Today is Stupid Day in Meganland

Yay!
(And yes, every day is stupid day in Meganland, but today is extra sooper stupid.)

Why vaccinate for HPV?: Hard as it is to say, I agree with Megan's basic premise here that parents should have their daughters vaccinated. That said, as always, Megan is being dishonest in her representation of the other side, probably out of some unconscious awareness that she's not a good advocate for anything besides not embracing libertarianism.

The New England Journal of Medicine echoed similar feelings in an editorial two weeks ago. "With so many essential questions still unanswered, there is good reason to be cautious about introducing large-scale vaccination programs," it said.

Says the reader:

This study on its own won't change your mind, but maybe the drip, drip of these findings will eventually give you pause.

Let's think about this. Effect [sic] of allergic reactions:

The allergic reactions included nausea, itchy red rash, difficulty breathing and other symptoms.

Megan then goes on to list the numerous potentially horrible and deadly effects of HPV, some of which are unproven, of course. But she doesn't bother to find out what the "other symptoms" are (I'm not sure either, but then I'm not a paid 'journalist'), but she does conclude with this,

Nausea and/or a rash, or hysterectomy? We report, you decide.

Nevermind the "other symptoms", here's the line immediately following her quote about the side effects of the vaccine from the WaPo article.

"These reactions were all potentially serious, meaning that if they were untreated, it is possible they could have progressed to become potentially life-threatening. However, all were rapidly recognized and treated with no serious effects resulting," Brotherton said.

To say again, the vaccine is almost unquestionably a good thing, which young women should be administered. That doesn't mean there aren't problems with it, or that we should ignore them or minimize them because of our belief in its value. Megan can't handle nuance or uncertainty, because she has a small mind.

Update:

Read the comments to this post. People who know a lot more about the subject than both Megan and I have some interesting things to say about Megan's self-righteous anger that people won't force their children to take a fairly untested and not entirely benign vaccine. It's almost as if she's as interested in the welfare of Big Pharma as women.