Michael Bérubé is more than a little pissed off at Sen. Sam Brownback’s anti-abortion showboating at the Roberts hearings:
OK, Senator Brownback, listen up and listen good. Jamie Bérubé is a 14-year-old with Down syndrome, and I celebrate Jamie every mother-lovin’ day. Right now, in fact, Janet and I are celebrating his right to attend seventh grade with his nondisabled peers; we visited his science class yesterday, and we celebrated his use of the microscope and we celebrated the moment he raised his hand in response to a question, was called on, and said that some cells might look like “rectangles or squares.� And while I’ve counseled other parents—and genetics counselors themselves—that a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome should not be followed automatically by a decision to terminate the pregnancy, I strongly believe that all such advice should be a matter of persuasion rather than coercion. Many families, for whatever reasons, decide that they do not have the financial or emotional resources to raise a child with a significant disability, and I do not support clerics, mullahs, and their elected-official enablers who insist that the police power of the state be marshalled to compel those families to bear children against their will. Furthermore, unlike most contemporary conservatives and unlike all libertarians, I insist that the full health-education-and-welfare resources of the state be made available to every family that does decide to bear a child with a disability.
You, Sam—you and your cohort of extremists in Opus Dei, together with your extremist counterparts on the other side of the Reformation—profess to be worried about the constitutional rights that accrue to fetuses, embryos, and zygotes. Indeed, you are so worried about the rights of fetuses that you will install at the head of our nation’s highest court a man who almost surely will strip numerous constitutional rights from living humans. But then, your cohort is not always as concerned about humans ex utero as humans in utero. You all have made that clear time and time again. And one of the differences between people like me, who are actually raising children with disabilities while supporting other prospective parents’ right to determine what will happen with their bodies and their families, and people like you, for whom attractive 14-year-olds with Down syndrome are props to be used in the service of theocracy, is that people like me do not necessarily want to invoke the power of the state to ensure that our own choices are made mandatory for everybody else. People like me celebrate reproductive rights as one of the cornerstones of individual freedom; people like you are dedicated to finding ways of making individual rights pass right through a woman’s body, so that they adhere only to the zygote-embryo-fetus in the womb.
This was in the paper this morning.
Bradenton Herald | 09/22/2005 | STD vaccines prove effective - for children
Posted on Thu, Sep. 22, 2005
Conservatives fear immunizations could push teen sex
TRAN M. PHUNG
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO - A wave of experimental vaccines against sexually transmitted diseases could revolutionize the prevention of such infections during the next few years, but there’s a catch: The shots likely will work best when given to children as young as age 11.
The first such vaccine to prevent human papillomavirus - the leading cause of cervical cancer - could be submitted for approval to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by year’s end. Another vaccine against genital herpes is in advanced clinical trials, and shots for gonorrhea and chlamydia are in the works.
Already the injections have drawn moral opposition from some conservative groups, who fear such immunizations could give young teens a green light to have sex.
Medical experts who are helping develop the vaccines conceded that some parents might find the idea of shielding their young children from future STDs hard to accept. But they said the overriding goal is to save lives by boosting children’s immune systems before they are exposed to the viruses that cause such diseases.
“For most parents, the moral decision is to protect their children,” said Dr. Gregory Zimet, a professor of pediatrics and clinical psychology at Indiana University School of Medicine who has studied parents’ views on the immunizations.
Guarding children against such diseases is not a completely new idea. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already recommends the hepatitis B vaccine for adolescents 11 to 15 years old. Although generally not considered an STD - infection can be passed from mother to baby during birth or through use of dirty needles - hepatitis B primarily is spread through unprotected sex.
The new vaccines are fueling a moral battle as conservative groups promoting abstinence say they will fight recommendations that children get the shots.
“Sexually transmitted diseases in the United States will not be contained by injecting vaccines into pre-adolescents in anticipation of promiscuous behavior,” Scott Phelps, executive director of Abstinence & Marriage Education Partnership, wrote in a recent statement.
Generally, schools do not teach sexual education until junior high. By then, however, immunizations against STDs may be ineffective.
Research on the vaccines has shown they work best when administered before adolescents become sexually active. Experts said they do not know whether the shots would work on even younger children because the studies so far have not included pre-adolescents.
Drugmaker Merck’s studies showed that Gardasil, its new vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, was 100 percent effective in preventing precancerous disease, but only when given to women and girls who had never engaged in sex at the time of the shots. The drugmakers say the vaccines are no substitute for educating children about sexual activity.
There are more than 100 different types of HPV, making it the most common cause of sexually transmitted infection. Condoms cannot always protect against HPV, as the virus is spread by genital contact. According to the CDC, approximately 20 million people are infected with HPV in the United States, and at least half of sexually active men and women will acquire the virus in their lifetime.
HPV types 16 and 18 cause about 70 percent of cervical cancer and cervical dysplasia - abnormal cells on the surface of the cervix. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 3,700 women in the U.S. die each year of the disease.
The drugmakers are pushing for a CDC recommendation that would urge health-care providers to recommend the vaccination and encourage health plans to cover the cost.
But mainstream use of the vaccines will depend on parental acceptance, experts said.
brownbutt is a major league loony tune..too bad someone as sick as him gets elected…