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A country band plays near a busy intersection in Chapel Hill. The famed white steeple glows in the distance through a calm spring breeze.

A woman walks by carrying a Styrofoam container with leftovers from dinner. She is tall with chin-length dirty blond hair. At the age of 27, it would be hard to consider this woman named Katie to be ?too old? for anything. According to most insurance companies, however, she is too old for a new vaccine that protects young women against cervical cancer.

Katie says that most of her friends in their late twenties aren?t too worried about getting the disease.

?If you?ve gotten this far without an abnormal pap, then you?re sort of in the world of ?well, it?s not going to happen.??

But it did happen to Katie when her healthcare provider found abnormal cervical cells on a pap smear. When a woman is infected with certain strains of HPV, on...
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Merck?s vaccine Gardasil has been making headlines since it received FDA approval last June. Gardasil protects against genital HPV or human papilloma virus infections that are responsible for the majority of cervical cancers. Studies show that the vaccine prevents almost all new genital HPV infections covered by the drug. The vaccine is currently only approved for women between the ages of 9 and 26. All the hype surrounding the vaccine, however, has found an unintended audience ? many women older than 26 are considering the vaccine too. Next Generation Radio?s Jung Eun Lee has more?