I can understand the skepticism / distrust of medical establishment to tell the truth here. The same sort of issue has happened before, in recent memory.

It was literally decades that we knew HPV causes cervical cancer, but boys were not offered the vaccine for years, endangering their lives, because the establishment preferred not to say or to know the truth that HPV gives men head and neck cancer.

Someone doing the calculus might have thought: if people associate cancer with certain sexual practices, then it will kill people, because they will not seek treatment for their cancer.

Of course, this robbed the general public of the right to make informed medical decisions with respect to the HPV vaccine and robbed men of knowing whether they were in a high risk group for certain cancers, out of difference to a stigma. The very same value judgement could be happening right now — on our behalf, without our oversight or consent — with respect to some other cancer or public health concern. We wouldn’t know.

When people are lied to, sooner or later the trade-offs of dishonesty may come home to roost. That’s what we’re seeing here — and I hope that we are not also seeing another case of willful blindness at our collective expense.