Did you know Gardasil is on the list of required vaccines for women between the ages of 11 and 26 applying for U.S. citizenship?
I didn't, until I heard about the plight of Simone Davis, a 17-year-old applying for permanent residency in the U.S., yesterday. There are 14 vaccines on that list: 13 are against infectious diseases; the other is Gardasil, which protects against the four strains of HPV that between them cause 70% of cervical cancer and 90% of genital warts.
Davis' official objection - which was recently rejected by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services - is on moral grounds, since she doesn't intend to be sexually active anytime soon. But what appalled and infuriated me about the situation is that the U.S. government is demanding that this young woman receive a vaccine that her American peers can choose to embrace or scorn.
Approved by the FDA in 2006, Gardasil is still a controversial product. Some people object on moral grounds, like Simone and her family (last time I checked, being vaccinated against HPV didn't require you to go have sex, but my objection to that objection is another topic entirely...), some because of the possible side effects - your standard vaccine side effects, plus fainting and an increased risk of blood clots - and some because there just isn't much information available on its pros and cons yet. Personally, it's the last that makes me a little leery but even if I thought Gardasil was the best thing since sliced bread, I wouldn't want it to be mandatory for immigrants when it's optional for American citizens.
Requiring a vaccine that's optional everywhere in the U.S. makes it sound like we're using immigrants as lab rats - because we are. That is not only completely unethical, it's an authoritarian move that denies the freedom we embrace as the heart of the American dream and demonstrates a reprehensible abuse of immigrants' powerless position in society.
I love my country, but sometimes it can be an absolute moron. Let's get rid of the double standards, Uncle Sam, shall we?
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From what I hear Gardasil is also very expensive. I have nothing against the vaccine itself, but I hate that its commercials imply that it is a vaccine against cervical cancer. You can't vaccinate against cancer, dumbasses. There are more causes of cancer than HPV, and genetics is the biggest one. Kinda stupid that the US government is requiring it, it's not like HPV is that big of a deal, which is why the other vaccines are required. Sigh.
Yeah, if you don't have insurance or yours doesn't cover it, I think it can run more than $1,000. And it's completely stupid that it's required, since HPV isn't an "infectious disease" in the same way that chicken pox or the MMR diseases are. Sigh, indeed.
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