TEEN GETS EARLY INTRODUCTION TO INTRUSIVE GOVERNMENT
Colorado Springs Gazette, 3-6-08
My daughter
would like everyone to know that she is not pregnant. She wants you to know because, after six
months, she is finally off Accutane.
For those
of you who aren’t parents of teenagers, Accutane is the wonder drug of the new
millennium (the patent expired in 2002).
Six months of pills and some potentially nasty side effects later, your
kid’s zits are history. My daughter’s
case may or may not be typical, but I’ve never seen a med with such dramatic
results. A few months ago, she had some
pretty serious acne issues. Now she
could do Dove commercials.
So why is
she shouting to the world that she’s not pregnant? Because she’s had to upload that information
to the internet for a while now, so she figures the rest of the world might as
well know.
Accutane is
a teratogen. That means it can cause
birth defects. To ensure no one ever
gets pregnant on the drug, the FDA now
requires anyone who wants Accutane to go to a special web site and answer a
bunch of very personal questions. Only
after you convince the computer that you know how to avoid pregnancy will your
doctor fill out an Accutane prescription.
And not
just once. You have to log in and keep
this up every month you’re on the drug.
This got so ludicrous it became a running joke in our family. “So Erica, are you pregnant today? Because you know you’re not supposed to be if
you’re on Accutane.” “So Erica, Mom and
I want to be grandparents someday, but not till you’re married and off
Accutane. OK?” You get the idea.
Now that my
daughter’s time with Accutane is done, I’m struck by how the science behind the
program busts some deeply held myths.
Neither liberal nor conservative parents will be wild about putting
their girls on Accutane.
One of the
common threads of teen sex education programs is to minimize differences
between boys and girls. Sex education
classes are routinely given to mixed audiences with the egalitarian message “If
you choose to be sexually active, here’s what you should think about.” It’s all very consistent with the left’s
general discomfort with sex differences and their obsession with “fairness”.
Unfortunately
for liberals, there really are big differences between teenage boys and girls
in how they approach sexual activity.
These differences are complex, but they are real. The best evidence suggests that those
differences are rooted in the biological fact that (hold on everybody, big news
coming up) girls can get pregnant, while boys can’t.
That’s why
the girls’ Accutane literature is the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica,
while for guys it’s more like a comic book.
Boys and girls are just different, and there are times when it’s
important to acknowledge that. I think
social conservatives have always understood this.
But many
social conservatives, I suspect, will not be signing up their daughters for
Accutane any time soon. In order to get
a prescription, you’ve got to put your teenage FCBP (“Female of Child Bearing
Potential”) on not one but two forms of birth control. And here’s the rub: Abstinence is not on the list.
Yes, it’s
true, a program developed during a Republican presidency and
Republican-controlled congress does not list abstinence as an effective way to
prevent pregnancy. You can go on the
pill, you can use an IUD. If you want
your Accutane, you can promise to use any number of scientifically tested ways
to avoid conception. But abstinence isn’t
listed as one of them. Could that be
because an abstinence pledge doesn’t work very well?
To be fair,
there’s plenty in the Accutane protocol that bugs me too. Why, in a free society, should people be
forced to answer personal questions over the internet just to get an acne
treatment? Why can’t they be informed of
the risks and then decide for themselves?
Why is zero risk of birth defects from Accutane the only social goal
worth considering? Those questions are
all conspicuously missing from the web site’s FAQ.
So no
matter what perspective you come from, there’s going to be something you don’t
like about the Accutane protocol. It’s a
hassle, no doubt about it. But if I have
to choose between saving a few hours online and knocking out my daughter’s
zits, I’ll pick the latter. So to speak.