With the current prevalence of the HPV virus in the North American population, unless your son or daughter remain virgins for their entire lives, do you now what the chances are that they will be infected with HPV during their lifetime?
Approximately seventy five percent. (75%)
"But what does all of this have to do with my pure as the driven snow daughter?", somebody might ask.
Well, it has a lot to do with her, even if you keep her locked up in her room until her wedding day. You know why? Because you had ZERO control over her future husband.
Once a virgin bride sleeps with her husband on her wedding night, as far as a sexually transmitted virus is concerned, she also slept with every woman that her new husband ever slept with as well as all the men that those women ever slept with as well as all the women that those men ever slept with as well as all the men that those women ever slept with .... and on and on and on.
Before you believe that HPV only affects other people's daughters, think about that simple fact of viral epidemiology and then think about how much control you have had over your daughter's present or future husband.
With up to 30% of the ENTIRE ADULT POPULATION infected at any one time by HPV, it is a huge public health issue. Vaccination can reverse that trend and actually make a virus extinct from an inoculated population. A vaccine for a virus with a much lower infection incidence, Hepatitis B, is already a mandated in most states.
But why start at age 12?
Because, for the best immunity, the series is given in three stages, before any sexual contact.
"But why vaccinate teenagers? My daughter would never have sex as a teenager."
Well, remember that virus chain?
Somebody's daughter, a 25 year old virgin, was infected with HPV on her wedding night by her new husband that never claimed to be a 27 year old virgin. He was infected when he was 23 by a girl that was infected when she was 18 who was infected by a boy that was infected when he was 16 by a girl who was infected when she was 13.
Don't think that the sexual conduct, which occurred years ago, of a 13 year old girl you never met and never will meet will never affect your family because it could be the cause of your daughter's cervical cancer 15 years from now.
That is how Mother Nature's nasty game of sexually transmitted viral epidemiology works.
How do you stop Mother Nature's nasty game.
You immunize the population and, over time, the virus becomes extinct .... Just like the Polio virus became extinct.
Ask somebody who is old enough to remember about the fears that every summer brought to every family in America before the Polio virus became extinct .... Because of a vaccine program.
