Sexualizing Cancer: HPV and the Politics of Cancer Prevention

The HPV vaccine has changed how we think about cancer and its causes, as well as how we talk about sex and its risks. Laura Mamo's book "Sexualizing Cancer" chronicles the journey of cervical cancer from exam rooms to public discourse, showing how the scientific breakthrough that identified the virus as having a causative role in the onset of human cancer galvanized sexual politics, struggles for inclusion, new at-risk populations, and a new regime of cancer prevention.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 20 December 2023
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

The impact of the HPV virus on cancer and its perpetrators, as well as the vaccine's impact on sex and its dangers, is the subject of Sexualizing Cancer. People in the US and Europe were bombarded with media coverage in 2005 linking cervical cancer to the sexually transmitted virus HPV. Within a year, product advertisements marketed a vaccine aimed at the viral cause of cancer, and girls and women rushed to become early adopters of this new cancer vaccine. The understanding of HPV's expanding association with other cancers led to the identification of new at-risk populations, notably boys and men, and 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, as well as the medical capacity to screen for HPV, crucial landmarks in the cancer prevention arsenal based on a novel connection between sex and chronic disease. Laura Mamo chronicles cervical cancer's journey from exam rooms to public discourse, showing how the late twentieth-century scientific breakthrough that identified the human papilloma virus as having a causative role in the onset of human cancer galvanized sexual politics, struggles for inclusion, new at-risk populations, and, ultimately, a new regime of cancer prevention. Mamo reveals how gender and other equity arguments from within scientific, medical, and advocate communities shaped vaccine guidelines, clinical trial funding, research practices, and clinical programs, with consequences that reverberate today. This is a must-read history of medical expansion, from a "woman's disease" to a set of cancers that affect all genders, and of lingering sexism.

Weight: 540g
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226829296