HPV Advertisement, Now there's a way to stop it!

This is an advertisement for the HPV vaccination. The ad shows various moments that occur throughout peoples lives that they will want to be around for, indicating that if you don't get the vaccination you could end up not surviving long enough to live a full life which is an example of a fear message. By showing that cervical cancer, which is caused by HPV, could cause you to miss out on the important things in life, it makes a person believe that they need the HPV vaccine to survive.

This ad also gives off false information. There are many different strands of HPV that cause cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine only protects against a few strands. Therefore the vaccine does not stop cervical cancer from happening all together as the ad suggests.

It is successful at aiming towards it advertising market. Young women in there late teens and early twenties are the only people subject to the vaccine. The pictures used in the ad show women growing up and special moments that will happen in their life, especially the wedding picture. All women have a dream or goal of what their life will turn out like and the pictures used in this ad demonstrate some of those goals.

In general I think advertisement has a huge affect on the public opinion of STI's. I for one had never heard about HPV until the "ONE LESS" commercials came out. I think that advertisement also can change peoples view about how STI's can affect everyone not just so called "promiscuous" people. Advertisements can be very educational if they are actually providing factual information.

Clinton's Tuskegee Apology

The Tuskegee Study began several decades ago and continued for far to long. I was the longest non-therapeutic study in history. The United States wanted to research the effects syphilis had on African-Americans compared to whites. The used 300 people in the small town of Tuskegee that tested positive for syphilis and pretended to treat them for decades. However, the treatment the government was providing was to treatment at all but simply anguishing tests that these victims had to endure.
The result of the Tuskegee study was that there of course was no difference between how syphilis progressed in between African American and whites. However, it did cause a majority of the African-American population to become distrustful of the government and its medical research. Many families were harmed in this study and it is one of the most unethical research programs in history.
President Clinton made an apology in 1997 for the way the American government acted, but no apology could ever completely amend all of the lives lost due to this study. Yet Clinton tried to do his best to repair the damage done and rebuild trust for the African-American population. He made numerous promises to right all of the wrongs done so many years ago.
However, even though Clinton made an honest attempt to restore the trust and honesty in governmental research, there is still a ways to go. Many people are still apprehensive about participating in research studies, especially minorities. Minorities are taken advantage of all of the time simply because they do not posses the same resources as the whites do. I believe that having President Obama in office will help ease some of this strain, but only for the African-American population. The Hispanic population seems to be an ever growing minority group in America and they are taken advantage of all the time.
America has come quite a ways in terms of ethics since the Tuskegee study, but there is still a lot for room for improvement where minority groups lie. I look forward to seeing how President Obama will handle different situations involving minorities.

Public Health and Bioterrorism

The podcast discussed various points throughout history where smallpox was used as a weapon and harmed many people. Until the 1970's, when a vaccine was created, smallpox was actively used as a weapon.

Public health and bioterrorism relate a great deal. There are numerous illnesses out there that can be used as for bioterrorism such as TB, Measles, and Anthrax. It is the goal of public health organizations to prevent this from happening so that it won't destroy specific populations. I believe that currently people should be worried about the use of smallpox and other infectious diseases as weapons simply because we do not have cures for many of them. We do have a vaccine for smallpox, yet there is no manufacturer that makes the needle necessary for the vaccine. Therefore smallpox could eventually be used as a tool for bioterrorism.

I think that since we do have a vaccine for smallpox, that has left us vulnerable to other more severe diseases that we cannot easily access vaccinations for. I know that smallpox is a terrible disease that is easily spread, but we at least know how to eradicate it. This leaves us open to other extreme diseases in which we have no vaccination for. Other successes of public health that have left us vulnerable include diarrhea and influenza. People are still dieing all over the world from these two infections, but in America that number is limited. Because of this, Americans are now living longer which makes us more vulnerable to chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Even though some public health successes leave people vulnerable to other diseases, people working in that field still need to try and conquer all of the infectious diseases out there. Without public health people would definitely not have the quality of life they enjoy today.