Do you really want to punish your child with an incurable disease for breaking your sexual rules? Grounding them is one thing. Forcing them to live with genital warts and possibly cancer or even death is not an appropriate way to punish a child for making a one time mistake--or for disagreeing with your lifestyle choice. It happens. Parents and their offspring don't always turn out to have the same ideas. You've been given a chance to protect your child (or someone else's) from deadly cancer. Even if your child got cervical cancer 25 years from now and they *did* get it from having sex in high school, would you really sit on the edge of the hospital bed, watching her waste away, and think, "I'm really glad I didn't get her that vaccine. She made a lifestyle choice when she had sex with her longtime boyfriend and she deserves this painful, ugly death."
Just something to consider, even if it was simply an STD only. But it's not. Your kid could never have had sex and still could have it and spread it. Pointing fingers and placing blame isn't something we should risk the public health over. Anyway, that's why I agree with your doctor's choice.
I'm sorry, but despite your last comment on this thread, your comment above most certainly does imply that I am intentionally putting my child in harms way.
I wrote that statement, not to say that you are intentionally putting your child in harm's way, but rather that *no one* would want to put their child in that type of situation, though it is, effectively what happens when it's withheld as a "lifestyle" disease. Clearly, I did a bad job of communicating that, and should not have used the pronoun "you" when I should have used the royal "we". The "you" reads too easily as my meaning "you" specifically, which isn't the case, and it bothered me that it sounded that way, which is why I wanted to write this. I didn't explain my p.o.v very well and made it sound like I was targeting you, personally, when what I was trying to do is explain the clearly unintended resulted risk we put children in the path of when we withhold a vaccine because we feel that it is related to a behavior we think we can count on children to never once particpate in. It's kind of moot anyway since they can absolutely be exposed without ever having sex since we can't possibly know every person's exposure risk, their parents' exposure risk, the people their associates' at work, school, the park, etc. exposure risk, and so on.
Anyway, I am very sorry. I should have been much more thoughtful when posting and have realized that what I was saying could be hurtful. It did sound like I was targeting you when I was trying to make a point about the dangers of thinking of this as a "lifestyle" vaccine in general. Life can sideswipe us with all sorts of things. I really did mean the statement to be a view into the larger picture and the potential risks no parent, even those who are against vaccinating, would want to effectively place upon their child. Certainly no parent wants to make a choice that puts their child at risk of death for having sex (even condom protected sex doesn't protect against HPV) that is why I used such an extreme scenario as an example. My attempt to find a common example of a risk I think we can all agree is unacceptable turned to to do nothing but divide us. I apologize for my poor choice of words and for making it sound like such a personal attack, which I see now that you pointed it out. I didn't want to be a jerk, but apparently I succeeded in doing so anyway. Truce?