Hillary Clinton, Lesbian Moms and Lesbians with Breast Cancer Mean Vaccines Are a Lesbian Feminist Issue.
As a journalist and a feminist, I am a proponent of free speech. The First Amendment in the US is not, as I remind people all the time, to protect the speech with which we agree. It’s to protect the views that are unpopular. Those might be the grotesqueries of neo-Nazis or it may be my speech, as a lesbian feminist Socialist on the far left of the political spectrum.
In recent weeks as the measles outbreak has spread to half the continental US, I have heard the debate over vaccinations described as “free speech” and even heard Republican presidential hopefuls say everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Vaccinations are not a matter of “opinion,” Jenny McCarthy notwithstanding.
To paraphrase lesbian satirist and essayist Fran Lebowitz, your right to not vaccinate your children stops at my right to stay alive.
As an investigative reporter for 30 years, I have covered a lot of health crises in America, notably HIV/AIDS at its most virulent point over the first decade and a half of the epidemic, various cancers impacting women, the resurgence of tuberculosis in the US and most recently, the Ebola virus.
I also published an award-winning book on lesbians and cancer, Coming Out of Cancer: Writings from the Lesbian Cancer Epidemic and Restricted Access: Lesbians and Disability.
I know science. I know viruses. I know that the only real treatment for viruses is vaccines. The need for vaccines to stop the spread of deadly illnesses is why scientists are currently searching for a vaccine for Ebola and it’s why they have been searching for a vaccine for HIV/AIDS for three decades.
Nine years ago the first vaccine to prevent a cancer that killed thousands of women every year was approved by the FDA. The vaccine was for HPV–Human Papilloma Virus–which is, according to the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), the cause of virtually all cervical cancers and the cause of most anal cancers and some vaginal, vulvar, penile, and oropharyngeal (throat and laryngal) cancers.
In 2014, studies revealed that use of the HPV vaccine had already shown a reduction of HPV by 56% with a significant drop in HPV related cancers. In only nine years of the vaccine being available, that is massive.
Cervical cancer was known as a killer of younger women, as are anal and vaginal cancers, so the use of the vaccine has indeed been saving the lives of women and girls.
Vaccines have eradicated or contained diseases that have killed millions of people, most notably the smallpox vaccine, which has completely eradicated that disease. Over 300 million people–the same number as nearly the entire population of the US–died from smallpox in the 20th century alone, worldwide. According to the CDC, the vaccine saves approximately 5 million lives annually.
According to UNICEF, while smallpox is the only disease that has been completely eradicated through vaccines, others could be as well. Over 80% of the world’s children are immunized against the polio virus, cutting the annual number of new cases from a half million in 1980 to 416 reported cases in 2013.
The reduction is the result of the global effort to eradicate the disease. In 2015, only 3 countries (Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan) remain polio-endemic, down from more than 125 in 1988. In addition, yellow fever, diphtheria and tetanus have come close to being eradicated through vaccines.
And then there is measles. According to the World Health Organization, the number of measles deaths globally decreased by 71% between 2000 and 2013, from 542 000 to 158 000. The disease was eradicated in the US in 2000.
But in 2014, the number of cases in the US and throughout the West began to rise as mostly white, middle-class parents continued to ignore warnings about the vital import of vaccinations.
A current outbreak of measles across the US, fomented by vectors of people refusing to vaccinate, has catapulted the issue of vaccines into the headlines–and the 2016 presidential race.
On Feb.2, President Obama said in an interview with NBC News, “There is every reason to get vaccinated. There aren’t reasons to not. I just want people to know the facts and science and the information,” the president said. “And the fact is that a major success of our civilization is our ability to prevent disease that in the past have devastated folks. Measles is preventable.”
Obama was the first of several politicians to weigh in. Likely Democratic nominee for president and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed the President’s interview with this tweet:
The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest
Replies to Hillary’s tweets were, unsurprisingly, uniformly vile. But the issue of vaccines quickly became political. Democrats were overwhelmingly supportive of vaccinations, while Republicans–not so much. NJ Gov. Chris Christie said it was a matter of parental choice. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said vaccines had been linked to “mental disorders.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry apologized for once mandating the HPV vaccine, which has been proven to save lives.
The epidemic of vaccination skepticism, based on unfounded and discredited anti-vaccine beliefs promoting the lie that vaccines cause everything from allergies to autism, has contributed to the growing public health crisis.
And make no mistake–it is a public health crisis and one that impacts lesbians like myself, with immune systems suppressed by cancer or other diseases or lesbians mothers with babies or toddlers still too young to be vaccinated or women whose own parents neglected to immunize them.
And then there is HPV, which the CDC states is the most common STD in the US. About 20 million Americans ages 15 to 49 currently have HPV–that’s nearly one in three adults. And at least half of all sexually active men and women get genital HPV at some time in their lives, including lesbians, bisexual women and trans women.
It’s easy to presume if you are currently childless and healthy that the vaccine debate doesn’t affect you–but you would be wrong. Issues that impact some lesbians impact all lesbians. Cancer is pandemic in the lesbian community, as I have written here many times over the years
Lesbians also have a high rate of other autoimmune diseases, which the CDC reports are “quite common, affecting more than 23.5 million Americans. They are a leading cause of death and disability.”
The CDC also notes that more women than men get autoimmune diseases. Among the diseases common to women are chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune hepatitis, Grave’s disease, celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), MS, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and among African American women, Vitiligo and sickle cell anemia.
The vaccine “debate” isn’t happening in a vacuum. Measles can cause death–it’s not “just a rash,” as some anti-vaxxers insist. The CDC states, “Some [infected with measles] may suffer from severe complications, such as pneumonia (infection of the lungs) and encephalitis (swelling of the brain). They require hospitalization and could die. One out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of death from measles in young children.”
Vaccines save lives–whether it’s smallpox, polio, measles or HPV. Getting vaccinated protects not just the person or child who gets the vaccination, but people around them who can’t get the vaccine. If you could save a life, why wouldn’t you? Lesbians are not immune to that question.