By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 12 years ago

Breaking news: HPV vaccine does NOT make you more “promiscuous”

Why would anyone oppose a vaccine that could protect people from the human papillomavirus and, ultimately cervical cancer? Well, there’s intellectual heavy weight and amateur scientist Michele Bachmann, who claims the vaccine causes mental retardation. But a more widespread fear among some conservatives is that it will lead to “promiscuity.” And at the end of the day, having a lot of sex with a lot of people is way worse than dying of cancer.

Of course, the science proves, once again, that there is no correlation between the HPV vaccine and sexual behavior. A new study looking at a sample of nearly 1,400 girls, found no evidence that those who were vaccinated beginning around age 11 went on to engage in more sexual activity than girls who were not vaccinated. Robert A. Bednarczyk, the lead author of the report and a clinical investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research Southeast, in Atlanta is “hopeful that once physicians see this, it will give them evidence that they can give to parents… Hopefully when parents see this, it’ll be reassuring to them and we can start to overcome this barrier.”

I don’t know if I believe the science, guys. I mean, I got the HPV vaccine and immediately tried to have sex with the nurse who gave it to me. Then on my way out I tried to have sex with other people in the waiting room. And don’t get me started on what I did on my subway ride home!

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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