catqueen wrote:
hm -- it would be shaky ground to enforce it for guys if there were absolutely no benefits to them maybe. (maybe) But even still, its the greatest good for the greatest number. If a guy being vaccinated prevented 3 girls from contracting it, then yes, i think its a worthwhile risk. I see what you mean, but i don't think its completely right to say you cant expect people to take risks for other people. They would be preventing themselves getting the virus in the first place, so there is benefit to them. I'm trying and failing to think of an example where someone is expected to take a risk for other ppls benefit. I guess bone marrow transplants, or live organ donation, but both of those are usually for specific people, and usually people known to the donor. I do know some home carers who get the flu vaccine because of the impact flu would have on the person they care for, when the person they care for refuses to get the vaccine, but again, that is for the benefit of a specific person.
My point of course is not that it's a dog eat dog world and we're all on our own baby. Ha ha. Consideration and concern for others motivates things each of us do voluntarily every day and it's a rewarding part of being a human being. It would certainly be part of what I would cover in any discussion with my own son about any decision he might make to get the vaccination. What I was reacting to was the assumption that seemed to be being made that the recommendation for boys was exclusively to protect the girls - that they were 'carriers' and such - and since it was for a school assignment I thought it might benefit the OP to think that through a bit more.
Back to our hypothetical situation. :) There are more routes to a high number of boys being vaccinated than enforcement alone. Cultural and social expectations for example, or messaging from health organizations and special interest fuchsia ribbon "Be a Dear and Protect Women from Cervical Cancer' type campaigns could all put upward pressure on the number of boys who would eventually roll up their sleeve and be injected. In Canada there are Gardasil adoption rates that vary by province from about 50% up to about 90%. Let's hypothesize that with education and acceptance and lobbying we could eventually assume a steady average adoption rate of about 80% or so for both boys and girls. So in a class of 30 kids (assuming 50% girls and 50% boys), 24 get vaccinated and 6 don't. That leaves 3 girls unprotected who could benefit from immunity conferred to the boys. So 12 boys have been vaccinated to potentially protect 3 girls. We're already at 4 times the aggregate risk and none of the benefit.
Add to that now that the actual statistics are that it takes the vaccination of just under 800 girls to prevent one lifetime death from cervical cancer. That's the girls directly protected themselves. So by the time we statistically get to that special case where that one vaccinated boy who would have been among the percentage of people who otherwise would have contracted HPV, who now doesn't give it to the minority unvaccinated girl he's slept with, who now has to be among the small minority of girls who doesn't clear the virus on her own and instead develops a persistent infection, and further is one of the percentage again whose infection develops into cervical cancer, and that cancer is not caught during a regular screening of the type that is available to all of us from our late teens, and finally that the cancer is not cured or managed and eventually proves to be fatal - well by this time we have vaccinated at least several thousand boys to prevent the death of one woman from cervical cancer in her lifetime. Given that that same woman could have been protected at a ratio of one girl:one shot it's clear that we would have asked a lot of our boys who's health and bodies should be just as valued. Vaccination risks are small but real, from personal reactions to unsafe clinical conditions to getting hit by a bus on the way there.
Further thought experiment: what if for every x number of women whose lives were saved under the above scenario one boy died from some circumstance of the vaccine. This would fall under a purely objective 'greatest good' and you can choose the magnitude. At what value of x would it become morally acceptable to adopt/encourage such a policy that would see, in effect, a boy who lost his life to cervical cancer?
That's all a little simplified and hypothetical but again I just thought it deserved more thought because such a scenario would neither be as straightforward or as morally clear as it seemed to me that people were presenting it.