For a while, the Daily Mail has been has been casually stirring up oposition to the vaccine against the virus associated with cervical cancer. A few weeks ago, the print edition had a banner asking something like “Would you let your daughter have the sex jab?”

This vaccine has been offered to all 14 year-old girls and is being promoted on tv. It almost defies belief that anyone would object to it. However, the utterly irrational idea has been spread that it somehow promotes promiscuity.

Quick recap on the blindingly obvious point that cancer is worse than “promiscuity.” On any scale. By several orders of magnitude. You would assume that even the most extreme bigot must see that.

Quick logic check on the idea that the vaccine will somehow encourage promiscuity. Does any teenager make decisions about sex on the basis of a remote chance that they might get cancer at some unspecified time in a couple of decades? This is well nigh inconceivable. Have they even been teenagers or ever met one? Making decisions on the basis of something that could just about occur in bounds of possibility in the remote future? Does that sound very teenage? (Does that even sound human? Look at our leaders’ action on climate change, ffs) Pregnancy or STDs are much more likely and immediate bad outcomes of sex and they don’t seem to be putting off kids from following the urges of nature, do they?

Any argument against the vaccine on these grounds is basically an argument for honour killing.

I am truly staggered that there are people so evil that they would rather that their daughters died in a horrific way than have sex. Ever. There is no reason to assume that even an abstinence-till-marriage policy (hat tip, US “sex education” absurdity) would guarantee that the poor girl who observed it to the letter wouldn’t marry someone who has the virus.

Anyway, A Roman Catholic school (no surprise there) has decided that it won’t allow the vaccine to be provided on its premises. In fairness, the school governors distance themselves from the demented argument on “morality”, there being no way in which this can be seen as a “moral” stance, except possibly by the standard of the Taliban.

Although some religious groups are opposed to the vaccine because of fears it may encourage promiscuity, the governors make no moral objection to the programme. (From the BBC)

Instead, the governors claim that they are refusing on health grounds.

In it, they question the effectiveness of the injections and point out the possible side effects.
The letter says a number of the school’s pupils who took part in a pilot study were subsequently off school suffering from nausea, joint pain, headaches and high fevers.

I doubt that the governors have the scientific credentials or research backing to question the “effectiveness ” of the vaccine. I know nothing about the veracity of the side effects claim, but, even if it were true, I think most people would rather than a headache than cancer. So, I’m going to suggest that they have taken the cowardly way out, in response to the concerns raised by the likes of the Daily Mail.

Yet another good reason for not sending kids to “faith schools.”