Yay Science!

[lederhosen]

Queensland University of Technology press release says a vaccine against one of the world's most common sexually-transmitted infections, chlamydia, may be available in three to five years. If they can achieve that, it'll save a lot of fertility treatments and more than a handful of lives; if it can be made cheap enough for worldwide use, it will also eliminate the most common cause of preventable blindness.

Obviously the usual suspects will complain bitterly about anything that might make sex safer, but stuff 'em, I'm pleased. We may not have defeated HIV yet, but substantial strides have been made just in my lifetime on HPV, Hep B, and now this.

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Well, those Queenslanders are obviously doing something right - first UQ came up with the cervical cancer vaccine, and now this.

Yay!

And thankfully, the "zOMG, you're encouraging SEX!!!1!" contingent don't seem to have managed to stop the manufacture and distribution of the other vaccines you mention. The nasty little thoughts at the back of my mind also point out that really, if they want to let themselves and their children in for infertility by withholding the vaccine, isn't that just natural selection in action?

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the teen-pregnancy-through-abstinence-education angle seems to counteract that :-(

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

That's true to an extent, but I like to think that in turn, teen pregnancies can be something of an education of their own - for both generations involved...

Perhaps that is simply naievete on my part, though. *sigh*