As a full-fledged cancerphobe whose mother contracted lung cancer at a young age, I’d never missed a pap smear or a mammogram. Yet, ironically, my disease eluded my annual checkup. Instead, I was diagnosed months later when unmistakable symptoms of a malignancy erupted.

Several days after my surgery, my doctor delivered the results of my pathology report. When he named the human papilloma virus (H.P.V.) as the culprit responsible for my cancer, I gave him a blank look. When he explained that H.P.V. translates into the most common sexually transmitted disease on the planet, I was stunned.

Apparently my propensity for memorizing entire passages about sexual health from Our Bodies, Ourselves in college had been for naught. I had gotten cancer from an S.T.D. I’d never even heard of.

I remember the good girl in me recoiled at just the sound of the words “sexually transmitted” virus. Intellectually, I knew that no one deserves to suffer by getting cancer. But, back then, at my most vulnerable, I’ll admit that I was sometimes haunted by the notion I’d contracted cancer as retribution for past sexual (mis)adventures.

In the end, despite a morass of messy complications that conspired to steal nearly two years of my life, I survived—just. But the ordeal left me irreparably scarred—physically as well as emotionally. The surgery that saved my life had killed my hope of having children.

So I was elated when the Food and Drug Administration recently gave the green light to a vaccine called Gardasil that could virtually eradicate cervical cancer by targeting H.P.V. Widely trumpeted as a watershed medical miracle, Gardasil is the first vaccine that appears to be 100 percent effective in preventing cancer and could save countless thousands of lives.

But that hasn’t stopped some conservative groups from scrambling to sabotage the vaccine’s use. While they publicly hail Gardasil as a breakthrough, they predict it will promote promiscuity among adolescents. That’s because experts recommend mandatory inoculations for girls as young as 9, since the vaccine is most effective before sexual activity begins. So even in the face of scientific fact, supporters of the Bush administration’s abstinence campaign are once again clinging to their Biblically based hard line.

In their view, it’s better to stoke the fear of getting H.P.V. by withholding the vaccine so young girls will just say no to premarital sex. The reality is that choosing to preach chastity trumps the possibility of saving lives later on. After all, in the case of cervical cancer, abstinence has a real—and potentially deadly—loophole: Even if a girl toes the conservative line and saves herself for marriage, her new husband—who didn’t—can infect her with H.P.V.

Apparently, some adults should also get a crash course about the virus along with their kids. Even though more than half of sexually active people have been exposed to H.P.V. (which was linked to cervical cancer 20 years ago), it still lurks deep in the closet. Most people never know they’ve been infected until it’s too late.

Still, abstinence activists do not want Gardasil lumped into the mandatory childhood-vaccine mix with those given for measles and rubella. They’re pushing the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to make parents the sole “deciders” of whether their daughters should get the vaccine. The ACIP’s verdict is due at the end of this month.

Granted, the Gardasil approval has unleashed a litany of complex questions and issues, as well as moral and practical concerns that need to be sorted out.

But in the end, I can’t imagine any parent denying their child a life-saving vaccine.

Based on wrestling with the cause behind my own illness, I can even understand buying into the conservative brickbat of labeling H.P.V. as a barometer of promiscuity. Technically, it is. But instead of blaming the victims who contract H.P.V., the debate should shift to how quickly and affordably we can inoculate as many young girls and women as possible. We need to make hard decisions about who’s going to pick up the tab for the triple-dose treatment that, at $360, is beyond the reach of millions of women.

If I’d had a daughter, I would have delivered a cautionary mantra about the minefield of irresponsible sexual activity. And, yes, I would have talked about how abstinence is often—but not always—the front-line defense against consequences that can inalterably change or cost lives. Then I would’ve had my daughter vaccinated against the human papilloma virus.

That’s if I’d had a daughter.

As a full-fledged cancerphobe whose mother contracted lung cancer at a young age, I’d never missed a pap smear or a mammogram. Yet, ironically, my disease eluded my annual checkup. Instead, I was diagnosed months later when unmistakable symptoms of a malignancy erupted.

Several days after my surgery, my doctor delivered the results of my pathology report. When he named the human papilloma virus (H.P.V.) as the culprit responsible for my cancer, I gave him a blank look. When he explained that H.P.V. translates into the most common sexually transmitted disease on the planet, I was stunned.

Apparently my propensity for memorizing entire passages about sexual health from Our Bodies, Ourselves in college had been for naught. I had gotten cancer from an S.T.D. I’d never even heard of.

I remember the good girl in me recoiled at just the sound of the words “sexually transmitted” virus. Intellectually, I knew that no one deserves to suffer by getting cancer. But, back then, at my most vulnerable, I’ll admit that I was sometimes haunted by the notion I’d contracted cancer as retribution for past sexual (mis)adventures.

In the end, despite a morass of messy complications that conspired to steal nearly two years of my life, I survived—just. But the ordeal left me irreparably scarred—physically as well as emotionally. The surgery that saved my life had killed my hope of having children.

So I was elated when the Food and Drug Administration recently gave the green light to a vaccine called Gardasil that could virtually eradicate cervical cancer by targeting H.P.V. Widely trumpeted as a watershed medical miracle, Gardasil is the first vaccine that appears to be 100 percent effective in preventing cancer and could save countless thousands of lives.

But that hasn’t stopped some conservative groups from scrambling to sabotage the vaccine’s use. While they publicly hail Gardasil as a breakthrough, they predict it will promote promiscuity among adolescents. That’s because experts recommend mandatory inoculations for girls as young as 9, since the vaccine is most effective before sexual activity begins. So even in the face of scientific fact, supporters of the Bush administration’s abstinence campaign are once again clinging to their Biblically based hard line.

In their view, it’s better to stoke the fear of getting H.P.V. by withholding the vaccine so young girls will just say no to premarital sex. The reality is that choosing to preach chastity trumps the possibility of saving lives later on. After all, in the case of cervical cancer, abstinence has a real—and potentially deadly—loophole: Even if a girl toes the conservative line and saves herself for marriage, her new husband—who didn’t—can infect her with H.P.V.

Apparently, some adults should also get a crash course about the virus along with their kids. Even though more than half of sexually active people have been exposed to H.P.V. (which was linked to cervical cancer 20 years ago), it still lurks deep in the closet. Most people never know they’ve been infected until it’s too late.

Still, abstinence activists do not want Gardasil lumped into the mandatory childhood-vaccine mix with those given for measles and rubella. They’re pushing the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to make parents the sole “deciders” of whether their daughters should get the vaccine. The ACIP’s verdict is due at the end of this month.

Granted, the Gardasil approval has unleashed a litany of complex questions and issues, as well as moral and practical concerns that need to be sorted out.

But in the end, I can’t imagine any parent denying their child a life-saving vaccine.

Based on wrestling with the cause behind my own illness, I can even understand buying into the conservative brickbat of labeling H.P.V. as a barometer of promiscuity. Technically, it is. But instead of blaming the victims who contract H.P.V., the debate should shift to how quickly and affordably we can inoculate as many young girls and women as possible. We need to make hard decisions about who’s going to pick up the tab for the triple-dose treatment that, at $360, is beyond the reach of millions of women.

If I’d had a daughter, I would have delivered a cautionary mantra about the minefield of irresponsible sexual activity. And, yes, I would have talked about how abstinence is often—but not always—the front-line defense against consequences that can inalterably change or cost lives. Then I would’ve had my daughter vaccinated against the human papilloma virus.

That’s if I’d had a daughter.

C’mon, folks, you can relax. We all know that network news isn’t about news anymore; it’s big-bucks showbiz. How else to explain ABC’s recent Primetime Live story, entitled “Outrage After Teen Gets 10 Years For Oral Sex With a Girl?” If someone had pitched Ted Koppel a story about Angelina Jolie finding her “purpose” in life, he’d have run screaming from the room. Thanks to you, Mr. and Ms. Network Honcho, missing teenager Natalee Holloway enjoys better name recognition than the president of Pakistan, old what’s-his-name.

If Daily Show host Jon Stewart can fess up about anchoring the “fake news,” why can’t you admit that you care more about Q ratings than what’s happening in Qatar? When an anchor is judged by how well he cries on cue rather than by the content of his questions; when research dictates that NBC anchor Tom Brokaw snares a bigger audience if he reads the news standing than sitting; when stories formerly relegated to the underbelly of tabloid TV routinely worm their way into that sacrosanct 6:30 p.m. time slot, it tells you the audience isn’t clamoring for a great journalist.

When I was an NBC network news correspondent 15 years ago, the highly mined border between the entertainment and news divisions was already as smudged as the mascara under Tammy Faye Bakker’s eyes. Still, the sanctimonious posturing of news execs channeling Ted Baxter proliferated even as it became clear that the heyday of the deified news anchor was done. Journalistic credibility crashed as TV news heads vied with Washington lobbyists for dead last on the credibility scale.

Of course, when you’re trying to rack up ratings in a culture that cares more about the travails of Michael Jackson than the travesties in Darfur, a story like NBC Dateline’s “Bed Bugs Are Back” transmogrifies the meaning of hard news. Network news can only be as good as the audience demands. And, these days, the audience—rendered catatonic by a steady diet of cheesy daytime talk shows and prime-time reality programs—barely differentiates between a story on Entertainment Tonight and one on Meet the Press.

Which is why Ms. Couric, who’s done everything from dancing with actor Antonio Banderas to chirping her way through “How to Give Your Garage a Makeover,” was tapped to shore up the sagging springs of the CBS Evening News anchor chair. She has elevated fluff-as-fact to an art form.

Besides, as the feverish spinmeisters are gushing, Ms. Couric—who cut her journalistic teeth as a Pentagon reporter—is simply returning to her hard-news roots. Not to mention that those horn-rimmed glasses she’s been sporting translate into instant gravitas and are bound to add to the suspense of her CBS debut. (I can hear the office pools forming: Will she or won’t she wear the glasses?)

Even more important than her ability to ask tough questions, Ms. Couric is, above all, likable. No wonder veteran newsman Bob Schieffer, whose intellect is eclipsed by a charisma bypass, lost out to the terminally congenial Ms. Couric. Still, kudos are pouring in to CBS for taking a flyer on her in the high-stakes network anchor wars. Voice-of-God anchor Walter Cronkite lapsed into lapdog lingo when he praised the “great talents” of a “very beautiful lady.” But it was Today show colleague Ann Curry’s tribute—“I feel like my sister is going off to college”—that really put this landmark event in broadcast news history into perspective.

Not surprisingly, CBS chairman Les Moonves started romancing Ms. Couric even as he declared his intentions to radically rehab the Evening News. So, despite former MSNBC president Erik Sorenson’s protestations that many of Ms. Couric’s talents aren’t transferable, that’s exactly what Mr. Moonves has in mind to woo the coveted 25-to-54-year-old audience demographic. The average network news watcher is a myopic 59, so you’ll know Ms. Couric is making headway when the makers of Viagra, Centrum Silver and other elixirs for the AARP set take their ad revenues elsewhere.

Whatever CBS has in store for Ms. Couric, I wish her all the best. But I confess that I felt a wave of disappointment when word leaked that she’d been hired. It wasn’t because I don’t like her—I was just secretly hoping that Jon Stewart would get the gig. Or that maybe Mr. Moonves would really shake things up and install American Idol malcontent Simon Cowell. Now that might have helped resurrect my faith in the future of network news. Besides, it would have been a lot more honest.

C’mon, folks, you can relax. We all know that network news isn’t about news anymore; it’s big-bucks showbiz. How else to explain ABC’s recent Primetime Live story, entitled “Outrage After Teen Gets 10 Years For Oral Sex With a Girl?” If someone had pitched Ted Koppel a story about Angelina Jolie finding her “purpose” in life, he’d have run screaming from the room. Thanks to you, Mr. and Ms. Network Honcho, missing teenager Natalee Holloway enjoys better name recognition than the president of Pakistan, old what’s-his-name.

If Daily Show host Jon Stewart can fess up about anchoring the “fake news,” why can’t you admit that you care more about Q ratings than what’s happening in Qatar? When an anchor is judged by how well he cries on cue rather than by the content of his questions; when research dictates that NBC anchor Tom Brokaw snares a bigger audience if he reads the news standing than sitting; when stories formerly relegated to the underbelly of tabloid TV routinely worm their way into that sacrosanct 6:30 p.m. time slot, it tells you the audience isn’t clamoring for a great journalist.

When I was an NBC network news correspondent 15 years ago, the highly mined border between the entertainment and news divisions was already as smudged as the mascara under Tammy Faye Bakker’s eyes. Still, the sanctimonious posturing of news execs channeling Ted Baxter proliferated even as it became clear that the heyday of the deified news anchor was done. Journalistic credibility crashed as TV news heads vied with Washington lobbyists for dead last on the credibility scale.

Of course, when you’re trying to rack up ratings in a culture that cares more about the travails of Michael Jackson than the travesties in Darfur, a story like NBC Dateline’s “Bed Bugs Are Back” transmogrifies the meaning of hard news. Network news can only be as good as the audience demands. And, these days, the audience—rendered catatonic by a steady diet of cheesy daytime talk shows and prime-time reality programs—barely differentiates between a story on Entertainment Tonight and one on Meet the Press.

Which is why Ms. Couric, who’s done everything from dancing with actor Antonio Banderas to chirping her way through “How to Give Your Garage a Makeover,” was tapped to shore up the sagging springs of the CBS Evening News anchor chair. She has elevated fluff-as-fact to an art form.

Besides, as the feverish spinmeisters are gushing, Ms. Couric—who cut her journalistic teeth as a Pentagon reporter—is simply returning to her hard-news roots. Not to mention that those horn-rimmed glasses she’s been sporting translate into instant gravitas and are bound to add to the suspense of her CBS debut. (I can hear the office pools forming: Will she or won’t she wear the glasses?)

Even more important than her ability to ask tough questions, Ms. Couric is, above all, likable. No wonder veteran newsman Bob Schieffer, whose intellect is eclipsed by a charisma bypass, lost out to the terminally congenial Ms. Couric. Still, kudos are pouring in to CBS for taking a flyer on her in the high-stakes network anchor wars. Voice-of-God anchor Walter Cronkite lapsed into lapdog lingo when he praised the “great talents” of a “very beautiful lady.” But it was Today show colleague Ann Curry’s tribute—“I feel like my sister is going off to college”—that really put this landmark event in broadcast news history into perspective.

Not surprisingly, CBS chairman Les Moonves started romancing Ms. Couric even as he declared his intentions to radically rehab the Evening News. So, despite former MSNBC president Erik Sorenson’s protestations that many of Ms. Couric’s talents aren’t transferable, that’s exactly what Mr. Moonves has in mind to woo the coveted 25-to-54-year-old audience demographic. The average network news watcher is a myopic 59, so you’ll know Ms. Couric is making headway when the makers of Viagra, Centrum Silver and other elixirs for the AARP set take their ad revenues elsewhere.

Whatever CBS has in store for Ms. Couric, I wish her all the best. But I confess that I felt a wave of disappointment when word leaked that she’d been hired. It wasn’t because I don’t like her—I was just secretly hoping that Jon Stewart would get the gig. Or that maybe Mr. Moonves would really shake things up and install American Idol malcontent Simon Cowell. Now that might have helped resurrect my faith in the future of network news. Besides, it would have been a lot more honest.

The first time, I was a quivering 14-year-old chaperoned by my father at a Beatles concert in 1964. A dog-eared photo taken by a friend caught me at the height of my reverie as tears fell onto the Peter Pan collar of my madras blouse. My father’s face is frozen in the same stunned expression immortalized by the actor Paul Lynde as he watched a bevy of Sweetwater, Ohio, teens come under the thrall of the twitching, swivel-hipped Elvis Presley–inspired Conrad Birdie character in the musical Bye, Bye Birdie.

The last time was watching Hugh Jackman as he ended his triumphant Broadway run playing the late Australian entertainer Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. In all, I saw the show 12 times—once for every month it played—always with a friend or two. And at every show, we were gleefully caught up in the kind of crowd hysteria usually reserved for an end-of-season shoe sale at Barneys.

Who would’ve guessed that otherwise sophisticated, professional women could resurrect the giddy bliss of sharing an innocent crush perched on the edge of our orchestra seats? Or imagined that our homage to Mr. Jackman, the consummate matinee idol, would morph into a midlife sisterhood experience reminiscent of those long-gone days when we pored furtively over Our Bodies, Ourselves? But that’s exactly what happened.

I saw Oz for the first time with my friend Abby, a real-estate executive. We left behind our husbands, who would rather see Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr sparring in Copenhagen. And somewhere between the cell-phone warning and the intermission, we became part of the cacophony of catcalls and screams that erupted every time Mr. Jackman finished one of Allen’s treacly greatest hits. Not one but two standing ovations later, Abby and I were making plans for our own encore.

Next I saw Oz with my friend Judy, a financial manager, who brought her friend Barbara, a psychologist. I took my 17-year-old daughter, who swooned over Mr. Jackman but was horrified when I suggested we join the throngs of stage-door Janies waiting for him. ("Fan girl," she hissed derisively, pulling me away.)

Our self-styled fan club doted on the inestimable Mr. Jackman. We swapped showbiz-gossip e-mails and taped his Inside the Actors Studio appearance. We shared the DVD of his star turn in Oklahoma and TiVo’d his talk-show guest shots promoting his new movie, Van Helsing. We rhapsodized when he hosted this year’s Tony Awards and had a collective meltdown when he thanked his wife (before his agents) after clinching the Best Actor in a Musical honors. We even ventured onto the official Oz Web site, where self-styled "Ozalots" chronicled everything from Mr. Jackman’s vacation dates to his favorite autograph pen (Sharpie). All that was missing was our AARP group-rate subscription to the menopausal equivalent of Tiger Beat magazine.

Even veteran celeb-watchers were not immune to Mr. Jackman’s not-the-boy-next-door charisma. Columnist Liz Smith gushed that she had seen Oz multiple times, and Diane Sawyer openly fawned during her Good Morning America interview with Mr. Jackman. Barbara Walters was rewarded for plugging Oz repeatedly on The View when Mr. Jackman (along with audience-recruit actor Matt Damon) treated her to an onstage lap dance at the Oz final performance.

Meanwhile, I shamelessly called on every connection I had to finagle a backstage pass to meet Mr. Jackman. In preparation for the big day, I went into training like a bride headed to the altar. As I left for the theater, my husband (who hadn’t seen my legs in a decade) shot a knowing smile in the direction of the Manolo Blahnik stilettos I’d excavated from my closet.

In retrospect, meeting Mr. Jackman was not the high point of my year as a middle-aged fan girl. Yes, he was exceedingly gracious, even though I babbled nervously like I was being paid by the word. But the truth is, our meeting wasn’t nearly as magical as the camaraderie savored in the anonymity of the darkened theater, nor as enduring as the friends—old and newly made—who’d been there with me. (Besides, it’s true what they say: He was taller onstage.)

When the rumor mill started spitting out candidates to replace Mr. Jackman at the end of his contract, my Oz buddies and I shook our heads knowingly. Wisely, the producers decided that the show could not go on without him.

Starting soon, a whole new crop of great actors is poised to hit the Broadway boards: James Naughton, Richard Thomas, Liev Schreiber …. And although I suspect that my days as a fan girl are over for now, I just may take the Manolo Blahniks out for another spin.