Thanks for the calm and sensible response Dr Guy, I do appreciate it and the view you present here.

I realize I may be taking the alarmist side of the argument when I push for using vaccines to help stop the spread of these diseases, and while I would like to think it could and should be a choice for people and not something they would have to jump through hoops to opt out of, I'm well aware of the effect of these diseases and other diseases that might have been stopped in the past and weren't.

I lost a cousin to AIDS.  I lost former co-workers to AIDS.  People that might be here still if there had been a vaccine available and if the people they had interacted with over time had not been carrying the disease, or if they themselves were protected by more than thin layer of latex (or if the blood system had been more thoroughly screened, etc.)

In the future I might lose my son to AIDS (depending on choices he makes in the future). I might lose my daughter to AIDS depending on choices her partners make, and in the case of HPV, I could potentially see her taken by cancer that could very well be very preventable.

Cancer too has affected too many people around me and I have to be incredibly vigilant about watching for skin cancer since I've already had a small battle with same.

Ovarian cancer has impacted people I know and struck down lives well too soon.

So I look at these issues and when I see people that use choice to say they won't help stop the spread of these things, I get more than a bit upset about their choice potentially harming others.

I could see a future (given this nation's litigious history) where sexual partners are sued into oblivion because they didn't get these vaccines (as they become available) and basically recklessly endangered their partners.  God help us if it comes down to that, but on the other hand having these preventative measures available and failing to use them would seem to fairly reckless no matter who is making the decision.

I respect that a lot MM, and would normally be doing everything I can to avoid such things myself.  All I can say is I most certainly didn't start this, and most certainly wasn't the one that made like a dictator myself by blacklisting an opposing viewpoint.

I agree with your thoughts here too for the most part.  It should have been opt in, rather than opt out, and it really shouldn't have been forced upon the people of Texas.  I don't dispute that.  I dispute the idea that there is no potential benefit, or at least no benefit that makes the good potentially outweigh the bad.

There are a lot of residents of the otherwise fine state of Texas (my birthplace) that would play ignorant and refuse a preventive measure such as was proposed.  They'd be relying on the belief that their children aren't the ones that need to be covered because their children would *never* do things that would cause them to need this protection, or at least they wouldn't do it until after they'd talked it over with mommy and daddy and been helped to keep away from negative results.

Those parents would be wrong.

The statistics don't lie here, and they do back me up when I point out that teen pregnancy is a growing problem, not one that is going away.  Sexual activity among school aged children continues to happen at earlier and earlier ages.  And parents keep pretending that their children aren't involved.

It's never my children until well, it is.  Until it's my child that got pregnant, or picked up an STD that goes untreated for years before they realize they even have it.  Or pick up HPV because they've had multiple partners and some of those partners may be carriers.

As you point out, and as I already had acknowledged, this may not be a cure all for preventing cervical cancer, but it very well could help a measurable number of young girls keep from having problems in their futures.