Always give credit where credit is due.
I'm an extremely imperfect person, but I have some ethical standards I try to honor, no matter what.
That opening line up there is one of them. I put it up there today because I'm about to recommend a post over at Ace of Spades.
I don't have much in common with Ace of Spades or most of the people who comment there. But I just have to link this post, because Ace has nailed it.
For those of you just tuning in, here's the recap:
In 2007, Texas Governor (and now Presidential hopeful) Rick Perry signed an executive order mandating that all six-grade girls be innoculated against Human Papillomavirus with Gardasil. Human Papillomavirus- HPV- is responsible for 70% of all cervical cancers. Gardasil is- both in effect and by design- an anti-cancer vaccine.
Michelle Bachmann has decided to use Gardasil as a talking point against Perry. As Ace puts it:
So now an anti-vax lunatic buttonholes Michelle Bachmann (or so she claims, at least) and tells her the story of how Gardasil caused her child's autism. At age 12. Late onset autism, I guess. And despite there being absolutely no connection between Gardasil and late onset autism (whatever that is), she broadcasts her new medical findings out to the public.
Here's the clip Ace is referencing:
With this statement, Bachmann has placed herself firmly in the anti-vaxer camp. Ace notes this and launches into an excellent rant about anti-vaxers (including pundit Michele Malkin). Some quotes:
This is the whole point of the anti-vax movement, as I said before: They want vaccinations to be the exception, not the rule, so that they don't have to endure the hectoring of a doctor telling them that diseases are bad. They don't want to feel "weird," so they seek to make their own personal rule (which is in fact fringe) the rule for everyone. That way, they fit in, and no more arguing with doctors!
That's not liberty. That's not freedom. That's trying to use political power to force your beliefs on others.
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It's also using political power to force others to undertake the same risks you choose for yourself. Back to Ace:
Michelle Malkin goes on and on about this, about how doctors were so darn arrogant in telling her about the usefulness of vaccinations, and didn't seem to respect her skepticism, and so on. And I think she said a doctor said he'd drop her kid as a client unless he was vaccinated.
Well, that's the doctors right, isn't it? It's amazing to me how many conservatives believe their own personal liberty includes "freedom from confrontation or people disagreeing with me" and yet other people's freedom barely even includes plain-old freedom.
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HPV is something that half the population has had. Most don't even know they've had it-- you get it, most people don't even know they've gotten it, then it goes away.
It's a fairly trivial "STD," except for one thing: It causes 70% of all cervical cancer.
That's why a vaccine was developed -- not to protect against a minor (and incredibly widespread) STD whose direct symptoms are fairly trivial, but to protect against the deadly cancer it causes late in life.
This is being demagogued as some "Pro-Sex" STD vaccination. But no one would have bothered to make a vaccine for it all -- it's pretty minor, as far as primary effects -- except for that "deadly cervical cancer" part.
It's an anti-cancer vaccine. Period.
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Let that last phrase roll off your tongue for a moment: anti-cancer vaccine.
To those of us who came of age during the War on Cancer, the idea of any anti-cancer vaccine is medical nirvana.
My father has leukemia, one of my coworkers died of breast cancer several years ago, and recently another coworker lost her daughter-she was only 21- to ovarian cancer.
Think about that, and about any cancer victims in your own life, and try out that phrase again: anti-cancer vaccine.
Of course, Gardasil is only intended to protect against certains types of cervical cancer, not all the other types of cancer mentioned above. But the fact remains that it is an anti-cancer vaccine, something than can actually protect a person from a form of cancer. It's not another new treatment for an existing cancer, it's a preventative. It's not a new chemotherapy or a new form of radiation or a new surgical technique that might save the lives of some cancer patients, it's a preventative that will result in fewer people getting cancer in the first place.
That is a victory few people dared dream of when the War on Cancer began in 1971. And instead of celebrating, Bachmann and the anti-vaxers are shrieking with dismay.
That is some pretty thick crazy.
I'll close by offering a link to Jenny McCarthy Body Count. The website defines itself this way:
Jenny McCarthy has a body count attached to her name. This website will publish the total number of vaccine preventable illnesses and vaccine preventable deaths that have happened in the United States since June 2007 when she began publicly speaking out against vaccines.
Is Jenny McCarthy directly responsible for every vaccine preventable illness and every vaccine preventable death listed here? No. However, as the unofficial spokesperson for the United States anti-vaccination movement she may be indirectly responsible for at least some of these illnesses and deaths and even one vaccine preventable illness or vaccine preventable death is too many.
Let's hope Ms. McCarthy is never forced to share credit with Michelle Bachmann.
(I will now return to disagreeing with Ace of Spades, and being regarded as a Mush-Minded Moderate by those who comment/post there.)
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