Cosmopolitan, March 2014
So why aren’t people clamoring for an anticancer shot? Because somewhere on the road to disease prevention, the HPV vaccine came to embody everything that’s wrong with America, at least in some circles — premarital promiscuity, Big Pharma greed, and government control. “The vaccine acquired this kind of identity as an STD shot for young girls,” says Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School. Meanwhile, unfounded rumors about the shot’s safety and effectiveness have spread. Not the lifesaving image developers envisioned.