Unless you’re interested in the field or have had need for specific information, it has been easy to miss the incredible changes that have occured at the FDA, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services — basically every government organization that touches on women’s health issues — in the past six years.

_Glamour_ provides an excellent and in-depth rundown of what has been going on. Over the past few years my opinions on this matter have changed, and it has had almost everything to do with HPV.

The Bush administration engages in a whole lot of practices that I find highly morally objectionable, and one of the most long-lasting harms the administration and its allies in Congress are causing is the complete implosion of some of the most effective and important science-based arms of the government. In the past, though, I’ve stated that while I find concerted efforts to outlaw abortion, withhold contraception, and spread misinformation about STDs and other diseases to be morally reprehensible, at least it is a practice that, while highly detrimental to the people of today, can be quickly corrected within a few years of the next administration coming into office. This in contrast with the accellerating pace of global warming, which has the potential to affect generations of human beings throughout the entire world.

But my view has shifted, and while I still agree to the fundamental principle I’ve espoused, I now also believe the the religiously motivated shenanigans at the FDA and elsewhere are incredibly harmful and bordering on criminal, for one simple reason: *they are trying to kill people*. Inaccurate information about treatable STDs is one thing, inaccurate information and lack of contraception ahd lack of abortions is strange and self-defeating and wrong, but *withholding the cure to a life-threatening disease on moral grounds is unthinkable.* Yet that is exactly what is happening with a new HPV vaccine that Merck is trying to bring ot market.

HPV, a sexually-transmitted disease, is the major cause of cervical cancer among women. This simple vaccine, incredibly effective, cheap to produce, easily administerd, should be included the vaccine cocktails given to all children in the early years of their lives. But some radical religious conservatives, always looking for ways to stop “immoral” premarital sex, have latched on to HPV as their latest weapon, and object strongly to any vaccine that might somehow “encourage” teenages to have premarital sex by lessening their risks of catching various diseases. Their goal, it seems, is to derail Merck’s drug application in much the same way that they have successfully derailed the over-the-counter version of the Plan B emergency contraceptive pill.

Now, admitted, cervical cancer is not in the top 10 or even top 20 cancers. And in many cases the immune system can itself stop HPV before it causes cancerous cells to develop. Additionally, cervical cancer can generally be detected in women who have regularily gynacological exams. But I find these points immaterial next to the moral absurdity of a political position, supposedly based in deeply held religious beliefs, that is saying, in effect, that *people who have premarital sex deserve to die.* I believe these people are completely morally bankrupt, and I don’t think anything anyone can say is going to convince me otherwise. I can’t even imagine how they might react if a cure to HIV/AIDS was found.

And so while I think global warming and other major environmental problems may be a larger problem than the corruption of science relating to sexual health, when people start getting *cancer* because some blowhard doesn’t like the concept of teenagers having sex, I really start to worry about what other sorts of science is being adversely affected, and what lasting consequences it will be having both to my generation and my children’s generation.