Finding immunity from moral panic

[Horse with no Name]

Excellent, timely essay.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/finding-immunity-from-moral-panic/2006/01/30/1138590443539.html

>>>>snip
IT IS not often that someone who is named Australian of the Year must the following week defend the work that earned him the title. Professor Ian Frazer, 53, who came to Australia from Scotland in 1981 to follow his passion for clinical immunology, was honoured for 20 years of research that led to the development of a vaccine against a sexually transmitted infection that causes cervical cancer.

But the vaccine that could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women every year is the latest medical innovation to fall victim to a morals scare campaign over who should receive it and when.
>>>snip
Frazer says a "scare campaign" against the vaccine has been active in the US for the past year, with websites devoted to speaking out against it, warning of an outbreak of promiscuous behaviour in young women.

"This is a virus that kills a quarter of a million women every year … if there were any other disease that was killing that many people and there was a vaccine to prevent it, there would be no debate about administering it," he says. "The most effective way to deliver this vaccine to young people is before they become sexually active."

The human papilloma virus causes 70 per cent of the world's 470,000 cervical cancer cases each year, killing 230,000 women annually. Nearly three-quarters of all sexually active women will become infected.

[PLF]

1. You are making a bullshit straw man argument here.

Nobody likes the way Rick Perry and the Merck lobbyists are going about this.

Nobody here is trying to prevent access to the vaccine for anybody who wants it.

Drop the bullshit lies. You ought to be worried about Rick Perry and a group of lobbyists making mandates.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. That's exactly what it looks like to me.

If it's mandatory, girls who otherwise wouldn't have gotten it will get it.

[MasonJar]

2. It does not necessarily follow that because our corporate pharma-

ceutical firms are pieces of trash that the vaccine itself should not be administered for the well-being of the young ladies who could easily contact and die from this vicious disease.

[Horse with no Name]

3. Merck didn't develop the vaccine

This gentleman did.
Merck is just the moneymaker.