see you at the crossroads

This morning on the Beltway I was driving behind a flatbed truck that had port-o-potties strapped to it. It looked like they were lashed fairly tightly, but I nonetheless thought, “Oh god, with my luck, one of those things is going to get loose. That would be one fuck of a way to die. I’m just driving to work, minding my own business, blasting the a/c and a Puccini CD, and then suddenly a port-o-potty comes hurtling—in a slow, languid, twirling motion—through my windshield and kills me instantly.” It sounds like an urban legend. I don’t want my death to be so absurd, people mistake it for an urban legend. I don’t want my death to be something that elicits snickers when people read about it in the Washington Post. Also, I don’t want to die in a pandemic (bird flu!), because I don’t want to be shoveled into a mass grave.

Last night, on the heels of finishing the 689-page rollicking medieval novel The Decameron (which was delightfully dirty), I decided to shift gears to the modern era and began reading The Brief History of the Dead. It posits something that is apparently believed by some African tribal societies; namely, that after death comes a period where people stay somewhat alive, in a different plane, so to speak, because they remain in the memories of the living people who knew them. After the last person who knew them has died, they leave that half-alive plane for a permanent state of death.

I myself have no definitive theories on the afterlife. Being raised Catholic, I was always taught about the big three components of life after death: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. I don’t really recall my CCD teachers describing those three arenas in much depth, so my young mind filled in the blanks with stereotypes: fluffy clouds, harps, flames, pitchforks, etc. I prayed for the souls in Purgatory every night and feared ending up in Hell for my silly little misdemeanors (but that still didn’t make me embrace the concept of Confession; I absolutely hated Confession, and much literal kicking and screaming ensued every time my parents forced me to go to Confession at Easter and Christmas).

Now that I’m ex-Catholic, agnostic, and areligious, I don’t really know how I view the afterlife. Part of me subscribes to the atheistic belief of consciousness simply ceasing to exist upon death. It’s a bit of a hard theory for me to wrap my mind around, mostly because I can’t comprehend absolute nothingness (even though I descend into it every night when I fall asleep, minus the delightfully bizarre dreams that I periodically retain upon waking). Another part of me digs the theory of reincarnation and the nirvana that you reach after you’ve learned all the lessons you’re meant to learn during various lifetimes. Still another part of me prefers the dreamy heaven that appears in The Lovely Bones. Needless to say, I’m not losing any sleep over my lack of a clear afterlife theory.

Anyway. As you may have heard, last week the FDA announced the approval of the HPV vaccine Gardasil for sale to girls and women aged nine to 26. (Why such a young cutoff? Do they think that women stop having sex when they hit age 27?) In clinical trials it was 100% effective in preventing infection with HPV strains 16 and 18, which together cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases. The trials showed that Gardasil was also about 99% effective in preventing HPV strains 6 and 11, which, together with strains 16 and 18, cause about 90% of genital wart cases. Gardasil also protects against vaginal and vulvar cancers, which are also linked to HPV.

When I had my annual physical done last week, my doctor mentioned the vaccine and dryly mused that she was surprised by how quickly the FDA approved Gardasil. I asked her why, and she said something like, “Well, because HPV is a sexually-transmitted disease, and you know how our government loves promoting abstinence and buries its head in the sand when it comes to admitting that unmarried people have sex.”

Oh.

That hadn’t occurred to me, honestly. As cynical as I can be, I guess I was being a Pollyanna by optimistically thinking that, gee, the FDA would actually put women’s health issues ahead of their government’s moral issues. Silly me!

Dr. K. had a good point, though. It is rather surprising that the FDA was so quick to get this STD vaccine on the market. But thank god they did it. This is the first cancer vaccine ever developed, and is thus a medical breakthrough. And as a woman who knows several women with HPV and HPV-induced cervical dysplasia (no surprises there; 20 million people in the US currently have HPV), I am thrilled that the FDA saw fit to make Gardasil available.

In other news, a 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by another user of MySpace sued the Website earlier this week for $30 million, claiming that it didn’t take sufficient steps to protect its underage members.

I don’t know how I feel about this. I mean, obviously I feel horribly for the girl, and I’m thrilled that her attacker has been nabbed by the authorities. I sincerely hope that he gets a nice, fat jail sentence and gets a taste of his own medicine at the hands of jailhouse thug with a gleam in his eye. But I don’t think I agree with the lawsuit. From what I understand, MySpace does have security measures in place to protect its younger members, and, frankly, there’s only so much they can do. I’m not trying to let them off the hook and give them a license to be lax; I’m just stating what seems to be obvious common sense: security is a two-way street. Like MySpace’s chief security officer said, “Ultimately, Internet safety is a shared responsibility. We encourage everyone on the Internet to engage in smart Web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world.”

Yes, MySpace’s attempts to keep out pedophiles and sexual predators are far from perfect. And because of that, it’s up to MySpace users (and Web users in general) to exercise extreme caution and distrust when dealing with strangers. It’s sad that modern society forces us to be this way, but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt. If the Internet had been around when I was in high school, and if my family would’ve had a computer, I’m sure my parents would’ve kept it in the living room and would’ve kept tabs on my online movements. Yeah, I’m sure I would’ve bitched and moaned in my very special angst-ridden way. However, my parents’ job would’ve been to say, “Screw you. This is for your own good. You’ll thank us one day.” And they would’ve been right.


song heard most recently before posting: Signore, ascolta!—Giacomo Puccini