To the Editor:
Your front-page article on the vaccine for four of the 40 strains of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) didn’t include the historical perspective. As a baby boomer, I was born in 1951. The HPV virus was not epidemic then as it is now. Actually, two vaccines are being recommended now that were not offered then; the Gardasil vaccine for HPV and the vaccine for the Hepatitis B virus.
The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s led to the spread of more than 50 sexually transmitted diseases. Hepatitis B became widespread and needed a vaccine primarily because of the practices of the homosexual community. HPV is now a problem because of heterosexual activity.
As Dr. Robert Cantrell of the University of Virginia Medical School has stated, “the Bible is the Owner’s Manual for human life.” When we follow God’s guidelines of sexual relations only in the lifelong commitment of a man and a woman in marriage we not only avoid almost all sexually transmitted diseases, we also avoid the emotional and spiritual toll that ignoring God’s guidance brings.
If we continue in the direction we are going with increasingly immoral practices being accepted and promoted, who knows how many vaccines we will have to develop to protect us from the consequences of rebellion against God? Jesus offers to forgive our sins and to give a new direction and purpose in life to those who have already listened to the corrupt values of our day but want to change. Supposedly intelligent people look for a variety of means of ‘protection’ from the consequences of their actions rather than the obvious answer–do what’s right in the first place.
Sincerely yours,
Rev. Glen Bayly
Mifflinburg Alliance Church
80 Church Road
Mifflinburg, PA 17844