HPV

Katha Pollitt Likes the HPV vaccine, and doesn't like people who don't:

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.

Elsewhere, the family research council apparently supports vaccine availability, just not compulsory vaccination (fair enough), but that's not my main point.* Pollitt's bewilderment at the suggestion that HPV immunity might lead to teenage promiscuity seems fair, and is shared by many (including my mom, with whom I was discussing this for some reason over pesach). Well, I had this thought:
A lot of abstinence only sex education stresses the "threat"** of HPV: it sounds like HIV, after all, but is a lot more common and condoms are less effective against it (so they say). SO, my theory is that the abstinence only crowd make a somewhat irrationally big deal out of HPV in the first place, which is what makes them worry that a promise of HPV protection will encourage promiscuity. I don't know why, but I was pleased with myself for putting this information together...

**not that it's not a threat, but it's more a "geee maybe I should get a pap smear" type of threat than an "i'm going to die if i get this" threat...
*Also not my main point, though probably more important re: how public health works in this country, is whether the push to vaccinate helps women or Merck...