So Help Me, I'll Never Smash My Penis With a Rock Again

Courtland Milloy, if you're so damned opposed to a man smashing his penis with rocks, why won't you support HPV vaccination? We all wish the world were a disease-free place, but wishin's just wishin'—it's time you considered the bottom line about the world we live in. Even the most enlightened sex education isn't good enough when there are women's lives and men's penises on the line and curbing mortality is a real possibility. And clearly enlightened sex education isn't in the cards now—the best anyone can hope for is that the Bush administration's strenuous public support for abstinence education hasn't permanently burned Dick Cheney's scowling visage onto so many young retinas that we wind up with a Children of Men–style population meltdown. Maybe after the 2008 election? America is in some ways growing more liberal, but Silda Spitzer will take Elliott back in her bedroom before we, as a nation, are in the mood for reliable sex education in all our public schools.

But support for HPV vaccination, at least, is widespread, and the opposition (yourself included, Milloy) isn't yet so intractable that they've managed to find the narrative handhold on the issue that somehow skirts over the fact that one shot will prevent many, if not most, cases of cervical cancer among the next generation. (As for your angle, Milloy, it should be clear by now that calls to racial conscience don't exactly resonate in conservative eardrums.) So then: You may choose a Stone Age world where men smash their penises with rocks and women die of utterly preventable cervical cancers, or you may choose a world enlightened by sound science, where cock goes unmolested except in the best sense of the word and cancer-causing HPV is prevented by simple vaccination. Embrace perfect penises, Milloy—for the future.