

Aricca Wallace knew she was nearly out of time.

One of France's top medical experts appealed for calm Monday as a scare over a widely administered vaccine that prevents cervical cancer gathered momentum.

Via Jill comes this amazing evidence of how out-of-touch and extremist sex panicking conservatives have gotten.  As I think all grown-ups are willing to admit, this whole shitstorm Michele Bachmann has stirred about the HPV vaccine is just pure sex panic (with a side dose of anti-vaxxer nuttery, but really, this is bigger than that), and Ayelet Waldman was alarmed by all the people who've convinced themselves that all ladies who Do It are Snooki and Paris Hilton (and therefore "good" girls have no need for vaccination against a common STD).  In an effort to breathe a little reality into the debate and remind the public that there's a whole sea of women between the categories of "virgin" and "whore", she put up this tweet:

Unless you're living under a rock, you've probably heard about how a panel was convened to look at the breast cancer screening recommendations, and taking new evidence into account, they suggested the screening should start for most women at 50 instead of 40, and that self-exams were ineffective. I knew this would be taken by some feminists as an outrage---believe me, there are some feminists who are prepared to believe the worst at all points in time---but I was surprised how much of the feminist blogosphere went into pure rage mode immediately. Why was I surprised? Because feminism has a long tradition of critiquing the over-medicalization of female bodies, producing excellent must-read texts like Our Bodies, Ourselves and For Her Own Good. Feminist critiques of over-medicalization of female bodies have produced much good: the introduction of midwifery, the willingness of therapists to take women's concerns seriously instead of just drugging them, the legalization of emergency contraception, the promotion of breast-feeding, the end of the use of twilight sleep for childbirth, the invention of safe abortion techniques that can be performed even without electricity. It's also produced some bad, from overreaction: paranoia about the birth control pill and the HPV vaccine and bullying women who aren't willing or able to tough out completely drug-free childbirth come to mind. But the fact that we even have to control for overdoing it shows how firmly committed feminists generally are to pushing back against over-medicalization. So why was there so much anger about recommendations that fit so neatly into feminist critiques of medicine?

It's painful for me to write this, because I don't like criticizing people I generally admire, but if I'm going to get on the right for sex-phobia and anti-science thinking, I have to do it for the left, too. I hinted at my frustrations in my article about the reproductive health panel at WAM, but truth told, I was banging my head against my desk in frustration when a handful of anti-vaccination types absolutely destroyed any science-based, productive conversation by making the entire discussion about how Merck only invented Gardasil because they enjoy profiting off killing people. It's one of the most frustrating illogical habits of the left, to assume that because someone makes money at something, that action is almost surely immoral and probably actively evil. You definitely get that every time someone tries to make a scandal out of the fact that liberal and feminist bloggers have advertisements, and you get it in the anti-vaccination hysteria.

I hope this doesn't come across too harshly, because I usually like Catherine Price's blogging, but this blog post is irresponsible. She buries the most important detail, perhaps for dramatic effect or perhaps because she didn't realize how important it was. The teaser on the front page of Salon says, "Do we need to guard against Gardasil? The controversial cervical cancer vaccine may carry serious health risks". That when I began to get that sinking feeling, because I've been carefully following how the right wing noise machine is trying to discourage people from getting their daughters vaccinated---because sex should have "consequences" for women, even if the consequence is death---and I was afraid that Catherine got snagged by right wing propaganda. In fact, I have a segment for next Monday's podcast (this week's: is sex without condoms always a bad thing?) chronicling the success of getting the message out there to parents to refrain from protecting their daughters from HPV.