Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/62972

Soon after two cervical cancer vaccines were introduced in 2009 in Japan, their severe adverse drug reactions (ADR) were recognized, which put the vaccines' safety and efficacy in question. Using the concept of Ulrich Beck's ‘individualization’, this paper examines the decision-making process of those who chose these vaccines and suffered from severe ADR. It also looks at how they took responsibility for their choices, revealing the fact that the sufferers of ADR were surrounded by aggressive marketing campaigns and vaccine support organizations, economic measures such as free inoculations, and the powerful effects of intermediate groups (school, family, local community and so on). This paper argues that the choice of these vaccines showed that individualization in Japan is uneven because of a gap between subjective individualization and objective individualization, which makes individual decision making difficult.