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Showing posts with the label HPV

Sex and Relationship Education across the sexuality spectrum

Today I read this article by Louise Tickle   "Does Sex Education exclud e young gay people?"   Personally in my work I have always tried to be gender and sexuality neutral in all my lessons. I always use the term "partners" or using the full phrase "a boyfriend or girlfriend" in every sentence to any gender student. But sometimes I still find myself falling into hetronormative language. It is not a choice but an unconscious accident.  For example I had a interesting situation doing a condom demonstration in a school with a girl constantly talking over me (which I find so annoying).  I asked  " Please listen for a few minutes then you could speak with your friends."    She replied.  "But I don't need to know this"   I replied "you never know what might happen in the future and it both a male and a females  shared responsibility to know how to minimize risks" ...

Discrimination with a HPV vaccine

Read this article about how the UK government is rethinking it's decision to only immunise girls against HPV. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/calls-to-immunise-teenage-boys-after-huge-rise-in-throat-cancer-6292679.html When I read this article I obviously was encouraged that the government was even considering changing the policy. As a male SRE educator I have felt that the current system is deeply unfair ever since the BBC aired a documentary about this on BBC3. The logic of with holding a potentially life saving vaccine on the grounds of cost verges on the ridiculous. Now the body of evidence is growing and hopefully soon the problem will be resolved. But even the original plan to immunise all girls to provide herd immunity seems to have a huge hole that in my opinion show discrimination at the state level. What about the male homosexual population? Now when HPV was seen to be linked to cervical cancer it was also shown to be linked to ...

Playing with figures of sexual health

A single  research  project can be reported on in  different  ways depending on what you want to do. Take the following two articles both reporting on the same research by the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. The research shows how many girls in the study thought the HPV vaccine also reduced their risk of catching other STIs. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083260/One-teenage-girls-thinks-HPV-vaccine-cuts-risk-contracting-STDs.html http://www.healthnews.com/en/news/Some-Girls-Overestimate-HPV-Vaccine-Protection/3hFUdOev1E8wSjg313QPZq/  The daily mail report  emphasis  1 in 4, I  believe  this is because they are trying to show how it is a big problem. Where as Health News states "show that a small percentage of girls" I believe this is because they are trying to  show  it is not a big problem. Both quoting the same study with the same figure of 23.6% of girls having the HPV vaccine  bel...