Richard Zurawski

This is a relatively new story as reported in the Globe and Mail

“Alberta is scrambling to come up with a backup plan to vaccinate girls against a virus that causes cervical cancer as more Catholic school boards opt out over a program they say condones premarital sex.

So far at least six of Alberta’s 20 Catholic boards have voted against allowing girls in Grades 5 and 9 to be inoculated against HPV in schools. More boards are expected to say no after Calgary Bishop Fred Henry spoke out against the program during a meeting with school trustees.”

When I read the article I was left speechless. I thought to myself, here we go again. And in fifty the years I suppose the Catholic Church will again trip all over itself to cover up another horrendous tragedy. Thousands of women who could have been spared a needless early death to cervical cancer will now receive a death sentence because church officials in with their sanctimonious pronouncements came up with the absurd suggestion that they should be denied a vaccine in the name of halting promiscuity.

Modern science is an amazing tool. It has given us a lifestyle that could only be described as miraculous. A few short centuries ago average life spans were less than half of what they are today. Bacterial diseases have been fought to a standstill with antibiotic agents like penicillin. Before penicillin even a scratch could become septic and ravage the body’s defenses and lead to death. Vaccines defeated scourges like Small Pox, the greatest mass killer in human history, making it the first disease ever to be eradicated.

We have unravelled DNA, genetically re-engineered cells, cloned cells, plants and animals and are on the verge of defeating horrendous afflictions. Nothing in human history has worked like western modern medicine. And yet superstitious silliness still seems to run strong. There are those who refuse blood transfusions, based on scripture, others take up a variety of charlatanous practices like the laying on of hands to cure illness and still others promote reflexology, raky and host of ridiculous and dangerous pseudo medical substitutes.

This latest salvo from the Catholic Church is as stupid as any that I have heard. With this vaccine the parasitical virus that cause cervical warts (Human Papillo Virus – HPV) and is the leading cause of cervical cancer is stopped in its tracks. The virus is passed from person to person during sex. The vaccine prevents the virus being passed on if the woman is inoculated with the vaccine. The vector is broken and the woman does not become infected with the virus which often leads to cervical cancer.

That a school board of any sort, Catholic or otherwise, should come out against the vaccine because they feel it promotes promiscuity, sickens me. It is the same twisted logic that allowed HIV to rip through the Gay community in the late seventies and early eighties with the justification that it was a revenge from a vengeful deity in response to an immoral lifestyle.

That this should occur in this day and age is again proof that a clique of powerful old men with anti female bias is still a huge problem in our world.