In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Because I’m still sick…

Jill

Read my article in Alternet today!

It’s about the HPV vaccine, and the fact that it’s prohibitively expensive for college students (and not covered by university insurance). I wish I had more space in the article to write about the controversies around Gardasil, especially from the perspective of the Big Pharma skeptics, but it just didn’t fit with the flow of the story. And, while I could go on for 50,000 words, no one wants to read that much. Check it out, and I look forward to your thoughts…

9 thoughts on Because I’m still sick…

  1. I’m just curious whether or not you have any hard statistics about how many colleges and universities cover the HPV vaccine. Mine certainly does, for every female over the age of 9, but my university health care is a bit atypical from what I’ve heard.

    I do think it’s problematic if even one insurance plan doesn’t cover it, as it is expensive, but I think that the argument of the article could be stronger for showing just how many do or don’t cover it—and for acknowledging that some do.

  2. MIT covers Gardasil for women over the age of 9. There’s a copay, but it’s no more than for any other vaccine.

  3. I don’t think there are any statistics on how many colleges and universities cover it, because it’s so new. If statistics exist, I certainly couldn’t find them. But as far as I could tell, most student insurance plans don’t cover it.

  5. I’ll have to go back and check my older drafts, but I’m pretty sure that at some point I did mention that. It probably got edited out along the way.

  6. I should add that the Alternet editors are very, very good and I gave them a very tough article — it was 6 or 7 pages long (single spaced) and they chopped it down to a nice, concise size. So a lot got taken out, but had they just printed what I sent them, no one would have read it.

  7. Jill–Sorry to bring this up on an unrelated thread–you can delete it so it doesn’t derail the discussion, but according to a sticky at autoadmit, GTO=Great Teacher Onizuka=Anthony Ciolli resigned. Just wanted to post it here so you would catch the comment.

    Ismone

  9. I just can’t get the anti-HPV vaccine people.
    I’ve seen metatstatic cervical cancer. Anything that might help prevent it is needed.
    In general, I feel that the anti-vaccine crowd should see some of the people I saw in India, with polio, or dying of diptheria.

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