In weighing the harms and benefits of pelvic exams researchers are concerned more harm than good is coming from too frequent pelvic exams. In fact, many women are failing to go to doctors for health concerns so they will not have to submit to an invasive exam. Researchers are also saying pelvic exams are not necessary to test for sexually transmitted diseases as all that is required is urine/blood, the same way in which men are only required to provide urine/blood for the exact same tests. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/14/us-pelvic-exam-idUSTRE7BD24820111214
forwomenseyesonly 
You know, I can’t believe that a better way of detecting cervical cancer has not been created yet. In fact, I find it astonishing. I don’t think there are any other screening tests that have not been continually improved, both for acceptance, and also for reliability. The pap test has never been improved upon in nearly a century. Why not? It is unreliable, invasive, and because of the very unreliability of this test, it has the added bonus of sending healthy women with absolutely nothing wrong with them onto more invasive and dangerous procedures such as LEEP, cone biopsy etc etc. All for nothing. The majority of women who go on to have these procedures have results that come back as negative, or very minor changes, which will resolve on their own with no intervention or treatment needed. This is a disgrace. Prostate cancer screening has improved in leaps and bounds, both to make it acceptable to men, and to make it as reliable as possible. It’s about time women were told the truth about how very unreliable pap screening is, and also told the truth about how very rare cervical cancer actually is. It’s about as common as mouth cancer, yet I don’t know anyone who has tested for mouth cancer once, let alone as regularly as pap tests are foisted onto us.
Jacqui, It looks looks like we’ve been booted off unnecessary pap smears because I can only access via a proxy browser (ie hiding my ip address). I posted on Dr Shermans site a new blog address for the continuation of the blog, but that was before I realised it wasn’t the site that went down but me that got banned. If Sue is happy to continue the conversaton on her blog that’s fine with me. Anyway, if they want to ban us then I hope others leave the blog too.
Jacqui and Mary I don’t understand why you would get banned? In any event I have turned off the moderator and log in requirements so you should be able to post without having to wait for me to approve it, and should be able to without having to log in. Mary it looks like it’s working since your comment popped up without me having to approve it first.
We probably were getting a bit abusive about a couple of doctors We mentioned two by name. I don’t care because I would say everything I said there to their faces. Those doctors should be banned for giving dangerous false information to women.
Hey guys! I have contacted the Tech heads at unnecessary paps, and so has Sia. Sia got told by Christopher that it was an issue with her IP. She contacted her IP and they told her their end seemed ok, it must be the blog site, and one of them (can’t remember who) said they thought it may be an Aussie problem, rather than a blog problem. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. I had Sia’s contact details from when we went onto Beth’s site and I checked out Sia’s F/B page (when I still had an FB page too), and when I spoke to her on the weekend we were both freaking out about if the unnecessary paps site went down. We both hope that everyone can make their way here if that happens. I have given Sia the link to get to here, but thought Sue, if you want to, you can make your name a link to here on the B/Critics site. I am also guessing if we all have to come over here it will be easier to keep in contact etc, but I really hope the B/Critics site gets sorted as so many of us are on there, and more so for the less regular users.
Sue, keep up the great work, your site is awesome!
Mary, I too would say everything I say on the blog to a doctors (or other health workers) face, and hope it’s just a hiccup, not anything awful.
Catch up with you later, my hubby is pretending he lives in a third world country and is about to drop dead of starvation, and it’s my turn to cook! 🙂
Hi Sue, I was just thinking that if we are all going to jump over here en masse from B/Critics, you might want to have a section for people to have a whinge/bitch whatever so the rest of your site doesn’t get hijacked by it and put other random people off? Not really sure, and certainly am not trying to boss you around on your blog or anything! More just trying to be respectful of you and your blog and not “gatecrash” it!
Not to worry Jacqui, I’m loving it but it’s nice of you to think of it. And I’ve added a new section but you post wherever you want.
Sue, thank goodness for your site and that Mary and Jacqui found their way here. I would have hated to have lost touch with you all. Does anyone know what happened to Blogcritics? I had a weird security alert when I tried to access the site.
Chrissy it’s nice to see you here – you are one of my featured authors after all. I wish we knew what was causing the problems with Blogcritics. It doesn’t sound as if it’s due to anyone being banned since each of you seems to have a different technical issue.
Jane it’s nice to see you too and thanks for the information about not being able to access the site. For those of you who can’t get into it at all, there aren’t many new posts. Maybe the problem is more global than we know at this point. I am still able to access and post.
Mary thanks for the vote! I am a bit concerned for our future though and it probably wouldn’t hurt to designate a meeting site in case this one develops glitches.
In the meantime, should we move the conversation to the “Blogcritics Welcome” post so we are all in one place?
Just to let you know that I can’t access the blogcritics site from the UK. I hope it’s a glitch.
Jane (UK)
I just wanted to slot this video in somewhere, it’s quite frightening and addresses the harms of over-treatment in America, but it’s happening (to a lesser degree) in most developed countries.
http://www.bmj.com/multimedia/video/2012/10/03/harms-overtreatment
This video certainly is frightening, but oh so effective. The graph near the beginning of the video that outlines money spent versus longevity sums it up very nicely. Thank you for slotting it in here Elizabeth.