Anyway, scientists have developed a vaccine for it.

I think it is cervical cancer.

Oh, I can't find a link right now... but there's this disease that condoms cannot prevent (I forget what). Anyway, scientists have developed a vaccine for it. Now some Christian groups are saying that the vaccine should not be released, because if it is then that's sending a message that it's OK to have sex....

I think it is cervical cancer.

HPV, which is a risk factor for some forms of cervical cancer.

I think it is cervical cancer.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Because they want the fear of cervical cancer to keep women all virginous until marriage....

My mother has played that game -- her argument (usually in connection with abortion) is that if you have sex, you should be prepared to accept the consequences.

I never had the nerve to ask her if she applies the same reasoning to other activities, oh, say, smoking. (FTR, her brother has suffered from smoking-related health problems.)

Autopsy: Schiavo Blind, Brain Damaged June 15 (AP) — An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

[link]

Not that this is a surprise.

HPV, rather. Huma Papilloma Virus. Which is the chief culprit in cervical cancer, and a lot of infertility cases, and I don't know what else.

but there's this disease that condoms cannot prevent (I forget what). Anyway, scientists have developed a vaccine for it. Now some Christian groups are saying that the vaccine should not be released, because if it is then that's sending a message that it's OK to have sex....

The way this is phrased, of course, you could be talking about the flu. Of course, to some on this earth, they'd be happy to outlaw the flu vaccine too, on the off chance that being healthy and not sneezing might lead to sex.

One of the things I've always liked about formal public policy is that it is risk-factors and outcomes, that's all. Sex only matters to government because it is a risk-factor for a bunch of things that cost the government money and cause the government's boss (citizens) to suffer.

After that it becomes a question of Where in the relationship of risk factors to outcomes is it (a) realistic and (b) affordable to intervene? Intervening at the "human nature" stage strikes me as 100 kinds of silly, and is by the way a lot more ambitious than most government programs would ever attempt.

June 15 (AP) — An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

Waits for the uproar over activist coroners.

Waits for the uproar over activist coroners.

Heh.

Stupid reality-based autopsies....

I know what people are going to say -- "they" are covering up the truth, that it's a consipracy and there will be implicatiosn that "they" paid off the officials to get the autopsy report that "they" wanted.

Stupid reality-based autopsies....

I swear, the neo-cons have taken Reagan's "Facts are stupid things" and really fucking ran with it.