Welcome Slate readers. Note, though, that I'm not exactly "socially conservative." More of an economic libertarian. See here and here.
Quote:
Officials of both companies noted that research indicates the best age to vaccinate would be just before puberty to make sure children are protected before they become sexually active.Mandating seat belts has resulted in riskier driving behavior. Mandating the vaccine can be expected to result in riskier sexual behavior. No where in the article are the dots connected between this unintended consequence of the vaccine mandate: more sex without condoms resulting in more deaths due to AIDS.
. . .
11 percent of the doctors said they thought vaccinating against a sexually transmitted disease "may encourage risky sexual behavior in my adolescent patients."
Conservative groups say they welcome the vaccine as an important public health tool but oppose making it mandatory.
. . .
Alan Kaye, executive director of the National Cervical Cancer Coalition, likened the vaccine to wearing a seat belt.
"Just because you wear a seat belt doesn't mean you're seeking out an accident," Kaye said.
For a related discussion see: Private Choices and Public Health : The AIDS Epidemic in an Economic Perspective by Tomas Philipson and Richard A. Posner.
UPDATE: Alex Tabarrok points to work linking access to abortion and risky sex.
2 comments:
I've often heard that seatbelts save more lives every year than number of soldiers killed in the Vietnam war. So if you view seat belt use or nonuse as an aspect of driving behavior - as I do - then you would reach the opposite result: less risky driving behavior.
I'm not ready to make conjectures about the vaccine part of yuor analogy, but I'm not going to have the seatbelts removed.
The commenters and I share a common concern: reduction in the spread of STDs and the human suffering that accompanies them. Would mandating the vaccine do that? There's no easy answer.
Part of what we need to know is the behavioral response of those who received the vaccine whether by choice or by mandate. I suspect the number who become sexually active as a result of the vaccine would be quite small - contrary to the concerns of religious conservatives.
But what of changes in behavior amongst those who are sexually active, such as the number of sex partners?
Making the vaccine universally required may wipe out one sexually transmitted disease, but this benefit cannot be considered in isolation from the spread of other STDs.
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