Show Notes:
- NNSL mass e-mail incident. http://ykonline.ca/2009/09/nnsl-headline-email/
- Vaccine Discussion. http://ykonline.ca/2009/09/episode-07-were-talking-city/
- Emergency Council Meet and By-Law discussion. After the Meeting , Before the Meeting & Issue
- Northern Podcasts: UpHere, CBC This Week in the North
- Winners of the “Being David Hasselhoff” Contest on Snowcoveredhills
- UpHere Blog featuring northern bloggers.
- All that and more.
Subscribe to this Podcast on iTunes
Sorry about my audio be out of whack and the podcast being quiet overall. Still trying to work out all the kinks.
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I’m glad that Kyle decided to speak about the vaccine this week! I only wish I had been on the podcast last week. Breaking my heart, man. I had to work. Working sucks.
Anyhoo, I’m sure I will weigh in. And I’m glad that Nancy said something along the lines of, “I can’t say much about it, partly because I don’t have kids, and partly because I’m not catholic.” I only wish the rest of Yellowknife thought this way. So many people, who really aren’t affected at all by this decision, seem to have such a strong opinion about it all, and really don’t understand where we-as a student body-are coming from. I can’t say that I speak for every female student at my school, but I speak for me, and people like me.
Honestly, I’m tired of all the parents being worried about all this, when really it affects us teenagers the most. Most girls I’ve spoken to from my school think the vaccine is a horrible idea because of all the facts they’ve learned from other teenagers like me who feel the need to educate our students because the local media obviously has failed to do so (the article in the September 18th paper had no facts about Gardasil itself). Yet, the girls I’ve spoken to from the Public schools really don’t have any knowledge about the vaccine itself except for the fact that it helps protect against cervical cancer. And even then, they don’t know how little it actually helps protect compared with other forms of prevention.
I was glad to hear Kyle, Nancy & Megan speak about this, although, I do wish we could have somebody on the podcast who was strongly for the vaccine so I had somebody to argue against. I apologize for the lengths of my posts last week, but I do have SO much to say about it. Don’t read it all, if you don’t want to. It’s mostly just about the lack of research about the vaccine.
I hope I can come on next week, not only to talk about the vaccines, but to advertise my blog a little, as well as make a few witty, HILARIOUS remarks about other things going on in town.
Love you guys!
-Jacqueline
I’m so glad you commented, Jacqueline.
I’m pretty pro-vaccine, and I think most of the reaction around town comes from the sense that the board is singling out this one vaccine. (The H1N1 vaccine is even newer, so I’ll be interested to see if it’s delivered in Catholic schools.)
As I said in the podcast, I totally support school boards to decide that no vaccines can be delivered in their schools, but I do think that if they’re going to be delivered there, it should be local health authorities who decide which vaccines are needed. I don’t think school boards should be trying to evaluate the scientific evidence, especially when public-health professionals are available to answer their questions. This opens them to the sort of criticism they’re getting now.
That said, it’s always a personal decision whether to get a certain vaccine: this discussion is strictly about where they will be available.
I agree with you in a way, Megan. That schools shouldn’t be singling out the vaccines. But honestly, at my school, it’s never been a “personal decision” to get a vaccine or not. It’s just been made for me. The whole idea isn’t that the school board is saying, “Don’t get this vaccine.” They’re saying, “This is a very important decision about a woman’s health that we don’t want to influence at all.” Because, like I’ve said in many posts and comments, most parents believe that a school wouldn’t be offering something that wasn’t 100% safe. I know that personally, when my school condones something, I assume it’s safe. It’s the idea of not influencing a young woman’s decision of to or not to take this measure to prevent cervical cancer that could possibly be damaging to health.
Public-health professionals have been told to push this vaccine, or at least that’s what it seemed like to me when I visited a nurse practitioner last month who pushed me to get the vaccine. I told her I wasn’t interested at all, and yet she continued to tell me I should look at the information, and even when I told her that I had already researched the vaccine, and decided not to, she tried to convince me that it was the right thing to do. I feel like she didn’t really include all the information that was out about the vaccine. Just the good stuff.
I should really quit now, or else I’ll go on forever! I definitely understand where you’re coming from, Megan, even though I disagree with you.
THANKS!
Megan. Thank you for saying the things I cannot for another couple of weeks. I have much to say on this issue. I think that if anyone is concerned about it, they should go to the YCS public forum (not sure the date, see http://www.ycs.nt.ca) and ask questions of the trustees stading for re-election. Rose Jackson (trustee candidate) also has a discussion board on Facebook where she is trying to spur dicussion. I would encourage you to go there and discuss this issue as well.