Description
Book SynopsisMedical anthropologist S.D. Gottlieb explores how the vaccine Gardasil - developed against the most common sexually-transmitted infection, human papillomavirus (HPV) - was marketed primarily as a cervical cancer vaccine. Gardasil quickly became implicated in two pre-existing debates - about adolescent sexuality and paediatric vaccinations more generally.
Trade Review"
Not Quite a Cancer Vaccine offers an intimate examination of HPV vaccine narratives, traced through public media, clinics, conferences, and public policy debates. In an era of commodified health care, such explorations are necessary to lay bare the motivations of health interventions as a public good only after corporate interests are served. Despite their potential good, inappropriate promotions of new technologies may minimize or even ignore the health inequities they aim to address." -- Nicola L. Bulled * editor of Thinking Through Resistance *
“This exciting book analyzes the cultural struggles over the vaccine Gardasil as both a source of corporate profit and an icon in the moral imagination of patients, doctors and health activists. Gottlieb expertly blends anthropology, media studies and feminist critique to illuminate how “disease threats” are defined in our era of corporate medicine and polarized politics.”
-- Paul Brodwin * professor of anthropology, UW-Milwaukee; secondary appointment in bioethics, Medical College of WI *
ReachMD "Primary Care Today" interview with Samantha Gottlieb * ReachMD "Primary Care Today" *
Table of Contents1 Introduction 1
2 Imminent Vulnerability and Commodified Empowerment 20
3 The Pap Smear, Racist Histories, and “Cervix” Cancer 36
4 Educate the Educators 54
5 Merck and the FDA 70
6 Vaccines and Politics 83
7 Complicity with Corporations 99
8 Mothers and Gardasil 116
9 The “Tragically Underused” Vaccine 136
Acknowledgments 145
Notes 149
Bibliography 177
Index 193
