Blog of a Million Dreams

Saturday, February 24, 2007

New Cervical Cancer Vaccine

Lately I've been reading a lot about this new cervical cancer vaccine that the Governor of the State of Texas wants to make mandatory for teenage girls.

And something about the whole thing strikes me.

There is birth control for women (not men) and now there is a cervical cancer vaccine for girls (not boys). Do you see the pattern?

For some reason, it's okay to experiment on the female population (yes, I call it an experiment...remember DDS?), but not on the male population.

And yet, I've read that most generic medicines are designed with men in mind (aspirin, over the counter medication, etc.,.). Even airbags in cars were designed with the passenger in mind as a male.

And when it comes to gender, our country is more than happy to say "men and women are equal and the same" when it comes to our court system, our laws, our working environment, pay, etc.,. And we make laws to ensure that everything is "equal and the same" even though the lives of men and women are very different.

However, this equality and 'sameness', doesn't work. Because "the same" is not always fair or equal. And men and women are not the same. So our medical community focuses only on females when it comes to STD's, birth control or medication that might have an adverse effect on the human system but might help the population as a whole. So we abandon our warped notion of sameness when it comes to the above issues of sexuality and instead create very unequal medicines to go along with our distorted view of gender and biology.

And, when it comes to birth control or sexually transmitted diseases, America seems to say time and time again that this issue is a 'female' issue. And therefore justifies an experimental vaccine (I call it experimental because a whole population hasn't been exposed to it yet) that will just be given to girls.

Sickening.

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