If you haven’t yet been offered a list of reasons to vaccinate yourself and your children, don’t fear: In this week’s issue, Sadja Greenwood and Steve Heilig present a personal and professional plea to convince you to stick with others to prevent disease. Peter Seidman explores a community vision plan for Strawberry, and Charles Brousse finds conflict and comedy in RVP’s production of ‘A Month in the Country.’ And if you’re on the hunt for wine and cheese this weekend, Tanya Henry has you covered with some delicious options. All that and more in this week’s Pacific Sun, available online and on stands today.
Vaccinations! I love vaccinations – especially the ones where you can ski and…..oh wait. Never mind.
How do I feel about Vaccinations? I am not for the HPV Vaccination being given to younger and younger kids, usually girls. Our girls are not going to be child brides or married off to old men and are not at risk for VD and STDs and having babies by age 13 like young girls sold into sex slavery and forced marriages are in other countries. They need the vaccine, and they are least likely to get routine annual physicals and Pap Smears when they are older too. I think the Pap Smears do a fine job and are reliable. I’ve just read too much bad stuff about this Vaccine to take the risk. Now that families can’t sue Pharmaceutical companies for bad Vaccine outcomes (law created in 1986 under President Reagan) there are more and more vaccines being created so I just see no upside to that one for young girls as young as nine. Every vaccine carries a degree of risk and to me this particular one is over the top in risk and the PAP smear is already doing a great job and should be continued. At the very least, any parents contemplating having this one administered should insist that the child be tested for HPV first, really have a determination made if the child has acquired exposure to HPV because to have the vaccination when the child has already acquired HPV makes the vaccination far more dangerous.
As someone who grew up fearing polio (I know four people who suffered it), I believe that anyone who is not vaccinated should be prevented from attending public school and any public gathering for that matter.