Use this man to save women
5/8/2007 Palm Beach, FL Elisa Cramer PalmBeachPost.com After a 42-year-old African-American seamstress refused to give up her bus seat in 1955 to a white man, the nation responded to racism in Montgomery, Ala., in a way it had not nine months before, when a 15-year-old girl was arrested for doing the same thing. Both women were bold. Both were courageous. Both were, as Rosa Parks described herself, "only tired ... of giving in." Neither deserved the arrest, but only one became the face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was not Claudette Colvin, a pregnant, unmarried teenager. To make Florida's lawmakers care about saving women from cervical cancer, a 58-year-old married father from Tampa - not sexually active teenagers - must become the face of the virus that leads to 3,700 deaths each year. David Hastings is fighting throat cancer that researchers say was caused by the same sexually transmitted virus that causes most cervical cancers. "All of my adult life," Mr. Hastings said to members of the House Schools and Learning Council last month, "I was a nonsmoker. I was a casual drinker. I was an exercise nut, a health nut." Last spring, Mr. Hastings noticed two lumps in his neck while shaving. After five doctors and several scans, an ear, nose and throat specialist told him he had Stage 4 cancer. As Mr. Hastings pointed out, "There is no Stage 5." Mr. Hastings fainted at the doctor's recommendation: "a radical neck dissection" to his collarbone to remove 26 [...]