by Jimmy Nightingale

Created on: September 21, 2007   Last Updated: June 02, 2008

I just don't get it.

I mean, we have some ground breaking research that culminates in a medical miracle, yet people are cracking a wobbly over it. That it might make our little girls promiscuous. Or encourage licentious behaviour on the part of our daughters.

Confused? I am. I'm not talking about the morning after pill - where these critics might have a case. The medical miracle I refer to here is Gardasil.

Okay, you have probably never heard of it. And you would be forgiven. It hasn't been around very long. It was only approved for use in the US last year. So, what is it?

In short, it is a cervical cancer vaccine. In fact, the only one available and it is extremely effective. Human papillomavirus (or HPV) causes about 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases and about 90 per cent of genital warts cases. Gardasil vaccinates against the HPV types that cause these cases. Given to a girl before she becomes sexually active, it is 100 per cent effective. If she has already been exposed to HPV and carries the virus, the effectiveness decreases to about 70 per cent.

In Australia, about 200 women die each year from cervical cancer. Around 600-700 new cases are diagnosed each year. This entails a lot of grief on the part of the patient and their families and places a significant burden on the health system. In the US, it is estimated that around 3,700 women will die of cervical cancer in 2007. Why would anyone be opposed to saving this number of lives? Gardasil can't save them all, but potentially 70 per cent of them can be by this simple vaccination.

Texas Governor, Rick Perry, issued an executive order in February 2007 mandating the vaccine be given to all girls entering the sixth grade from September 2008. Despite the fact that this order allowed parents to opt out of the program, this didn't sit well with some Texas conservatives. That is an understatement - they were livid. Irate enough to file a lawsuit alleging that Perry's order was unlawful and contradicts Texas' abstinence only sexual education practices.

What surprised me is that Perry is a Republican. I congratulate the man for standing up for his convictions. The problem is that he upset the hell out of a lot of his own party members. So much so that the Texas legislature passed a bill last month overturning Perry's order.

There is an old joke - Q: What's the definition of a virgin in Texas? A: A girl who can run faster than her brother. I guess you can take out of that there is a lot of inbreeding in Texas (where

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