You’re saying it’s “politics” to vaccinate men to protect women. Do you not remember saying women should be vaccinated to protect their children? That was politics too, then, was it? You already know this, but it is always POLITICS when the government is involved, even with something like innoculations. Sad, but true.

Can anyone direct me to a more longitudinal study to look at the ramifications of innoculating so young? i.e. sideeffects, longterm results, does it need a booster after so long [like measles, mumps]etc…? Looking for results 10-20years out if possible.

I think eventually innoculating men is logical step just to prevent the spread and hopefully erradicate it from most of this country hopefully like polio.

what seems more likely to me, if vaccinations are encouraged for men, is that men and women with enough money for insurance are going to be vaccinated, and poor people in rural areas are going to get very little coverage. i don’t think the richer men will be vaccinated at the expense of poor women (because their funding won’t come from the same sources), but poor men might be vaccinated at the expense of poor women (for example, in a first-come-first-served situation, which is common for free clinics). it doesn’t matter how much merck makes, because there is not unlimited available money to get the theoretically unlimited number of vaccinations to all poor people.

You know as well as I do that plenty of people in this thread HAVE said, or implied, that vaccinating women first is a bad idea. sophonisba, twoluvcats, and others, for example. What exactly do you think the debate is about? Only a very few people have raised the political angle; almost everyone else is jumping on the ‘no women first’ wagon.

“Implied” is a far cry from “said,” Sailorman. If you’re going to make claims like that, I’d appreciate some quotes. Because it could just be that you inferred something that wasn’t, in fact, implied.

if you’re just strictly looking at it from the cancer angle, then again you should be vaccinating everyone, but if you have a shortage, you’d favor vaccinating girls over boys, because the cancer risk is much higher, so you’d get more protection per vaccination, in a way.

and all of that is academic if there’s enough vaccine to go around. but it says to me that whether you think they should go on to the men once you’ve finished with all the women, or whether you should just mix them from the start, there’s an argument that can be made right and wrong, when you’re speaking in terms of public health policy.

however, speaking strictly politically, the mixed idea is better, because (and i wish we didn’t have to care about this and could just let public health people do their thing without it being dragged down by politics) it could make the fundies shut the hell up, because of the slut-punishing thing.

so now the issue is to weigh all of these concerns, and hope that there’s enough vaccine to go around.

If it were the case that there were limited quantities of the vaccine, I could see your point that we should vaccinate women first, from a simple cost-benefit analysis point of view.

But barring some odd reason for there to be inadequate quantities of vaccine, it makes the most sense to vaccinate everyone. Especially if it’s going to be mandatory

frumiousb,

You have a good point about vaccines and bodily integrity. However, I would argue that there is a qualitative difference between removing a part of a body for disputed medical reasons and giving a shot that stimulates the production of antibodies to protect from a disease. The ethics of the situation depend on the balance of risk between side-effects of vaccination and getting the disease itself.

zuzu, comment #3 asked why recommendations didn’t include boys and girls from the beginning. Sailorman provided an answer.

# zuzu Says:
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:22 pm

Well, he’s arguing against a strawman, because not one person here has said that we shouldn’t vaccinate women first.

Oh come on, zuzu, this is your blog, but that’s ridiculous.

You know as well as I do that plenty of people in this thread HAVE said, or implied, that vaccinating women first is a bad idea. sophonisba, twoluvcats, and others, for example. What exactly do you think the debate is about? Only a very few people have raised the political angle; almost everyone else is jumping on the ‘no women first’ wagon.

if everyone thinks that we should vaccinate women first, then why are there all those comments attacking my “obvious” point, and almost no comments other than yours which say “yes, that’s obvious” or “yes, that’s right” or whatever?

And (if you’re on the straw man tactic) in all fairness I’ve tried to stay away from representing anyone else’s views. I’ve been straw manned quite a few times, though, myself. Would you mind being a tad more equitable? “Specially as we apparently agree on this?

There is precendent for using limited vaccine supplies on the population most at risk – for example, we give flu vaccines to the elderly first.

No, it was not tested on women thoroughly. It was tested on females 9-26. For it to be tested on women thoroughly, it would have to be tested on women over 26. Testing is either proposed or already in process for males.

#17 twf: what, there’s not bodily integrity issues with vaccines? Nothing is 100% harm free, including vaccines. With most childhood vaccines, the risk/benefit is a no brainer – the risk of harm from the illness is astronomically higher than the risk of harm from the vaccine. The bodily integrity issue is also a no brainer for most childhood vaccines- it makes sense for a parent to make a decision about their child’s body without consulting them b/c the kid would probably die before it reaches an age where it can make its own decisions.

With diseases that affect primarily adults, one can make the argument that the considerations are a little different. Does a parent still have a right to make decisions about their children’s bodies if the medical condition motivating the intervention is not likely to occur until the child is old enough to make his own risk/benefit analysis? So far the answer in our culture has been yes – witness the infant Hep B vaccine. We routinely give Hep B vaccines to children even though most new cases affect adults. We do this because voluntary vaccination by adults was not effectively reducing the incidence of new Hep B cases. As a societal benefit, violating the bodily integrity of an infant by giving it a Hep B vaccine makes sense.

Now we are discussing violating the bodily integrity of girls and boys by giving them HPV vaccines. Most people here are in favor of it. We won’t know until the trials are over and the vaccine has been in routine use for boys whether negative effects from the vaccine are more frequent than negative effects from circumcision (injury). If the negative effects of the two interventions are similar, is it really so different to vaccine a boy against HPV than to circumcise a boy to reduce his risk of penile cancer?