U.K. Offers Girls Shopping Vouchers to Encourage HPV Vaccination

Salon.com: HPV shots for a shopping spree, by Tracy Clark-Flory:

The U.K. offers girls coupons for popular stores in exchange for getting vaccinated

The U.K. has settled on a new approach to getting teen girls to take care of their health: Offer them a shopping spree! Through the National Health Service, Birmingham is handing out £45 ($71) in coupons for local hot shops to girls who get the HPV vaccine. The plan, which targets girls between the ages of 16 and 18, costs the equivalent of roughly $35,600 a year. So far, approximately 500 girls have been given vouchers.

Today, the ever-incendiary Daily Mail calls the promotion a "bribe" and reports that some are calling it a "promiscuity jab." You see, we aren't so different from our British brethren: Stateside, conservatives have consistently challenged the vaccine -- which protects against the virus that causes cervical cancer -- on the grounds that it would cause girls to become reckless little strumpets. Because the only thing keeping girls from slutting it up is their fear of death-by-cervical-cancer. God knows sex wouldn't be right without guilt and fear! . . .