One of the fundie blogs I read had a link to this article.

Here, the author uses a single article (which does no original research) to conclude that The vaccination against the HPV is not only not necessary, but also very likely ineffective.  The person then implies some unspecified dark and foreboding threat to the effect that “the left” (apparently, we’re organized, would someone please send a copy of our agenda to our politicians in Congress?  They seem to have lost theirs.)

First, about the implications of a dark and lurk-y agenda on the left for inoculating all girls by age 12; AND the objection that it won’t do anything about the virus spawning new forms of vaccine-resistant virus.

The second objection answers the first.  The virus can only create mutated versions of itself if it reproduces.  It can only reproduce if it infects someone.  If there is no-one to infect, viola!  No new forms of the cancer-causing virus.  Small pox is an example.  Eradication techniques were not limited to reaching critical levels of herd immunity, but it was the center piece of the effort.

Another objection (#3)is that the vaccine might not provide life-long immunity.  In other words…you might need a booster shot.  HORRORS!  I guess we should eliminate all shots where you need a booster from the mandatory shot list.

Another objection (#4)is that there are several strains of the virus, and the strains that this vaccine covers  might take over its ecological niche, and become cancer-causing and ubiquitous.

Well, if we are going to allow the fact that some other virus might eventually come to make us sick if we treat the ones that are making us sick right now, we might as well just give up on all of them.  There’s always another virus.  Where are all of the fundamentalists railing against flu shots?  You have to take one EVERY YEAR to benefit, after all, and sometimes you still get the flu.

Objection #5 is that it is expensive.  You think a shot is expensive?  Try cancer.  A good friend of mine has recently completed a fairly modest and standard treatment for breast cancer (lumpectomy, radiation, Tamoxifen).  She has insurance, but the costs that she was still responsible for would have wiped out many families.

Cancer is incredibly expensive in terms of individual expenses, lost worker productivity, and as a burden on the health system (no matter if it is a public system or a private system, the cost is ultimately born by all of us…weather we all pay for everyone, or if we price ourselves out of our ability to pay through competing for available resources).  It is very resource-intensive to treat.  If we want to make it affordable to treat the people who WILL get sick, we have to first stop people getting sick wherever possible.

Objection #6 isn’t in this article, but it has come up in some others: women will stop getting pap smears.  That seems unlikely.  Pap smears are a standard part of the yearly exam, which also includes a manual check for breast cancer, and ovarian cancer, among other things.  Both of these are amply scary enough to keep women coming back year after year.  Not to mention that the yearly exam usually includes non-reproductive general health checks.  Do people think that just because women lower their risk of cervical cancer by a significant margin, they will think their heart is just fine too? Bah, humbug.