I Heartily Concur: Bill Maher

Writing on Salon a few weeks ago, Bill Maher started an op-ed about the current HPV vaccine controversy this way:

New Rule: If you don't think your daughter getting cancer is worse than your daughter having sex, then you're doing it wrong.

I don't have much to add to what he wrote. I have a daughter, and another on the way, and as soon as they can be given this vaccine (at age nine), they will be.

Am I worried that giving her this vaccine will make her want to have sex? No. I'm worried that not giving her this vaccine will increase her risk of getting CANCER.

According to the National Cancer Institute (a division of the National Insitutes of Health), 10,000 women will be diagnosed with the cancer caused by HPV this year, and 4,000 will die from it. The vaccine prevented nearly 100 percent of the precancerous cervical cell changes caused by HPV, and the NCI estimates that it has the potential to reduce cervical cancer deaths around the world by as much as two-thirds.

It's pretty simple: this vaccine prevents cancer. Many people who get cancer die. Therefore this vaccine prevents people from dying. It will help prevent my children, and yours, and everyone's, from dying.


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As far as the sex thing is concerned, giving my daughters this vaccine will give them a better chance of living to the point where I have to worry about them having sex. I'll deal with that issue then, and I'll be glad I have to worry about it at all.