Oh my God. Okay, look, even if worries about "lost innocence" (gag) were legitimate (and, okay, I will grant that this is a somewhat legitimate concern for an 11-year-old child, male or female), what about rape? In today's society it is FOOLISH and IGNORANT to pretend that children aren't raped EVERY DAY. If you can innoculate your kid against contracting an incurable STD should she happen to be raped, how can you think this is a bad thing? Why would you want your child to be doubly punished?

I mean, geez, next thing you know these folks will be fighting R&D funding for an HIV cure/vaccine. I hate how small-minded and short-sighted our culture is.

Oh, I also meant to include -- they don't have to explain everything to the kid when she gets the shot. They can just tell her it's a shot to help prevent certain forms of cancer. Even an 11-year-old knows what cancer is.

As Law Fairy said, this can't really be a valid argument against vaccination: did this parent wait to give MMR and tetanus vaccinations until she felt comfortable describing these illnesses (or I guess for the "lost innocence" concern, how these illnesses are transmitted) to her daughter? Of course not.

What about Hepatitis B? It's basically the same idea; it's a disease that can be contracted through sex, that can cause liver cancer.

The whole point is doing it before "innocence is lost," isn't it?

I don't understand these parents at all. What parent wouldn't want to prevent their child from getting cancer? Do they think that by giving their daughter the vaccine, they're implicitly telling them to go out and have sex? That's such a stretch...

You are clearly not a parent or you would understand that woman's argument. Agree with it or disagree with it, it makes sense developmentally whether you agree with her moral stance.

I have 2 daughters 5 and 7. They don't watch TV so they are not assailed by marketing (and because it is terrible for their brain development - parents research it, you'll be horrified if you are currently letting your kids watch tv). They don't wear the ridiculously hoochie clothes sold for girls their age made to sexualize them at earlier and earlier ages, they don't play with Bratz dolls and their materialistic and objectifying focus, and they don't get to pick their music or reading material as yet. All in an effort to retain their innocence until they are developmentally able to understand these influences. Kids don't have the capability to process and understand different types of input and social structures until their brains have fnished building the parts that can understand them and provide appropriate responses to them. If that woman's 11 year old daughter is not sexually active (and don't say she doesn't know. We homeschoole and know every minute of the day where are girls with, what they are doing, and who they are with) the vaccine is not necessary yet.

But Buffy, the point is to give the vaccine before the daughter is sexually active. Kids are routinely vaccinnated for Hepatitis B at the same age this girl is, and it's another disease that can be contracted through sex. And my mother, a religious conservative with three children, doesn't understand this argument either. Preventing possible illness is her foremost concern.

I don't think this has anything to do with the innocence of the child, because the child most likely won't even understand what the vaccine is for... I think it's to protect the innocence of the parents, so they don't have to think about their little girls becoming sexually active.

i may not be a parent, but i have certainly been a child.

i didn't have television growing up either, but my mom sat me down at about age 5 and explained human anatomy and sex to me. at that point you can put whatever moral spin on sex that you choose.

as the years went by she explained more and more to me, so that by the time i was 11 (nearly junior high) i definitely knew what STDs were and how to prevent them if i engaged in sexual activity.

and guess what? shockingly i did not think: great, now i can have sex all the time!

how does knowing what sex is make you not innocent? how does having sex make you innocent or not? what does that even mean?!

what they really mean is: the kids need to be ignorant a little longer.

Do these parents claim to have explained ALL diseases for which their children have been vaccinated PRIOR to vaccination?

But, buffy, it's like Lopp said, we don't explain everything about tetanus and measles and mumps and rubella to children getting vaccinated. Heck, half the kids that age can't even *pronounce* "vaccination." There's nothing wrong with not wanting your children to have sex, and *no one* here is advocating that children go out and start having sex. But it's irresponsible to pretend that they never will.

And, again, you're able to keep an eye on your kids' every movement now, but you won't always be able to. My parents homeschooled me from kindergarten through 12th grade, so I think I have an idea what I'm talking about here. When I was 7, yeah, my parents always knew exactly where I was and everything. When I was 13, they knew all of the important details (e.g., if I was at the mall with Jenny, etc.) -- but if I'd been rebellious Jenny could have arranged for Matt to meet me in the food court, etc.... When I was 16 and had a driver's license, they had a good sense of where I was and what I was doing, but, again, the older you get, the easier it is to break away ever so slightly from your parents' watchful eye. I never did anything stupid, but I could have if I'd wanted to badly enough -- and I was the oldest child of VERY STRICT parents.

Do you sincerely think you can prevent your daughters from having sex *or getting raped* until they are 18 and old enough to decide for themselves if they want the vaccine? Are you willing to take that risk with their health?

And let's be perfectly honest, sure, at 5 and 7 you know where your children are at all times, but will that always be the case? Can you always shelter them? No. If you want to discuss harmful television, let's also discuss the harm in completely blocking your children from the outside world.

Did you know that the average, AVERAGE age for adolescents to have sex is 12 years old? And, not to be insulting, but do you know how many of those adolescents' parents believe their sweet little children don't have a clue about the birds and the bees?

In this day and age, if you want to talk about protecting your child, protect your child from something physical. Psychologically you can only do so much, but this is something physical that can be done. Sure, there are probably other risk factors, and I can understand that mother's trepidation because of those risks but "loss of innocence"?

One of my very best friends remained a virgin until she was married and contracted HPV from her husband so there's another scenario outside of the old argument that this is enabling girls to go out and be promiscuous.

This is encouraging girls and women to be smart not promiscuous. Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive?

How stupid does this sound?: I don't want my infant to get a tetanus vaccination because I'm not ready for her to step on rusty nails!!!!

Excuse me, that should have been, why do the two always have to go together: smart = promiscuity.

Seriously, I had no idea what was going on with my vaccinations until I was 13 or so. I was just told I was having "a shot."

What's the big deal about protecting your daughter from cancer? Even if the girl does decide to give her husband the virginity wedding gift, who is to say he won't give her the gift of cervical cancer?

I am a mother of three, the oldest a 12-year-old girl. I would NEVER withold this vaccine from my child except for worries about health risks. You never know when horrid things like a sexual assault will happen. That's one reason I would have vacinated her as a baby had the vaccine been available (and I felt it had been properly tested). We vaccinated all the kids for HepB, and just so everyone knows, my best friend is a carrier for Hep B, as is her brother, and they found out they were carriers when they were 6 and 8 years old. We told our daughter that she'll need a vaccine at her next Dr. appointment next year, and we just said that it prevents certain types of cancer. She doesn't want it because she hates shots, but she also knows she doesn't want cancer. By that time, she may be more ready to hear about the sex connection, but she's a bit of a late bloomer on that end, so we'll see.

"You are clearly not a parent or you would understand that woman's argument. "

Oh, Buffy, there's nothing I loathe more than these kinds of self-righteous assumptions about how if somebody disagrees with you, they couldn't possibly have the experience that you have. They couldn't, y'know, be a parent and simply come to different conclusions, oh, no.

My mother's a parent, and she has never understood why anyone would allow anything to take priority over their children's health. Tell me, if this was a vaccine against lung cancer, would you "understand" why a parent wouldn't want to give it to her kid, because she "wasn't ready" to discuss smoking?

ok I have some issues here:
1) Why don't you want your child to understand even the basic risks of sexual activity? When do you want her to find out that sex has consequences, after she's sexually active?
2)On the other hand, why do you have to explain anything to her about sex, just because she's getting a vaccine? I'm still not sure about all the stuff I got vaccinated for as a kid (for example, I'm really not sure how Polio was spread except for public pools)
3) How does keeping a child at risk for a disease keep her from "losing innocence"

4) Why are we only vaccinating girls? I understand that cervical cancer is only a risk for women, but are people pretending that only lesbians are at risk for HPV? Isn't the point of vaccinations to eradicate the spread of disease?

lion, if I'm not mistaken, its effectiveness in males is unproven and it hasn't been approved by the FDA for use in men. Hopefully eventually studies will demonstrate its effectiveness (and lack of substantial risk) for men and women of all ages, but right now unfortunately it's only approved for use in women under 26 (if I understand correctly).

I am so, fucking, sick and tired of people referring to the bare hearsay of things sexual as a loss of innocence, as if it were a sin and a crime. If it is, they're going to hell just for mentioning it to each other and producing the child, aren't they? Stupid assholes. Omigod, I know what an asshole is! How dare I have this knowledge, how dare I eat god's knowledge apple!

Since when did just hearing about something you don't understand become a loss of innocence? Actually I find these parents (both in the article and one in this thread) are not at all being consistent with that kind of analogy to loss of innocence. Hearing about subjects you don't understand from adults is one of the defining characteristics of being a child, whether that subject be money and bills, drugs, sex, dad's mumbjo jumbo about his job, an older sibling's science homework, the significance of the land annexing by the county to the next primary elections, etc., etc., etc.

How come all these other things are just another part of childhood, but if that subject happens to be sex that the child doesn't understand yet, suddenly we've destroyed their innocence?! The only way these people could put that ridiculous double standard into play is to assume that sexual knowledge is "carnal knowledge," it's a sin.

Fuck that paradigm right in the ear, I say. The only way a child can be harmed by sexual knowledge is to tell that child that it's bad to know and that their bodies have sinful parts and this perfectly natural part of adult Earth life is sinful, and it's all bullshit bullshit bullshit.

I am 22, and bs arguments like this make me LOVE my mother even more. In fact I just called her. She has always known that someday I would be exposed to all kinds of horrible and scary things (TV for example) so she's never lied about ANY of it. I could always make my own choices, and our greatest moments together during my childhood were talking about those choices. I don't eat healthy because she hid bad food from me, or forbid me from eating it, but because she treated me like a smart individual, who given all the info could figure it out for myself.

I went to public school because when we grow up we LIVE IN THE PUBLIC. You can't avoid other people because you don't like how they act, but whenever things came up (bad words, rated R movies, boyfriends, or anything) I always knew we could deal with them together and she'd always give me the straight anwers. Sex was the same way. I credit this great parenting style with making me a very independent woman and I plan to do my best to mimic it if I have kids some day.

By the way I'm scheduled to get the first shot of the HPV vaccine in about two weeks. I'll post a comment about how it is somewhere down the line (i.e. is it painful, did my insurance cover it, etc).

I AM a parent, and the reasons I would hesitate to get my child vaccinated have NOTHING to do with innocence, but rather, valid concerns about safety, etc. etc (as noted in the post).

Vaccines are BIG money, both for the medical and pharmaceutical businesses. That inevitably leads me to ask - is this really as great as it's touted to be? I have worked in medical research and don't feel secure that the folks pushing for this (and getting funding) care most about children's health.

Right now, BABIES (not kids) get a pretty large number of vaccinations. Hep B is now given at birth (and while that may be a good thing, no one at the hospital would explain to me why my newborn was being vaccinated for an STD - one I didn't have & that he couldn't have contracted through the birth process).

So -sorry - I am getting off topic. The point is - like many parents, we vaccinate but skip/delay the shots that we can. Our issues are - lack of data and lack of trust. But innocence? If a vaccine against an STD = loss of innocence, then I guess that happened before my baby left the hospital. The woman's desire to protect her daughter is understandable, but she is making quite a leap of logic.

Reading my post I missed a key component that it appears I take for granted. Trust and confidence. My parents (dad included) told me about sex because they had overwhelming confidence that I would make the right choice. That's really corny but its true. This doesn't mean I always made the right choice of course, but we also had a no question policy, meaning if I was ever in a bad spot I could call them for anything (ride home, money etc) and they wouldn't even ask until I was ready to talk about it. I'm calling my mom again, she rocks.

"an assault on their innocense" to tell a girl child she's getting a shot? No doubt all those parents felt the same way about sharing information about sex with their daughters in the 50s - you think any of them had regrets when they had to send their daughters away to home for unwed mothers? Given that human beings are social animals, and that most of humanity hasn't experienced the solitary confinement we call "their own bedroom", I guess most of humanity never had any innocence at all.

Buffy, I shudder to think what your reaction would be if someone dared to give your kids a pair of mice. I'm confident that your science curriculum is lacking. I hate to destroy your own innocence, but since most girls are molested by trusted friends and family members, just knowing where your kids are isn't protecting them, any more than their ignorance is. I am, by the way, a parent of two daughters.

Jrav, I have no idea where you got the idea that "the average, AVERAGE age for adolescents to have sex is 12 years old", but that isn't supported by any research I've ever seen. According to the cross-national data recently published in the Lancet, most people, world-wide, initiate vaginal intercourse between the ages of 15-19. Twelve as an average age for having sex would be ridiculous unless "sex" means masturbation. Then it would still be ridiculous, but only because most people masturbate as small children, even if they aren't able to remember and thus, to report.

Did you know that the average, AVERAGE age for adolescents to have sex is 12 years old? And, not to be insulting, but do you know how many of those adolescents' parents believe their sweet little children don't have a clue about the birds and the bees?

Since when? Most of the data I've seen puts the average age of first intercourse for American teenagers at 16-17.
Check out The Guttmacher Institute for the breakdown.

Also, I have never seen any good (scientific!) reserarch about the potential dangers of vaccinations. But I'm open if anyone has any suggested resources.

debbie,

I don't know if this is in response to my post, but as an aside - there is sound science around the dangers of vaccines; however, it's true that the dangers are few. Dangerous side effects are very, very rare (about 0.01%, I believe). I just want to do all I can to keep my kid from being that 0.01. The risk is tiny, but it's real. Plus, I just don't trust these folks!

Hmmm, maybe that's what that mother really meant - she doesn't trust the pharmaceutical industry either & and thinks there is a secret anti-innocence ingredient! ; )

JRAV posted that "the average, AVERAGE age for adolescents to have sex is 12 years old?".
I have no idea where that data came from. The STUPID BUSHISTS (may they all be impeached soon) stopped funding federal surveys of teenage sexuality. The Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan NFP probably has the best numbers, and their data shows that the median age of first sexual encounter for US teens is about 17yo (16.9 for boys, 17.4 for girls).
That being said, HPV is a virus that needs intimate contact for spreading, but not necessarily penis-vagina contact. It is prevelant enough that 75-80% of adults in the US will have been exposed by the time they are 50yo, and it is "catchy" enough that ONLY 1 encounter with an infected person will transmit it to the partner 26% of the time, and 1% of the adult population is chronically infected (source, Up-to-Date 2006). Transmission is markedly easier from male to female than the other way around, and transmission rates from other types of sexual encounters are not well documented, although there is enough anecdotal evidence to show that there is risk.
Regardless of when you think/hope your child(ren) will become sexually active, they will be at risk the minute they start! Disclose as much as you choose about what the shot is for. Demand good answers about safety, and whether Thimerisol (mercury) is used in the vaccine. But vaccinate your girls. Think of how that would feel, to look at your 40something daughter, maybe with young children of her own, fighting a cancer you chose NOT to prevent.

Thanks for the feedback guys - guess I need to get technical. 18-19% of youth have had sexual intercourse at age 14 or younger. Those percentages increase with age. At age 12 - 4-5% have had sex, increasing to 10% at age 13, and 18-19% at age 14.

Besides the fact, I am not saying these kids are out there living it up, getting their jollies - a large percentage of these are involuntary.

Simply trying to make the point that 11 is not THAT young.

While HPV is presumably mostly transmitted through sex, there's no reason to assume it can't be transmitted otherwise, and plenty of reason to expect that it can be. It does apparently live just fine under people's fingernails.

Debbie, your link doesn't work.

A few months ago, while looking up Canada's age of consent, I found an official Canadian government website that explained the government wouldn't hike it from 14 to 16 because the median age of first intercourse in Canada was 14.1 for males and 14.5 for females.

Interesting note on this from the Lancet: no significant change in age of first intercourse in the past 30 years.

Just an FYI - Thimerisol has been widely phased out in vaccine use. Also, the jury is still out on whether the amount of Thimerisol used in vaccinations causes any neurological problems. Phase III clinical trials are pretty rigorous for vaccines. I am just adding this to show that it is more likely that a young women will get HPV then experience any problems with the vaccine itself.

Oh fer crying out loud.

Are these parents /really/ saying that when they take their kid in for their flu shot, they tell them all about the influenza epidemic killing thousands of people? Or do they do like most parents and say, "Sorry getting shots hurts, honey, but it's to help keep you from getting sick." and then get down to the actual business of comforting a kid who's upset over getting jabbed with a needle (not that I blame 'em, I'm not fond of injections either).

HPV is just another series of initials kids will overhear in the long litany of vaccinations they receive as they grow up. "Yes honey, you got your MMR, your DTaP, and your Hep B today."

What parent actually sits down and explains what all that is? Heck, I'm sure plenty of parents out there can't even keep track of what all those initials stand for. (And not, btw, because I'm saying they're bad parents, but because that's a lot of alphabet soup to keep track of, in the midst of everything else that goes on in parenting a child. The average parent probably has it written down somewhere, or knows how to access the information, but if you stopped them on the street and said, "What's the DTaP shot prevent?" they'd go, "Uh... I can't remember offhand, sorry." Which is exactly how I'd respond, if you were to ask me. Just for the record.)

True Tabitha - Thimerisol is primarily in flu shots in the US. It is not supposed to be in any vaccine recommended on the pediatric schedule, but since HPV vaccine is a new vaccine and approved for young adults and since big Pharma is really not to be trusted, the questions are always worth asking. Unfortunately, no one will have really good answers about complications arising from the vaccine itself rather than from the substrate, until it's been in use for some years.

Sorry for the link not working, I'll try again:
Facts on American Teens' Sexual and Reproductive Health

Alon:
The current age of consent in Canada is 14. This does not apply to prostitution or pornography (18), or sexual relations between a minor and someone who is in a position of trust or authority.
The current Conservative government is trying to pass a bill that would raise the age of consent to 16. A lot of youth advocates and sex educators are opposed to this move. They argue that changing the age of consent laws does nothing to actually protect young people from sexual exploitation.
Some of the groups that have spoken out against the bill are Egale Canada, Planned Parenthood, and the AIDs Society of Canada.

The data I've seen for the age of first sexual intercourse of Canadian teens (male and female) puts the average at 16.5, but I don't have any citations handy.

I AM a parent, and the reasons I would hesitate to get my child vaccinated have NOTHING to do with innocence, but rather, valid concerns about safety, etc. etc (as noted in the post).

Vaccines are BIG money, both for the medical and pharmaceutical businesses. That inevitably leads me to ask - is this really as great as it's touted to be? I have worked in medical research and don't feel secure that the folks pushing for this (and getting funding) care most about children's health.

First, you haven't really posted any evidence or explanation as to how the large cost of vaccinations is overly beneficial to hospitals and Big Pharma. You have to show that they are making unnecessary profit instead of just having huge damned bills to pay for producing the vaccines in what is already a flawed system before these vaccines are finally made economically viable for mass production.

Second, to frame it as "the medial and pharmaceutical businesses" is patently flawed. You'll find plenty of doctors and other medical professionals who are thoroughly pissed off that Big Pharma spends 10x as much money advertising and evangelizing to hospital staff than they do actually producing what they claim is a good product, and that such businesses who get their bullshit entangled in college grants fuck up the entire system of producing good med students out of college and into the hospitals. You're making quite a blanket statement, tink, and it does justice to none.

You haven't described mainstream parental concerns as much as you have woo-woo, 'alternative medicine' loving, anti-science concerns.

Law Fairy: I'd love the data on safety for boys. Had not heard that. It sounds like the old arguments for testing prostitutes (but not Johns) for STDs. There is new research that links HPV to testicular cancer too. They should vaccinate all kids, regardless of gender.

I can understand the arguments that perhaps the vaccine isn't safe, so therefore some parents will choose not to have their children get the vaccine. However, that's completely different than not letting your child get a vaccine because you think it's encouraging sexual activity or you think its a "loss of innocence". As someone who is not yet a parent and just got out of my "troubled teen years" anyone who thinks a 11 year old in this society is "innocent" is either extremely naive or extremely stupid. Even if a parent doesn't talk to their child about sex, it doesn't mean that child doesn't know about or have sex. What I think is really going on here is that parents don't want to admit to themselves that they really don't have control over their children's actions. They're not willing to admit to themselves that they're daughters may soon be entering the dangerous waters of sexual activity and experimentation. Those parents would rather lie to themselves about their children, then help prevent their child from getting a life threatening disease.

"Those parents would rather lie to themselves about their children, then help prevent their child from getting a life threatening disease."

dhs, you hit the nail on the head -- this is exactly the same reasoning that makes some people think abstinence only education is the only acceptable sex ed. It's just naive. Yes, *some* kids will in fact buy it. But plenty won't, and chances are, you won't know the difference. It is foolish to base public policy on what the most self-controlled members of the public do. What if we had laws that allowed 12-year-olds to drive because some 12-year-olds were good drivers? What if the law allowed 15-year-olds to buy liquor because some 15-year-olds could handle it responsibly? What if we did away with the IRS because good citizens don't cheat on their taxes? Law and policy has to be made for the lowest common denominator, not for your little (snort) angel virgin children.

It is foolish to base public policy on what the most self-controlled members of the public do

Actually I think we're seeing laws being based on the most repressed people's behavior, not based on what the most self-controlled people do. As scandals such as Foley and Haggard demonstrate, time and time again, just because a group of people proselytizes against a behavior does not mean they are in fact capable of not doing it themselves. It is often because they're obsessed with something they're already doing in the first place.

Aerik, I think we're arguing the same point. A highly self-controlled member of the public would not act in the hypocritical manner Haggard did, and would not prey on underlings as Foley did. Thus, a law that pretends such persons are above reproach is foolish. Many people are *not* in fact self-controlled and need laws and policy that assume they are not. If you make policies assuming they are, then in most cases (like Foley's and Haggard's) you may as well have no policies at all.

What it sounds like these parents are saying is, frankly, that they'd like to be able to hold the fear of cancer over their daughters, when they get to be teenagers, so as to reduce the odds they'll have sex. In practical terms, it's not much different from pushing abstinence-only (i.e. anti-condom) "education" in public schools: In both cases, there's apparently an acceptable ratio of teenage deaths to "unpunished" teenage sex.

If the deaths of 10 teenagers can be used to scare 1,000 into temporary abstinence, the logic goes, then that's just fine, especially if the dead teenagers are girls. It's very much like the old slasher films, where if the teenage couple has sex, then of course the knife-wielding psycho will do them in. They deserve it, don't they?

It's logic like this that makes me seriously want to go out and get laid myself, just out of spite.

Cheers,

TH

The thing that pops into my mind is this: No one has ever NEEDED to tell/teach children about sex. I know it's cheesy, but everyone remembers "The Blue Lagoon," right? We're all hard-wired for sex. Drop two people on an island and it'll happen all on its own.

Now, since we're not on a deserted island, there are implications for intercourse. That's what we're teaching children. The physical act makes other children, that there are risks-to their physical health, mental health, etc. Now I am just going to echo everyone's sentiment that not getting a life-saving shot because of a ridiculous societal double-standard is a best bad science, at worst, possibly reckless endangerment.

Further, on the hippie-style tip, sex is natural and normal. What's not normal is continuing to police girls' sexuality by not giving them the shot. Someone should do a study about the emotional health costs of continuing to teach girls that their sexuality is *dirty* and *evil.*

What if the law allowed 15-year-olds to buy liquor because some 15-year-olds could handle it responsibly?

Actually, very little, considering that France and Germany allow 16-year-olds to buy some liquor products and have no problems caused by it.

What if the law allowed 15-year-olds to buy liquor because some 15-year-olds could handle it responsibly?

That kind of analogy has nothing to do with the HPV vaccine manufactured 'controversy' because, as prairielily explained, we already vaccinate for Hepatitis B in infants, which can be spread sexually, but nobody makes the argument about Hep. B shots, do they?

On the other hand, change that number from 15 to 21 or 18, and isn't that exactly what the law is doing throughout the United States? Many people over 18/21 cannot handle liquor at all. Surely this analogy would apply to every single citizen of the United States. Sorry to pull a tu quoque, but obviously nobody really believes that fallacious analog.

Imagine a conversation with your 30 year-old daughter. She tells you she has cervical cancer. It's advanced and her chances of survival don't look good.

Imagine that 18 years before she was sexually assaulted by her friend's older brother. Along with physical and psychological trauma, he also gave her HPV.

Imagine how you will explain to her that you didn't give her the shot that would have prevented her cancer because you wanted to "protect her innocence."

Certainly no one wants this to happen to a child, but the fact is that thousands of children are assaulted each year. And many more engage in sexual activity (which may or may not involve a condom) before their parents would like. Try as we may, we cannot monitor our children every minute of every day until they are adults, and we can't protect them from all the bad things in the world or all the poor choices they might make.

Personally, I'm not willing to sacrifice my daughter's future health just to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. But then again, no child is going to ask about their vaccinations - they're too busy being upset about them. As a number of people have suggested, if she asks, tell her that the shot will prevent her from possibly getting sick in the future.

As to the point about 15-year-olds drinking -- fair enough, I probably should have made it younger.

Anyway, the point was just that we have TONS of rules in place that are for the majority of people who screw up. The fact that we have laws designed to deal with screw-ups doesn't mean we're encouraging screw-ups. I'm saying that under these parents' logic, the best way to prevent "screw-ups" (in their minds, having sex) is to pretend they won't happen. This is silly and impractical.

My mother, who grew up a Southern Christian Republican (although she's changed her affiliation to "independent" over the past few years), has told me outright that she can't believe any mother in their right mind would withhold such a vaccine from their daughter. It has absolutely nothing to do with loss of innocense and everything to do with prevention of a deadly disease. I cannot imagine any mother encountering a vaccine that will keep their daughter from getting a certain type of cancer, and then deny her daughter that opportunity. That's just negligent. And, as others have noted above, it's totally unnecessary to get into a conversation with your child about sex if you don't want to -- tell them they're getting a shot to keep them healthy, just like you already do with the Hep B vaccine. (I actually didn't even remember what vaccines I'd had as a kid for this very reason, and had to get my mom to mail me the records when I went to college and when I got a job in a hospital).

I'd like to be able to ask that particular woman, face to face, why she calls it an assault on her daughter's innocence. The way I have always known innocence is that if you did the crime, you're guilty, and if you didn't you're innocent. To say that for her daughter to learn about sex too early robs her of her innocence implies that her daughter commits a crime/sin/wrongdoing, does it not?

What is with this big mystical 'innocence' that we name when we're really talking about, well, ignorance? Or rather, why do we consider the point where a child stops believing in Santa Claus | the Tooth Fairy | Boogie Man | etc. to be the loss of this 'innocence'? All this 'innocence' really amounts to is a paradigm of unnecessarily magical thinking.

As several of us have pointed out from their experience and their casual observance of other child/parent relationships, there is nothing to be gained by fostering a mind that is dependent on magical thinking and false hopes.

These "parents" seem to think that once you no longer believe in magic (santa caluse, etc. etc.), then suddenly you're no longer 'innocent,' that life has become 'adulterated' and bleak. Bullshit, don't you think?

Just because we know that the colors of the rainbow are digital in composition and a simple property of light + atmosphere does not mean that rainbows are any less beautiful and awe-inspiring. A life without unnecessary mysteries is not any less an enjoyable, awe-filled life.

These parents have been tricked. They've been tricked into thinking that believing in bullshit is what defines childhood and childhood 'innocence,' by their ministers/pastors/rabbis/whatever, by TV shows where almost everybody feels this way, by pseudo-scholarship they read without critical thinking skills.

Sad, sad state of affairs.

I just recently finished writing some research papers in one of my English classes about teens and use of contraceptives, and in my research I stumbled across the information that (as of 1980 anyway) the single most commonly stated reason teens do not use contraception during intercourse is the simple belief that they will not or are not capable of becoming pregnant (I'm sure we're all aware of the "invulnerability" syndrome this is often named). What truly dissapoints me is that so many parents behave the same. fucking. way. "Oh there is no need to vaccinate my child, there is no way she would be having sex, she went to a purity ball with her dad! Vaccinating her would steal her innocence!" /gag

This makes me all the more pleased about my family and the house I grew up in. At around age 10 my mom took me to my pediatrician's office and had me vaccinated for Hep B, and before we went, she told me exactly why I was getting this vaccine. Both of my parents were like this, and it has done me an incredible service to have been raised in a house such as this. I also went to a 4 month sex ed class through my church (not your typical church!) which was invaluable. It was not just sex ed, but building healthy relationships, child development, child care, etc. in addition to the "normal" sex ed stuff.
I knew 10 different contraceptive methods before my schoolmates knew how to use a condom.

Truthfully it does not steal your innocence, it prepares you to make better decisions, to understand why you need to use a condom when and if you choose to have sex. Teens with greater knowledge of how reproduction, STD's, and contraception work will make better choices than those who don't, period.

I am a mother and I have a 2 year old daughter and 4 month old son, so as soon as my daughter is old enough she'll be getting this vaccine and if they've approved it for boys by then my son will get it too. While I do worry about the increasingly younger and younger ages where kids are being sexualized and the loss of, I don't know if I'd call it innocence, but the ability to just be kids without wierd sexual undertones, I don't think that a vaccine that shields them against cancer is something I should be denying them because I don't want to think about them having sex eventually. These parents make me sick.

*sorry for the long post*

Ok, I can understand (if not agree with) the perspectives of those on both sides of the issue.

While I don't agree with the argument that "it would ruin my child's innocence," I can see why some parents feel that. The "sex talk" is generally a very uncomfortable episode for everyone involved, and just like having to go to the doctor's for some icky STD when you're 15, the longer you wait for it, the more uncomfortable it's gonna get.

I also agree with the reluctance to give children vaccines due to health concerns regarding their safety. Most vaccines are extremely safe, but a few that have made it to market were later removed due to health problems (ie. the lyme disease vaccine, though it's negative health effects weren't statistically proven.) The HPV vaccine works by a different mechanism though, which shouldn't cause problems. However, with a 5 or 7 year old, I see no problem with waiting a few years for some more safety studies to come forward on new vaccines.

While vaccines protect the individual receiving them, this is not their primary purpose from a public health perspective. Their primary purpose is community health. It is a given that a certain number of individuals will not receive a vaccine for whatever reasons (money, health, ignorance, etc), but since most people in the community do, they will be immune, which will preven the disease from taking hold in the community and infecting those who are not immune. This concept is known as "herd immunity." This is why boys/men should also receive the HPV vaccine (once more studies have been done, preliminary ones did indicate that it is safe and effective, if I remember correctly.) If there are not enough available new people to infect, its incidence will decrease dramatically. So get your kids (and yourselves) vaccinated, already.

manda, you are absolutely right. What mother would want to imagine herself in that scenario? And what if your thirty-year-old daughter wasn't raped when she was a kid? What if she started having sex with her boyfriend when she was 21? And then had one more boyfriend before she got married? Would any sane mother really think "Well, too bad, you slut. Cancer's what you get for that"? Wouldn't you rather your child not die of cancer?

HPV is incredibly common -statistically, if you've had sex with someone that has had sex, you have HPV. There are many strains that don't produce immediate physical signs (warts), and can hang around for a long time and eventually lead to cancer.

I know that if I had to deal with cervical cancer and it could have been prevented by receiving a shot while I was young, I would want to know why the hell my mother didn't get it for me. To all you parents who refuse to give your children these safeguards for fear of their "innocence:" You are being horribly, horribly selfish, and I suggest you come up with some reasons now why you didn't properly take care of your children, because believe me, when they're dealing with the fallout of disease, they're going to want to know. YOU are not the ones who have to deal with the consequences of their sexual misadventures, THEY are, and you're sending them into battle with very poor armor.

To all you ladies who have nothing but fond memories of your kind and honest first boyfriends, congratulations. I know that for me, I look back on my youthful naivete with embarrassment and a little horror - I had an upbringing similar to those children who's parents don't want to damage their "innocence," and I was a poorly prepared young lady who took the lies and lines from shmucks and losers at face value because I didn't know any better. Do you remember being young? Do you remember what boys are like at that age?

Protecting you daughters goes so much farther than just teaching her to shake her head no.

You know what this reminds me of? The invention of the lightning rod. This anecdote comes from something I read many years ago, but apparently, when the lightning rod was first invented, religious people and institutions objected to it, saying it was thwarting God's or Zeus's or Thor's or the lightning God of your choice's will to try and influence where lightning would strike and what the effects would be. After a few seasons of church spires being hit because they didn't put lightning rods up, well, that objection kind of died away.

I hate to say it, but give it a generation and then check out who's kids are suffering from this cancer. Perhaps then the fundies will change their tune.

"whose kids," of course.

While vaccines protect the individual receiving them, this is not their primary purpose from a public health perspective. Their primary purpose is community health.

True enough. The primary purpose of vaccines is to prevent epidemic outbreaks. Sure, a parent can refuse vaccination, but suddenly that kid gets sick, sneezes in day care, and deposits huge amounts of viruses on the toys, much more than would normally be there, even enough to infect the other kids despite their vaccinations, simply because that one child was not fighting the virus as well as the others.

It's a big problem that these parents fail to understand: the decision to vaccinate your child affects more than you and your child -- it affects everybody. And to make a cop-out excuse, saying vaccines

are BIG money, both for the medical and pharmaceutical businesses

We don't live our lives in fear. We don't fear rape and assault for our daughters and plan our lives, shots, and votes around it. Feel free, but don't expect to export your fear of every shadow and noise and think it is sensible. Dont's sit in your seat of "reason", choosing to vaccinate for HPV but not back gay-focussed AIDS ads and pretend you are consistent or logical.

"We don't fear rape and assault for our daughters and plan our lives, shots, and votes around it."

Ah, the well-known "If I pretend these things don't exist, then they won't happen to me or my kids." That always works well.

Honestly, even the kids of fundamentalists become sexually active in their early teens sometimes. It really boggles my mind that anybody would gamble their kid's life on pretending that's not true.

It is not a matter of living our lives in fear, but of not choosing to live our lives in ignorance.

Granted that was an extreme example, but point was that bad things can happen at times and places we don't expect. Even if they don't, teens can make less than stellar decisions (especially when they don’t have access to accurate sex ed), and people in “monogamous� relationships often find that their trust is misplaced. And rather than crossing our fingers and hoping they don’t suffer life-threatening illness, I think the responsible and truly caring decision is to protect them from one of the few things we can.

And I can't speak for everyone else, but I have no problem with gay-focused AIDS awareness ads - as long as similar ads are directed at other communities that are also affected by AIDS.

Not your lives, buffy. One shot. ONE.

The fear of losing "innocence" is a lot closer to the fear of shadows you mention. Are you telling me that you never tell your children not to talk to strangers or look both ways before they cross the street because it would damage their "innocence" to know that bad things happen in the world, and that doing that would be planning your lives around fear?

Also,

vaccines aren't terribly profitable. Most large pharmeceutical companies aren't even in the business of vaccine development any more because it is so expensive. Most of the innovation in the area is being done by biotech startup companies who then sell their product to a major company once they have some promising stage I clinical trial results. As far as having drugs pushed on your children by the establishment, I'd be much more wary of ADHD medications and the like (you know, the profitable stuff) than vaccines against potentially deadly diseases.

I can also attest as someone not too far removed from their childhood/teen years that if you think your eleven year old daughter doesn't know about sex, you are seriously delusional.

I've experienced the joys of HPV for myself. The waiting for the test results, the laparoscopy, the cryosurgery - and the anxiety of the pap smears ever since...just in case they "didn't get it all", as my doctor warned me. I wouldn't wish it on my child.

Having said that, my daughter's 4 now. I'm hoping that any problems in the vaccine will be worked out by the time she's old enough to be vaccinated.

As far as "living my life in fear", as a parent I prefer to plan for potential dangers. Until recently, our daughter's bed had a fence on one side. She's learning to ride her bike with training wheels. And when she's older, she'll go get the HPV vaccine; just like she's gotten vaccinated against measles, diptheria and chicken pox.

OK, on a totally off-topic note, can I say how lucky your daughter is, Spyderkl, to be growing up in the era of the chicken-pox vaccine? I had the worst case of chicken pox anyone in my family had ever seen (my sister, of course, escaped with only 2 pox on her entire body)--I was totally miserable, missed a week of school, had scabs all over my body for ages, and still have a couple scars. Yay for scientific progress!

To Aarik, this is a little late - I have been busy doing SCIENCE. I was trying to be brief w/ my post, but you'll note that I quoted the REAL risk of serious side-effects of vaccines (0.01%). We vaccinate, but not willy-nilly, and we aren't first in line. This is not about "woo-woo, 'alternative medicine' loving, anti-science concerns." I am a scientist, I have worked in these fields, and I have seen decisions made to sacrifice human health in favor of prolonging a study or making a profit, often by folks who consider themselves to be VERY caring. So yeh, as a a parent, if a vaccine is new and I can wait for MORE DATA, I will. Something in my post cleared bugged you - maybe that I actually wanted a doctor to tell me WHY he was doing something? But my point was, YES, there are reasons not to jump on board with a new vaccine (or drug), but innocence isn't one of 'em.

Dont's sit in your seat of "reason", choosing to vaccinate for HPV but not back gay-focussed AIDS ads and pretend you are consistent or logical.

Holy shit, buffy, you actually think AIDS is a gay disease? Think again, ignoramus. Recently studies have shown that dirty drug syringes are more responsible for the spread of HIV (that's the name of the virus that causes AIDS, by the way) than all irresponsible sex (both heterosexual and homosexual combined) in every country outside of the African continent. Contracting HIV through sex is less likely than through dirty needles, and through gay sex even less than hetero sex when you do take into account Africa.

So stop being such a damn bigget, buffythewhite.

vaccines aren't terribly profitable. Most large pharmeceutical companies aren't even in the business of vaccine development any more because it is so expensive.

Also accurate. Big Pharma is more likely to be making profit and being assholes about some medication with side-effects worse than the cure than pushing expensive vaccines. And since biotech companies and scientists are providing and innovating the vaccines, anti-science government administrations that are making a huge grant problem (Bush) for scientists are the ones egregiously raising the prices of good health care.