Why do Women have all the Responsibility ?

The new vaccine Garadsil, is being marketed to prevent the spread of human papillomavirus. The makers of the vaccine stress the point that Gardasil protects women against two strains of HPV that cause 70% of cervical cancers. In this light it has only been approved in the states for women 11-26. At first glance this makes sense. Looking further, however, it begs the question; don’t men get and transmit HPV as well? The answer is, yes. The rate of disease infection is not significantly different for men and women. Upwards of 80% of sexually active adults will have an HPV infection at some point in their lives. Why then hasn’t this drug been approved for use in males? It hasn’t been approved because research hasn’t been concluded to prove it would work for men and men don’t typically have major complications from HPV infection. There are two things to consider here. One would think that human physiology doesn’t change that much. Polio vaccines, for example weren’t being tested independently for boys and girls to satisfy a concern that it might not work for one sex. For that matter, many European countries do recommend the vaccine for both sexes, presumably because they didn’t discriminate their pool of research subjects. Secondly, whether men typically have further complications shouldn’t factor into the equation. The bigger issue here is that women wouldn’t be getting HPV at anywhere near the same rate if it were not for the men with whom the heterosexual women are being intimate passing it on to them. The responsibility for the sexual promiscuity is being placed squarely and unfairly into the laps of women. Again, this only reaffirms our culture’s premise that a man is allowed to—if not expected to—exert his masculinity through his sexuality at whatever cost.