Description
Book SynopsisThe virus that changed how we think about cancer and its culpritsand the vaccine that changed how we talk about sex and its risks. Starting in 2005, people in the US and Europe were inundated with media coverage announcing the link between cervical cancer and the sexually transmitted virus HPV. Within a year, product ads promoted a vaccine targeting cancer's viral cause, and girls and women became early consumers of this new cancer vaccine. An understanding of HPV's broadening association with other cancers led to the identification of new at-risk populationsnamely boys and menand ignited a plethora of gender and sexual issues related to cancer prevention. Sexualizing Cancer is the first book dedicated to the emergence and proliferation of the HPV vaccine along with the medical capacity to screen for HPVcrucial landmarks in the cancer prevention arsenal based on a novel connection between sex and chronic disease. Interweaving accounts from the realms of biomedical science, publi
Trade Review“An engaging, informative, and exceptionally erudite effort to explicate and analyze the complex, decades-long intertwining of HPV, cancer, gender, and sexuality.
Sexualizing Cancer will be a welcome resource for scholars, clinicians, and policymakers.” -- Laura M. Carpenter, Vanderbilt University
“Mamo has put together an exciting and lively read, highlighting historically through to the present day the many ways in which assumptions about gender and sexuality underpin much of public health decision making. With a focus on HPV, she sets out an extremely compelling and well written narrative that places current debates within their larger economic, social, cultural, and political contexts. Weaving together the local and the global, she ultimately asks us to query how our own assumptions about gender, sexuality, race, and class impact how we read and understand public health, and the social connections and actions we take.” -- Sofia Gruskin, University of Southern California
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Sexual Politics of Cancer and a New Regime of Cancer Prevention
Chapter One: Producing and Protecting Risky Girls
Chapter Two: “What’s In It for the Boys?”
Chapter Three: The Cancer That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Chapter Four: A Tale of Two Trials: Settling Debate through Evidence-Based Medicine
Chapter Five: A “Coming Epidemic” of HPV-Associated Oral Cancer
Chapter Six: Sex at the Oncology Office: Oral Cancer Care and the Politics of Prevention
Chapter Seven: Cervical Cancer’s Screening Politics
Chapter Eight: The Precision Imaginary: Optimizing Cancer Prevention Tools
Chapter Nine: Commodities of Sexual Health Care
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
