On HPV

Two school newspaper articles struck my interest today, both of which the editor will no doubt recieve letters about from me. They are topic that are not entirely controversial, but have the potential to be, and it’s nice to have a jump start and be informed. So my first guess is that next to none of you have ever heard of the STD named “HPV.” It’s not HIV, nor is it related in any way. The author says that about forty strands exist, but it’s really more like one hundred, and only thirty of them are actually sexually transmitted. There’s not much to mail the editor about this one, since I agree fully with the author’s comments, but it’s worthy of notice here. The issue? The disease may seem entirely unnoticed, when in fact certain strands are the cause of 70% of cervical cancer in women – 13,000 people annually. People don’t know they have it, and condoms don’t stop it because they fail to cover the entire infected area. So, even though nearly everyone and their grandmas seems to have it, the whole world (women population at least) isn’t being struck by cervical cancer. In fact, most strains of HPV are harmless.

But there’s a vaccine, and some people aren’t too keen on the vaccine being distributed. The Family Research Council has pitted against the spread of this vaccine because they feel that, when vaccinated, teenagers are more likely to have premarital sex because they have the knowledge that they are safe from the disease. When 3000 people are dieing each year, it seems as though we could spare a few virgins to save a few thousand people.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and as usual progress is slow. 37% percent of people in an awareness survey done by the University of South Florida knew about HPV. Putting those numbers into effect, whether or not people get the vaccine won’t change how they react to premarital sex. And even moreso, whether a person has premarital sex or not largely depends upon their beliefs, and not upon what STD’s they’re likely to get. People have the right to rcieve treatment for a disease – a doctor can’t deny someone the medicine they need (or can they?). One way or another, sick people are going to show up, and the vaccine is going to make its way into the general public.

On Online Literature

You’ve probably downloaded a book or two off of the internet in your life. Wikibooks is quite the source, as well as Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg has been distributing copyrighted literature for free since 1971, and is nearly exceeding one million books in its digital library. So, much like digital music, a quarrel has popped up: Welcome back to illegal downloading. Authors get royals from the books they publish, and when you download the books online for free, they supposedly lose profit. Copyrighted literature works in the way that, if you’ve created the work, nobody can alter or steal the piece and call it their own. In that respect, Project Gutenberg hasn’t been breaking any copyright laws: they give credit to the respectable authors of the books they distribute. However, it may be costing those authors a pretty penny.

Sites that distribute volumes of Shakespear and Wharton and Hawthorne and Twain aren’t at great risk, but those that are giving away more modern novels might be in trouble. I myself have at one point or another downloaded the Harry Potter series up to book six in both print and audiobook forms. What’s to say that many thousands of sites aren’t geared up to hand out this literature? I’m not going to hesitate to grab it – as an author myself, I support the spread of good literature. I may not have anything published, but if my novel were to ever be, I probably wouldn’t fight against the spread of the novel online. I wouldn’t encourage it, but I wouldn’t necessarilly be against it.

That being said, I wouldn’t be making my salary off of the book.

Not all books are transmitted in printed form, however. It’s just as easy to download books in audio form, as an audiobook. There are websites such as Audible and NetLibrary that offer these books for a price and free from your public library (our library has a nice NetLibrary that has access to over 1000 books, none of which are particularly exciting).When you really put it into perspective, there aren’t a lot of people who are going to wander around finding books online and then, after the turmoil of finding the book, spend the hours in front of the blinking screen to read it. I have trouble reading single paragraphs on a computer monitor, and it’s a waste of paper and ink to print it out, which is why downloded books are strictly try-before-you-buy in my case, as are many video games. It’s just not efficient to read them or play them on the computer.

Not only that, but there’s something special about having the actual book. I’ve never been one for rentals, so I don’t like the library. When I own the book, it feels good, almost like an accomplishment or something fresh that I could just eat out of my hands while I’m holding it. For that reason, I do not fear for online literature, and I don’t fear that anyone is going to have a lawsuit filed under their name for it. Downloading music was something, because it’s more convenient and easy to transport when it’s digital. Books are much more easily better left off on shelves in your local library. I can rest easily knowing that technology will have the struggle of its life trying to replace the book.