On inoculations

When pregnant with Madeleine, I was a habitual Babycenter visitor. One day the survey question was, "Will you have your baby immunized?" I was dumbfounded at first, under the impression that the question was ridiculous. They may as well have asked "Are you going to feed your baby?"
You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw the results, though. Something like 40% of respondents said "No." I was aghast, then worried. What was I missing? I followed some of the linked sites to fears of autism, epilepsy, learning disabilities, even death.
I took my concerns to my husband first. He pointed out statistics, weighting them, Internet surveys tend to be skewed. I was somewhat reassured but looked further.
I asked my mother. "What do you think about childhood inoculations, Mom? There are those who are skipping them for fear of side effects."
My mother is smarter than she gives herself credit for, and her mind is untainted by overeducation. She looked me square in the eye and said simply, "My sister died of diptheria, Heather."
Oh. Yeah. See, my mother hails from the Silent Generation. She had classmates in school in the fall, gone for some months over the winter, and return in the spring in a wheelchair due to polio. She had classmates feverish on Tuesday, absent on Wednesday, and dead by Saturday because of measles. She lost her sister. Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers, we don't have those memories. We remember shots at the doctor but not deaths of classmates. That puts a little perspective on it.
Long story short, we got the shots.
In talking with other moms later, one said, "There are so many things out there you can't protect your child from. Why not protect them from what you can?" That makes sense, too.
These folks opting out of all immunizations for ideological reasons are the same ones who don't do antibiotics or tell me we did wrong in getting tubes for Madeleine. I agree that overuse of antibiotics--any medicine, really--is bad. But untreated otitis media can lead to hearing loss, people. And antibiotics save lives.
Which brings me to the new shot--Gárd*ásil (accents for googlers). It's the best thing for our girls, we're told. Some states are making it mandatory! If it were that great, parents would be storming their doctors' offices and you'd have to take a number. Like flu shots.
But some have qualms about it. How is this different from the rest of the shots?
For one, it protects against a disease not caught by casual contact, the way so many others are. Certain, ahem, behavior is required, not usually occurring in schools. It protects against some forms of the disease which cause most cases of cervical cancer. Great. Translated: even nonsmokers can get lung cancer; even men can get breast cancer; even virgins can get cervical cancer. So the shot doesn't prevent anything, it just reduces the risk.
Okay. If you buy into that mentality, why not put all girls on the Pill at age 9? It reduces the risk of pregnancy, right? Far more effectively than Gárd*ásil protects against HPV. The same action is necessary, right? "If they're going to do it anyway..."
"What if your daughter was raped?" See previous paragraphs. If we're going to think that way, when can we expect the shot for boys who would be perpetrating said rape?
"What if she marries a man with it?" Hey, she's only five. They've got probably 20 years. Maybe they'll have a test by then. Maybe they'll have a shot for men by then. Maybe I'll raise her to have higher standards than that. Maybe all of the above.

I have some other questions about this one, this presumption that "they're going to do it anyway." Where is the shot to protect their souls? How do I inoculate against the harm to their psyche by engaging in adult behavior while still a child?