3,978 comments

1. I’ve been checking back on that blog I mentioned to see how the replies are going. The original writer of the blog said this on her Twitter feed: “Never realised there was a culture of people *strongly* against cervical screening. The comments on my post are somewhat…militant?” This just goes to show she didn’t receive a balanced view of cervical screening before she agreed to being part of the system. If people aren’t even aware of an “anti” stance, as far as they’re concerned there’s not one single objection to screening and over-treatment. I’m glad at least that she’s left the posts on there, although she’s probably doing it because she thinks the anti-screening posts sound crazy and defeat their own argument.

   • I don’t mind being thought of as ‘militant’. The Suffragettes were a militant group, too.
     Rather ironic though. Her feels that it’s ok to pressurise women in the consult room, yet she whines when she feels ‘under attack’ on her stupid blog. Taste of her own medicine, methinks.

     • Thank you for letting us know about this. I’ve been checking the Demos website and there are still only the 3 replies, one of them mine, but I can’t see anymore. I’ve tried twice to add my comments to the Daily Telegraph article, but my tablet doesn’t seem to be able to deal with the blogging software. Great to hear that Ms Salter has had her eyes opened to how many women feel about the cervical screening test.

2. Sorry, WP doesn’t like me again so I’ve split this:

   The newest reply has a neither here nor there reference to Angelina Jolie. The commenter compares a “strong chance” of developing cancer with Meg’s situation (which was abnormal cells and a totally different level of risk). This might be an OTT comparison, but treating abnormal cells based on a small chance of them becoming cancerous seems to me like all women having mastectomies because there’s a chance they could get breast cancer at some point. Why not keep an eye on every cell in our body and remove any the second they do something strange?

   In the FAQ document from the Eve Appeal charity, I also learned that HPV in males can cause cancer for them as well. The FAQ sheet said quite bluntly that there’s no screening programme for men. If preventing cancer caused by HPV was truly a problem, they would screen men just as vigorously.

   • Yes, men can get HPV related anal, head and mouth cancers, yet not much is said about this risk. Head and mouth cancer are more likely than cc, yet we see the massive fuss made about rare cc. Some countries are now offering the HPV vaccine to boys.

     The word “culture” makes us sound like a weird cult, when I think more and more women are finding the courage to voice their objections and talk about their negative experiences with this testing. Pro-screeners have never liked criticism and for a long time our comments were smply deleted and we were banned from sites. These people were never challenged. It’s encouraging that our posts are staying in place, in the main anyway, and hopefully, it might motivate some of the pro-screeners to actually do some research before they disrespectfully issue orders and sit in judgement of women.

     Militant, well, we have strong opinions, backed by the evidence, they have propaganda, scare campaigns, smoke and mirror stuff. No wonder some of us sound militant, when you’ve been silenced for decades and watched women being misled, pressured, coerced and hurt, being fed lie after lie, that tends to make some of us angry. Some of that will come through, but I think most of us are motivated to post and challenge simply to try and reach women and stop the carnage, or at least alert women to the risks and actual benefit, to let them know there are better options if they want to test, so they go into testing in an informed way.

3. Men can also, get HPV related neck cancers, also, penile cancer, the latter is very rare.

4. http://www.rcgp.org.uk/news/2014/june/rcgp-response-to-demos-report-proposing-on-the-spot-smear-testing-in-gp-surgeries.aspx

   Part of the response: “GPs will check that patients are up to date with health checks such as smear tests as part of their routine appointment if appropriate. But the choice should always be left to the woman – the average GP consultation is currently only 10 minutes long and it is imperative that this time is dedicated to addressing the particular problem or condition that the patient presents with. No-one should ever leave their GP surgery feeling that they have been pressurised into having a test that they did not want.”

   Thank you, exactly right.

   • This is good news that rcpg have come out with a statement about this. Thank you for the link. I was so furious about the demos article, your post has cheered me up for the weekend. Kept trying to add a comment to the Telegraph article, but don’t seem to be able to do it from my tablet.

5. Reading some of these articles by the just-do-it screening advocates: calling us militant is a laugh, a bit hypocritical when you read their articles, it’s all about more resources to reach unscreened women, umm, have they thought we may not want to be reached? I don’t
   The aim is to screen all women or at least 80%, ummm, some women may not want to be screened, what do they propose if less than 80% want to be screened, hog tie them?
   And these “great” ideas, doing pap tests on the spot etc.

   The disappointing thing: these suggestions often come from women and many would call themselves feminists, yet they can’t see how offensive their comments are. It goes to show how effective the snow job has been when some women think it’s appropriate to make these sorts of assumptions/suggestions and to lecture women in this way. They’d probably be the first to say “No means No” and speak out against violence toward women…except when it comes to screening.

   • I’ve got to believe that they DO see all this, since they stridently confront women about this subject.

     As for being militant, sometimes you’ve got to be that way to counteract dictatorial attempts to push things like probing & cutting on people. Same goes with poison that has a pricetag.

     They are feminists, in the sense that “ist” on the end of the word means “one who operates.”

6. Ada, pleased you’re making a speedy recovery and so pleased you found us, every informed woman is worth her weight in gold. Things will be different for your daughter, even if this program is still in place, because she has an informed mother, a huge advantage. Sadly, some mothers deliver up their daughters to the medical profession, this seems to happen a bit with American girls with ACOG calling for the first “exam” at the tender age of 13 or 14. These women think they’re doing the right thing, when the opposite is the case, there is no evidence to support these exams (as if ACOG ever cared about that) but these exams WILL cause harm, both emotional and physical. The suggestion that mother and daughter should buddy up for pap testing is just…..words fail me.

   You mention pap tests and being symptomatic, Dr McCartney published a piece in the BMJ recently pointing out many patients AND doctors don’t understand a pap test is for asymptomatic women. Screening is for people with no symptoms.
   A woman with symptoms needs diagnostic testing, not a pap test. So a doctor suggesting a pap test for abnormal bleeding…well, I’d be changing my doctor.
   A pap test is useless when a woman has abnormal bleeding or pain after sex, you couldn’t trust the result at all.
   If I can link the article, I will, sometimes she provides free access through her website. I subscribe to the BMJ, like to keep on top of their talk, the things they say when they think we’re not listening! (won’t surprise you at all)

   • I find the idea of mothers dragging their daughters along to doctors for intimate exams at such a young age is a form of child abuse. In the US, seeing a gyn at 13 results in a 1 in 3 hysterectomy by the age of 60.

     On another matter I just checked out how the UK Parliamentary debate about health screening is going, and noticed that there was another meeting, featuring Prof. Michael Baum and Dr Margaret McCartney. It took place last Wednesday 11th June and the link is here:
     http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=15500
     I’m ashamed to say it sent me to sleep in a few places, but Prof Baum is on form.

7. http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g3334
   No, no free link, but the responses are interesting reading anyway. It makes clear some doctors simply don’t understand the difference between a screening and diagnostic test. Some think the pap test is the one-stop shop in women’s healthcare.

   • Thank you for highlighting this article, Elizabeth. The responses are readable if the text is behind a paywall. I thought it worth reproducing this letter here from Justina Hurley in Ireland, which was among the responses. A clear case of the pap test getting in the way of, and delaying treatment for invasive cervical cancer. It is a good job that she survived to tell us her story. I wonder how many others repeat pap testing has left too late…

     As a cervical cancer ‘survivor’ and DES exposed in vitro, I had very regular smears (approx every 6 months). Despite full symptoms of cervical cancer for several years, repeated negative smears gave the false impression that all was well. The end result was a radical hysterectomy for 1b1 adenocarcinoma. What caused the delay was ultimately the lack of information that smears are most effective for squamous cell but not good at detecting adeno and DES type cancers. As non squamous cervical cancers are increasing in incidence, more education regarding this for doctors and patients and a referral based on symptoms would be a much wiser approach.

     • Ada, Yes, but they won’t do that, they can’t let women know the pap test is anything other than necessary for all women and absolutely brilliant.
       I wonder how many women have died after following pap test guidelines and perhaps, ignoring symptoms after a Normal pap test, false negatives are mentioned by screening authorities to scare women into pap testing, “we’ll pick it up next time so you must have regular testing”, but false positives are played down. We also, don’t hear much about those dying after a false negative pap test. (one or more) They only tell us about things that will get us into and keep us in the program.

       I know they also, mislead by using false negative cases to sell pap testing, so these groups have no ethical compass. A very young Australian woman with an adenocarcinoma was used to sell pap testing here, especially to young women.
       It was never mentioned, but one curious reporter asked a doctor about the young woman’s “normal” pap test result just six months before her diagnosis. (Bingo, a false negative case)
       He admitted the pap test wasn’t perfect, but if women have regular pap tests they’d pick up most issues. So the answer was worded to protect the program. The correct answer: pap testing doesn’t work in young women, women should just see a doctor promptly with persistent and unusual symptoms. A delay of 6 months or 2 years with something like an adenocarcinoma can make a difference to the final outcome.

       I suspect the young woman was driven back to the doctor with continuing or worsening symptoms and had a second pap test. (inappropriate in a symptomatic woman) This woman was convinced though, the pap test had saved her life, the reality is probably very different.
       The official advice risks our health, but keeps us in testing and accepting “treatments”
       When you lie and mislead women, some will end up worse off as a result, but protecting the program is their concern, not individual women.

       I wondered at the time whether the scare campaign focused on young women was more about the research that was quietly going on, they were comparing pap test results from young women with Gardasil records. I know one high profile male doctor publicly stated he didn’t think the program should be changed (excluding young women) until the research was complete, this country had a rare opportunity as so many other countries had already stopped testing young women. (or similar words)
       Other countries had stopped testing young women for a very good reason, it harms them for no benefit!
       I still can’t get over how callous and inappropriate that statement was/is, but it gives us a clear idea how many in medicine actually view women….almost like powerless lab rats, and everyone seems to be fine with that approach.
       Scientific ego is also, behind a lot of this testing.

8. Symptomatic women can have diagnostic tests at any age

   
   I like Kate’s response, well said.

9. Just wanted to remind everyone to post whenever you can, (if you don’t mind posting of course, I know some women prefer not to) it’s important for these groups to know it’s not just 2 or 3 women who feel strongly about this topic. Even a couple of lines is important, some of you have said you avoid doctors because of screening pressure etc. It’s important to mention that, or you were denied the Pill because you refused a pap test etc.
   These issues have been denied by the profession and others and for too long women have remained silent, we need to let them know this program and the attitudes in women’s cancer screening and healthcare generally are out of line. I imagine Jo’s Trust are unhappy with the response from the RCGPs. I posted it to the article in the Telegraph where hopefully, more women will see it.

   • I am one of those women who has been avoiding medical care for many issues just because I am suffering PTSD triggered by my doctor hassling me for Pap tests at every visit. I am really tired of this. I complain about him and then people tell me to switch to a female doctor or another doctor. I know with the incentive payments and the quotas that they are all going to do that. They are going to pull up my e-file and has this reminder to pap on it.

     This is what I am going to try. I am already documenting everything this doctor does and says to me. I am not going to be militant or rude or screaming. I am just going to tell him no and that he can ask me once per year if I want a Pap test so he can bill that code.

     Too bad he might not make his quota because of me but then he has all those other women walking through the door. Do I really care that he needs the extra $2200 so he can get an oil change on his porsche or buy his wife another coach handbag? No.

     If he might refer me to a female doctor for a pap I might go. But he never seems to understand that he is part of the problem.

     What really bothers me is that he told me that if I do not get a pap then I would be refused all prenatal care, in that case I would be recording the conversation and contacting a lawyer afterwards. I would prefer a midwife but their protocols are all the same first visit Pap test (unless up to date) and other tests I am not interested in. These are used to determine risk and any risk a woman is shoved off to a obsterician for a medical birth, So much for choice. No wonder some women choose to freebirth.

     I do to have any issues with abnormal bleeding only fertility issues. I have had several doctors yell at me that I need a pap and could not possibly be pregnant because I am over age 45. Last year I had a miscarriage that was totally ignored. I am 49. I can still get pregnant but do you think that I would allow a Pap test at a first prenatal visit when the manufacturers pamphlet says do not use brush after 8 weeks? How does the doctor accurately date the pregnancy? With an ultrasound. They do a bimanual exam after the Pap test to pretend they are dating by guessing the uterus size. The fertility issues for me are not addressed at all. IVF is a business and older or poorer women are just ignored as they do not make the ideal customers.

     There are many reasons for abnormal bleeding and pain during sex. I wonder if many women even get these issues resolved after having an abnormal Pap test and colposcopy. I recently read an article about a young women who had fibroids and was only offered hysterectomy by 4 doctors. She would not accept this and had to travel hundreds of kilometres to find a doctor who would do a procedure to just remove the fibroids and preserve her fertility. None of the other doctors even bothered to tell her about this option and she found out about it herself. Yes her fibroids might grow back but she is much better.

     The whole system is corrupt.

     Even with using the Dutch system of giving women over 30 HPV tests at 5 year intervals and inviting the 5% who are HPV positive for paps is outdated. The key is “persistent HPV infection”. So it has to be the same strain of virus persisting and not different strains that are cleared after a few years? Or has this theory been tested or not? Women over the age of 30 can surely acquire infections with strains they have not had before. For example if it were found that a woman had strain 16 and then tested again after five years and had strain 18 then does she had a persistent infection that makes her more at risk for cancer or not? If she had strain 16 and after five years still had strain 16 then that would definitely be a persistent infection that her body was not clearing.

     The technology exists to monitor exactly what strains a woman might have an infection with but it is not marketed. The HPV tests on the market now all pool the strains types and recently just put in types 16 and 18 separately because of the marketing of the vaccines.

     • Exactly, Moo. As I’ve said before, If I tested positive for a high risk strain, I’d know it’s a persistent infection because I haven’t practiced the horizontal tango for a long time.
       But if a woman splits from her partner, finds a new beau, then tests positive for a high risk strain of HPV, she’ll not know if it’s persistent or not. She could have been infected by a previous partner, or by her current one.
       And we know that most so-called ‘abnormalities’ are NOT caused by HPV. Yet it’s assumes that if a woman with a high risk strain has abnormal changes, that MUST be due to the HPV. I prefer to see hard evidence, not allow people to make decisions for me based on medical presumptions.

   • I’ve also been feeling that while it is great to let off steam about these issues on this site, not enough women know about it. I feel that with all the extra knowledge that I have gained from this website, I need to start targetting groups and politicians within the UK to try to bring about a change of attitudes towards these screening tests. From now on I will be writing some letters to individuals and groups, to try ang get the authorities to wake up to the fact that many women are not happy with screening – they’ve just been bullied and threatened into accepting it.

   • Seems to me that too many charities are more concerned with raising their own profile than anything else. Jo’s trust was set us as a support group for women with CC. Now they’re hellbent on getting young, naïve women, who of course do not benefit from pap tests, into the system. Disgraceful. As I said before, if they’re so concerned about this disease, why aren’t they pushing for better testing instead of promoting a medical dinosaur?
     I don’t know if you know, Elizabeth, but new information leaflets have been drawn up, and while they’re definitely an improvement on the old ones, they’re still (IMO) misleading. But then, the group who created them have had a lot of input from charities…

     • Kate
       I’m suspicious of many of these so-called cancer charities and awareness & survivor groups, some get a lot of funding from those with a vested or political interest in population cancer screening.
       I know one group here were starting to rattle the chains about removing those under 25 from the program, now a member of their Board was also, involved in the research comparing the pap test results of young women with Gardasil records.
       Has he influenced the public statements being made by this group? These groups can make it hard to make changes with their “women will die” public statements and survivor accounts, “I’d be dead if I’d started having pap tests at 25″….etc.

       I think it’s important to look at the funding and the make up of the Board and Committees for these various groups, and their funding, especially large donations and funding streams, it often explains their focus. i.e. pap testing the masses instead of smarter testing
       That information can be hard to find, you often have to go through long annual reports and accounts.

     • Do you mean these new NHS leaflets? http://www.informedchoiceaboutcancerscreening.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/FINAL-cervical-screening-helping-you-decide.pdf I found it the other day and agree it’s much improved on the previous ones (I last saw some in 2011). I like the phrase on the front: “helping you decide” and at least they acknowledge it’s not a perfect test with no downsides. In 2011 the leaflets I was given (and spoken info from nurses) didn’t mention any downsides whatsoever.

       The Jo’s Trust forum was basically full of women absolutely terrified following abnormal results. I know people are more likely to go online with a bad experience than a good one, but you couldn’t help but come away thinking further treatment is pretty common.

     • Thank you Victoria and Kate for this recent information about the NHS leaflets. As I managed to opt out about 10 years ago, I ‘m not up-to-date with what it is like to be stuck in the NHS screening programme. I just wondered if the NHS is sending these new leaflets out to every woman, or just the new twenty-somethings about to be broken-in to the programme? I’m a fifty-something, and I have a relation and some friends in this age group, who are blind followers of the programme. They couldn’t believe, when I told them it was an option. I just wondered if the NHS bothers to send these women the updated leaflets too, or whether, more likely, they don’t see any point in letting these sheep know about their rights?
       It says that the programme prevents 1 in 100 women from getting cervical cancer. I thought the odds were less than this?
       Also, I’m sure I’ve read in a nursing brochure, that the woman still has the right to change her mind and not carry on with the test at any time, and that the nurse carrying out the test must keep checking with the woman, that she still wants to go ahead with it, right through the test. Does this really happen?

10. Do people understand that the HPV test are grouped into high risk strains and low risk strains?They are not separate.

    So in the case of old boyfriend woman tests positive for high risk HPV (let’s say she has strain 38 which the HPV test has in the group). She clears strain 38 but does know because she tests at a longer interval. She gets a new boyfriend and has an HPV test and it comes back positive for high risk again (but this time she has strain 18). So her medical record shows she has two positive high risk HPV results so it is concluded she has persistent HPV infection and she should have excessive treatments. In reality here no one knows what strains she had and what strains she is clearing. The tests are not designed to test for strains individually. This flaw is purposely put there to preserve the pap testing sham.

    I heard plenty about older women just coming up HPV positive when they were having normal paps for years and with the same partner for decades or even celibate for decades. So how are they being infected with HPV then? (Probably dirty doctors office and colonoscopy equipment) I do not believe the “latent infection” theory because it is just that a theory, never proven because individual strains are not tested for in clinical use.

    MY cervix is on strike if anyone would like to know. There is huge keep out sign posted at the door to all medical professionals.

11. As most of you know, I am the founder of Medical Patient Modesty (http://www.patientmodesty.org). I am also the web designer of MPM’s web site and Sexual Misconduct By Doctors (http://www.sexualmisconductbydoctors.com).

    Medical Patient Modesty had a silent auction to benefit Medical Patient Modesty at a restaurant in South Carolina a few weeks ago. We also had the privilege of passing out brochures about MPM. It was a lot of fun to watch people getting good bargains. The minimum bids for most silent auction items were at least 50% off the value. We even had tickets for Sea World in Orlando. We received many gift certificate donations from restaurants, attractions, and hotels. I enjoyed raising awareness about MPM with managers and business owners of hotels / restaurants in my letters and emails requesting donations.

    We still have a lot of gift certificates to hotels in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia left over so we are doing an online silent auction to benefit Medical Patient Modesty now. I encourage you all to check out our silent auction list at http://patientmodesty.org/OnlineSilentAuction2014.pdf to see if there are any items you all are interested in bidding on.

    Misty

12. I’ve got to ask something: What do you think someone has to be to actually think these things up? Not just all the little mind games & advertising, but the actual procedures themselves too. A lot of it sounds like the type of shit a serial killer would think of!

    For someone to be THAT dedicated to the endeavor of pushing this on women (with all the attendant problems), someone really has to be pretty fucked-up. I don’t buy that all these people are so misguided, especially since they deliberately leave so much out. Someone jumps on this “Cause of Death for Women” and somehow that makes it as common as the gender, itself?

    [On that note: How about how fat so many women are? That kills plenty of people. Do they jump on all the problems with food that makes it cause obesity & all kinds of other problems- including hormonal ones? No. That’s not a “This Kills Women” cause. Same with putting people on medication for all kinds of problems caused by the medical profession. If someone is traumatized from something imposed on them, or has massive anxiety from all kinds of “disease advertising,” or is simply put on something that causes massive depression- all are avenues to put someone on one pill or another, maybe a few at a time. Any of these pills can cause their own problems, too. Maybe surgery for those? I guess there can be some infection or complication to add to all that.]

    Look at when they mention birth control & say that women don’t have the time or money to book an appointment, instead of it simply being that they’re protecting themselves from having something invasive forced on them. I don’t think anyone really has a huge problem with publicity, either- considering how much people do to get that publicity in the first place. Either they’d say it & that would be it, or they’d get a shitload of blow-back & that would gain them MORE publicity.

13. Here’s an interesting article that speaks volumes about how doctors are quick to extract a woman’s reproductive organs when they have no clue what is going on!
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11274190

    • Women goes to hospital for cramps, doctors suspect ovary cysts and she comes home with a baby. How could an ultrasound miss a whole almost full term baby? Yes, pregnancy tests do not work for some women as they do not have high hcg hormones in their urine and maybe even blood. I am wondering how many fetuses are “accidentally” killed by these invasive procedures by doctors.

      Myself I was told by my doctor that there is 100% chance that I would never be pregnant but 8% chance I could have cancer and HAVE to have a Pap test. I refuse. I found out that the perimenopausal “episode” last year was a natural miscarriage. So how can I believe anything a doctor says to me.

      All the “fertility” tests such as checking the tubes do nothing to promote fertility. They just determine who is a better candidate for IVF which doctors make $$$$ off of.

14. An afternoon of Googling also revealed to me that the concept of two people being virgins when they start a relationship (no other sexual contact with other people either) is so outside the bounds of comprehension, it’s not discussed online. I found people asking about whether two virgins could ever get HPV as long as they stayed monogamous, but it was always pointed out that, “Ah, but they must have had other sexual contact beforehand with other people.” I explained this very clearly to my nurse and she either mis-heard (worrying, given her job is to listen) or she thought I (or my husband) was lying! This is the nurse that said my husband, like all men, could just be a natural carrier of HPV. What makes us even more unusual is that our sexual history, or lack of, was just how things panned out and not a moral/religious thing at all.

    • “Natural Carrier of HPV”???? How would anyone just “naturally” become a carrier of HPV without being exposed to it??? Spontaneous generation?!?! They’re espousing a theory which was debunked by science more than 600 years ago!

      Or, more likely, they’re just not believing that you and your husband are one another’s only lifetime sex partners, and, moreover, creating doubt about it.

15. “This is the nurse that said my husband, like all men, could just be a natural carrier of HPV.” – to clarify, I know that’s bollocks, don’t worry 😀

    • Of course, there *is* a way that he could be exposed to HPV without either of you having an outside sexual experience.

      That is, with the number of pathogens, including HPV, which are found in and around a clinic, if YOU were having the recommended exams and tests, THEY could infect you, and you could then infect him. If he failed to clear the virus, he could be harboring HPV from a previous iatrogenic infection from you – which HE had no way of knowing or preventing, and it could be explained as “just naturally a carrier”.

      This is down there even below the Latency Theory on such diseases. There’s no evidence for it, plenty of evidence against it, but if you believe it because someone in a white coat says so, they don’t have to sterilize their clinic or admit that there are health risks by being in the clinic.

16. The brochure says”
    “Cervical screening helps prevent cervical cancer. It stops about
    1 woman getting cervical cancer for every 100 women who
    have screening. Cervical screening saves as many as 5,000 lives from cervical
    cancer a year in the UK.”

    This sounds like creative accountancy. 1 in 100 sounds better than saying you have a 0.65% lifetime risk of cc or more than 99% chance of not getting cc. (not really true now, the only women at risk are those HPV+ and most of those will just clear the virus naturally)

    I’d NEVER trust their figures, I know these groups only too well. Whoppers are a way of life.
    The brochure is better than the last one and miles better than the rubbish they give women here (if they give them anything, most women are just told to screen), but it doesn’t go far enough.
    The risks of screening are still glossed over, they give us figures for lives saved, how about giving us the number of women sent for colposcopy, biopsies and treatments and mention the lifetime risk of cc is LESS than 1%? Put the risk into perspective…then women can compare the risks of testing and over-treatment with the risk from the cancer.

    I doubt these groups are capable of producing anything that comes close to a balanced overview, that would put too many women off screening…what happens to the expensive program that relies on screening 80% or more of the target population to be “effective”? How do you justify the vast expense if only 60% want to screen?
    What happens with GPs targets and target payments with women have a real choice?

    IMO, most of this is academic, they’ve been pressured by advocates to produce something better, but I doubt women will see any change in attitudes and practices at the surgery level…few there believe women should have a choice about screening. If they meant that they’d provide real information on risk and scrap targets and target payments.
    We see the same thing with the new breast screening brochure in the UK, they twist and turn, but are incapable of telling women the truth, they know women would desert the program in droves and they might get sued. Some women may wonder why all of a sudden the “evidence” has changed.

    • I’ve just been checking out Pete Sasieni’s news, and these links are a little dated, but worth a look at all the same. He’s the Prof. who opposed Margaret McCartney in her radio interview regarding women making informed choices in screening, but he’s in favour of rolling out the HPV testing in the UK right away. In this link he’s proposing that the vaccinated cohorts of girls would only ever need 2 smear tests in their entire life – one at age 30 and the other at age 45,
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11717154

      Also this link here – http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/07/31/expert-opinion-now-we-need-to-plan-for-first-line-hpv-testing/

      Clearly those new NHS leaflets don’t seem to be saying the first line HPV testing is going to happen any time soon.
      As he’s one of the very pro-screening lobby, it is encouraging to see he is advocating this drastic reduction in pap tests. Very frustrating that the rest of the pro-screening lobby are putting up a huge fight to keep their dictatorial control over women’s lives running for as long as possible.

    • I agree that it sounds like creative statistics.
      It’s good that they are providing numbers but as always it’s presented in a way to create fear. Few people will look at those numbers and then take into consideration what the population of women is and realize that the cancer is rare. What is never mentioned is even if CC was the number one cause of death for women they still have the right to decline screening. It is our life and our body.

    • 1 in a 100?In the Raffle study it used to be about one in a 1000 over 35 years, how did the numbers change so bloody magically?

      • I too find that actual figures are hard to come by. The pro-screening lobby in the UK is always quoting that screening saves about 5,000 lives per year, but only about 3,000 people are diagnosed with CC. Just what have the extra 2,000 been saved from? Deaths from CC are stubbornly stuck at just under 1,000pa in the UK for a number of years.

17. The NHS pamphlet says they keep the sample for 10 years. I doubt that. Maybe they electronically store the digital image of the slide. They talk about “removing” abnormal cells but nothing about being burned with a hot wire.

18. Just thought I’d pop this in to see what you all make of it. Had to admit I felt a teeny bit of Schadenfreude when I read it.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2661143/Woman-45-dying-terminal-cervical-cancer-doctors-wrongly-told-smear-test-clear.html

    • Very sad about this women. The last sentence of the article is that about half of women diagnosed with cervical cancer did not have regular Pap smears even though it was available. Yes, and what about the other half that I’d have tests and the cancer was missed. Then all the sidebar about pap screening. Fix the f@$&$&$@ tests and use diagnostic tests when women have symptoms.

      This women says money is not important because it is her life, yet she still has retained a lawyer. Even more push for doctors to promote screening because it saves money on lawsuits.

      • The thing is though, the information leaflets we’ve been receiving here in the UK for quite a number of years actually states that the test isn’t perfect, that it can’t prevent every cancer developing … so why she’s so shocked that regular testing didn’t save her, I don’t know. Perhaps she paid more attention to the garbage spouted by the media, or perhaps she was suckered in years ago before the NHS finally admitted (after they got their asses spanked in public) that the program wasn’t foolproof. Of course because we only hear about the ‘success’ (derisive snort) of the program and never hear about the failures, it does give women a false sense of security.

      • Hi Kate, I’m just wondering if older women ever get sent the latest leaflets which say that the programme isn’t foolproof? If they are happy to keep turning up, why notify them that the programme isn’t all it was cracked up to be?

        There was recently another similar case on local news here in south-east England, and again they peddle the same old story that the sample was mis-read by the lab technician, when in fact it is the screening test itself, which fails to pick up all kinds of cervical cancer. They don’t want the public to know that, so they always put the blame on the person who read the slide. I noted that in Ms Reynolds case, the hospital denied the slide had been misread, so it looks to me that they blame the sample reader to protect the programme. I feel very sorry for this lady and also the individuals who are blamed to protect the programme.

        On an entirely different matter, I decided to exercise my rights to view my medical records recently, as I was feeling like I needed a good laugh after my cancer episode.
        My infrequent visits during the 1990s for things like ear wax removal were accompanied with:
        March 1995 – Adamant she does not want to have smear
        August 1996 – says she will come back for smear another time
        September 1996 – Vehemently opposed to the idea of cervical smears, difficult to ascertain why, she agrees to have one today. Contact bleeding. (I was forced into this one thinking it would jeopardise my home birth plans)
        January 2000 – smear due
        November 2003 Opt out letter for smears received. I couldn’t help grinning at my flamboyant signature on this letter…

        Has anyone else read their medical notes to see what they have written about you not wanting smears?

    • This woman is in my prayers. I feel so terribly for her and I hope that her body heals. You know what is so disgusting about all of this? It takes a tragedy, a woman who’s facing her death, in order for medical professionals to openly admit that screening is not 100% accurate. Be that as it may, they are STILL pushing screening, they are just saying you shouldn’t always trust it. There’s no talk about non-invasive standalone HPV testing which is more accurate and would possibly save more lives and cause less harm. THIS is why women need to be informed about screening. THIS is why we need honesty. Most of all, THIS is why women should be offered more accurate alternatives if they do wish to participate in screening. May God be with this woman and her family.

19. This is slightly off topic, but since we discuss medical topics on this site and there are many people from different countries, I thought this might be the perfect place to ask. I’ve noticed that here in the US, people spend a ludicrous amount of time talking about death and health problems. When I visit people, they typically spend a good amount of time talking about medications and non-severe health problems which could easily and/or naturally be solved in most cases (i.e.; insomnia). A while ago, I was visiting some relatives and about 90% of the conversation revolved around health problems, medications, and death. I met someone for the first time a few weeks ago, and within 15 minutes, we were discussing health problems of her friends and family. I was at the grocery store and a group of people (who probably had met each other before) were all congregated talking about cancer screening and medications and health problems and people dying. I’m just curious – has anyone else in the US experienced this obsessive attitude towards health or lack thereof? Is this commonplace in other cultures as well? I’m not saying you should never talk about these things. If you or a loved one are experiencing health problems, then it can be good to confide in someone about your worries and have a shoulder to lean on. Venting about these things can help relieve stress and it’s important to get your feelings and thoughts out. That being said, if that is the focal point of all conversations and the one thing people are consistently discussing, I don’t think that’s very healthy for the mind as it promotes an attitude of pessimism and worry.

    • I live in the US, and I have noticed it too.

      It just wasn’t done – except for VERY close friends and family before about the 1980s. Even in the early 90s, it wasn’t done much. After the change in the law that allowed pharmaceutical companies to advertise their wares on TV, along with the attorneys who were looking for specific malpractice cases (the victims got very little of the money – it went to lawyers and court costs), people started talking about health concerns, as well as life and death.

      Really, all of the healthcare concerns are about preventing death. The main thing that the medical industry has to sell is fear. More fear = more visits = more profits. Typically, when one has some “problem” found – in many cases, one that was not bothering them nor was unlikely to ever cause any problem – to justify all of the tests and surgeries and treatments, they are often told, “You’re lucky we got it when we did. YOU WOULD HAVE DIED had it waited another month or year. They instill fear and a sense of urgency of the importance of “seeing your doctor regularly”. All of these advertisements for medications with no information about what they do or treat no doubt causes more visits to doctors. People complain of overuse of the medical system, but this is what drives it. The US has by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but we have poor results in terms of life expectency, infant mortality rate, risk of becoming a “cancer patient” and months of chemo or radiation therapy, or on and on. A lot of new diseases have been marketed through some drug company developing a drug, and their marketing ploy is “Millions need treatment! Ask your doctor if you might have …. and if you could benefit from a course of (our medication).” So, people start talking about it.

      It seems that nearly everyone is taking multiple long-term prescription medications. And, they get talked about when everyone is together. Rather than “I’ve got a bigger car than you.”, it’s “I’ve got stronger medications and more medications than you.”

      So, people see all of this on TV, and they talk about it. And, the other ads about whatever health concern anyone has, and all of the push to get people screened from everything from Pap to HIV to prostates to colons…. this seems to make up a good bit of the conversation.

      50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, there was a stereotype of the fearful, anxious, bored “old ladies” who did nothing but sit around and talk about their health and their operations. Now, it seems to have become all of society! When one has developed a lot of mistrust of the medical system through numerous experiences with it, it’s difficult to have a conversation anymore. It’s pathetic.

      • Beth, well said! You stated: “The main thing that the medical industry has to sell is fear. More fear = more visits = more profits. Typically, when one has some ‘problem’ found – in many cases, one that was not bothering them nor was unlikely to ever cause any problem – to justify all of the tests and surgeries and treatments, they are often told, ‘You’re lucky we got it when we did. YOU WOULD HAVE DIED had it waited another month or year’. They instill fear and a sense of urgency of the importance of ‘seeing your doctor regularly’.”
        You have summarized it beautifully Beth, and I agree! Take insomnia for example. You could see it happening, all the coverage in the media related to ‘studies’ that highlighted all the ill effects of not getting enough sleep. Then on the heels of that, ads for many medications that would help you sleep. Of course, lack of sleep is a common issue at one time or another for many people. The fact insomnia is a normal occurrence is not mentioned. Instead, fear is instilled with constant reminders of how lack of sleep is going to harm you, or even kill you.

      • On a related topic, here’s an interesting article asking whether or not scientific research fraud should be treated as a crime: http://retractionwatch.com/2014/02/11/should-scientific-fraud-be-treated-as-a-crime/
        The comments underneath the article are revealing, such as this one:
        “. . . former BMJ editor Richard Smith has come to the reluctant conclusion that science is indeed failing in its public duty, calling research misconduct ‘terrifyingly common’ and stating that ‘hundreds of studies (and probably many more) that are fraudulent remain in the scientific literature without any signal that they are inventions.’ Smith urges that research fraud be criminalized to put an end to it.”

      • BethK – I was born after the 80s, so unfortunately, I wasn’t around during what I’ll now refer to as the “golden era” LOL. Isn’t it interesting that media controls so much of our lives and conversation here? I just find it strange that it can have so much influence over an entire culture. It’s also quite scary, as well.

        “Really all of the health concerns are about preventing death.” Alex and I have talked about that briefly before. There seems to be a new societal trend in which people want to live forever. Everyone dies eventually and that is the sad truth. You may be able to prolong your life to a certain extent, but there’s really no way to prevent death entirely. I agree that the marketing for pharmaceuticals and the medical industry is made up almost entirely of fear. “The US has by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but we have poor results in terms of life expectency…” I watched a video or read an article some time ago which said that overall, Denmark actually has the best healthcare system in the world. I can’t remember the actual statistics, but apparently they don’t have overcrowded hospitals or doctor’s offices. Speaking of a lot of new diseases, I saw an advertisement the other day for – and I kid you not – a prescription for people who laugh and cry at inappropriate times. They have a technical name for it. I don’t know about you, but I have laughed and cried at “inappropriate times”, but I don’t think it’s a health problem. I think it’s just being a human with emotions and thoughts and feelings. When I saw that I thought “well, I’ve seen it all now,” LOL. As a side note, it had some nasty side effects so there’s definitely lots of money to be made off of that. People will mention laughing and crying at “inappropriate times”, get put on the medication, need more medication because of side effects, and it’ll be a horrible, endless cycle for some.

        I would much prefer to hear people brag about their cars. At least then they’re focusing on life and something good rather than what’s going wrong or what could possibly go wrong. It reminds me of that old Disney movie Pollyanna. There’s an older woman who swears up and down she’s dying but nothing’s really wrong with her. Still, the doctor has her on all of these medications. She even has someone helping her pre-plan her funeral. Then Pollyanna delivers jam to her house and tells her she ought to be glad she’s living. Then she thinks about it and starts living. She no longer stays in bed all day taking medicines or thinking about dying. America needs a Pollyanna LOL.

        It is all of society these days, unfortunately. I’m in my early 20s and most of my peers discuss health problems. I’m thankful I have a few close friends who do not, but it’s really everywhere these days. Even among my relatives who are middle-aged it’s common conversation. Like you said, it used to be common conversation among old ladies. Something interesting I just thought of, though. I had a great grandmother who lived to be in her 90s. I can’t remember her ever once discussing her health. Perhaps that’s why she lived so long – she never worried about it or spent time thinking about it. She just kept on living. It is difficult to have a conversation anymore. I hate it so so so much.

      • Oh dear! I didn’t know that the lamenting about health worries went into the 20-something age bracker too! The few people I know in that age group either talk about their children or pregnancy (although I think they are a little too concerned about their children’s health – like rushing one to a hospital with a 99 (F) degree fever. Really!), or talking about work, or their experiences in the military.

        Psychologically, early 20s are in the time of life when people usually feel invulnerable. That is the reason young men especially are notorious for doing daring, risky things, and is why their car insurance premiums are higher than most people’s. Young women are that way, just not as daring with it. If that group of people are lamenting about their health concerns, wondering if they need that medication or this test, there’s a problem.

        I do know from reading military magazines that more than half of the people – late teens-early 20s who enlist in the military are on one or more maintenance medications. That used to be a reason that they couldn’t enlist, but they had to remove it. Then, there was a problem with those overseas who could not get their maintenance medications, and were sharing them, cutting them down, taking them sporadically, and it caused a problem.

        Denial of death has been an issue since people stopped being around their dying relatives, stopped caring for them directly, stopped preparing them for death at home, stopped having wakes at their home. Since then, ailing or elderly people die in hospitals or nursing homes, one hears about it by a phonecall, one next sees their relative after a funeral director has cleaned, dressed, and made them up to look like they’re asleep. We don’t see death. We just see grandpa as having gone to sleep.

        Yet, we know death occurs. We see it in the news. We hear of mass shootings on a daily basis, we hear of car crashes, we get requests for money from AIDS charities. It’s just that it happens to somebody else. We can watch and see fictionalized accounts of how these things happen. We know that we’re “good drivers” so we won’t get into a crash, we don’t hang out with the kind of people who use guns (insert biggotted term for group of your choice), we live in a “good” neighborhood. We don’t do those risky behaviors that cause people to get AIDS – we don’t hang out with “those kinds” of people either. So, we’re safe.

        Yeah, we hear about somebody dying of a heart attack, stroke, or cancer. But then… we know it can’t happen to US. WE watch our blood pressure, cholesterol (it’s a number that people look at like it’s “god”, even if it’s “computed” rather than directly measured with a blood test!). WE go to the doctor regularly, and have those things treated before they become problems. The people who die… well, you know… he never watched what he ate, he didn’t go to the doctor or take “his meds” for cholesterol and blood pressure like he “should”. His death was preventable. REALLY??? I’m unaware of anyone born more than about 130 years ago who did NOT die!

        Nevermind that study after study has shown that statins lower the cholesterol number, but do not increase lifespan significantly. They treat to the number, while the science says that there’s something going on besides that number.

        We never hear of, or think about (unless it happens to us) that the number of people who die of AVOIDABLE ADVERSE EFFECTS in a medical setting in 2013 was over 100,000. That is about the same as all of those who died in traffic fatalities, guns (all causes: mass-shootings, homocides, suicides, accidents, carelessness, while committing crimes, etc), and AIDS COMBINED! That number has suddenly taken a turn upward, from hovering from 90,000-96,000 for several years, then jumped last year. The 90,000 number exceeds the number for all traffic fatalities and all firearm-related fatalities. Somehow, that’s a real blind spot, and people consider deaths from medication errors, wrong medications, hospital acquired infection to be extremely rare – SO extremely rare that nearly all of those who sue over it are just trying to get money.

        I think your great grandmother was on the right track of just LIVING until she died… not lamenting it while denying it. One of my grandmothers tried to keep herself from dying – ended up with a quack/fraudster who ended up in the federal pennitentary, running from doctor to doctor, taking all sorts of treatments. People called her a “hypochondriac”, and even those her age couldn’t take it for very long. My grandfather (other side) lived to 91, keeping a farm, ate bacon & eggs, smoked, and didn’t like doctors. He quite literally died farming – harnessing a mare to furrough a field and keeled-over dead! I KNOW which one of them had the most pleasant life!

        BTW, I have been diagnosed as having the same heart weakness that killed my grandfather and one of my uncles. I was diagnosed when I was 30. The treatment – which I was warned “you’ll DIE unless you have!” by a doctor who seemed too-eager to do it – involves open-heart surgery. I would have to live as a heart patient the rest of my life. No thanks. I figured (then) that I’d just live 60 more years and drop dead suddenly doing something useful or fun, rather than just exist and watch everything I do for the next 70 years…. maybe. Or die much sooner than 90 because of surgery or… you know… being a heart patient.

        You might want to read some of the writings of S. Kierkegaard. He’s best known for the line of, “Live until you die.”

      • forwomenseyesonly – I’m glad people are finally discussing scientific research in this manner. I think a lot of scientific research is A) biased, B) innaccurate, or C) unintentially flawed. I’ve been reading books about science (unrelated to the medical field) lately and I found something interesting. Most scientists look for things to support their own personal beliefs. I don’t want to get into a debate here, but I’ve never really believed in evolution (I know that’s rare these days, but I just never thought there was sufficient evidence to support it.) So I looked into the facts and actual scientific discoveries and found that both people who were for and against the theory used their own personal bias to determine their area of study which would affect the outcome of their findings. After reading that, I decided that I will no longer trust scientific studies. Most of them are flawed, especially when vested interests and/or personal beliefs are involved. Also, in regards to this, there’s a lot of pseudo science going on in regards to health/well-being/life lately. “Asymmetrical facial features make people less attractive, less likely to be successful and are caused by growing up in a poor home.” “Studies show animals don’t have a soul therefore, humans don’t either.” By the way, those are two headlines I read recently. Where do they come up with this stuff? It’s ridiculous. I know those two examples were a bit more on the extreme side of things, but it happens. The scientific community seems to be spiraling down hill more and more over time. I can only hope that the truth is soon found about these studies and that the public become informed. However, I know that’s bit of a pipe dream, unfortunately.

      • forwomenseyesonly – That should read “unintentionally” not “unintentially” LOL.

      • bethkzb – Indeed it does. It usually isn’t AS severe, but there’s talk of screening, cancer, asymptomatic tumors, etc. I cannot tell you how many girls my age I know (some even as young as 18) who have had asymptomatic, benign ovarian cysts surgically removed. They were told they were lucky it wasn’t cancer. However, a close friend of my family worked in the medical field for a while before leaving (she now says she can’t go back because of ‘how it is’. Truth be told, I think she got sick of seeing people harmed because she’s very much into helping others rather than causing harm). Anyway, she told me that almost all women get cysts every month so they’re nothing to worry about. Even if there’s slight pain with them, they typically go away in 1-2 weeks on their own. If they aren’t persistently causing pain or causing abnormal bleeding or anything like that, there’s nothing abnormal about it as most women get them. If that’s true, then nearly every woman regularly going to a gynecologist has probably had an ovarian cyst scare at some point in her life. At least here in the US where they still do pelvic exams. I’ve never heard of someone rushing to the hospital for a 99 degree fever. When I was little, my mom waited until it was up to 103 before taking me. Man, these doctors are just making a fortune off of hypochondria these days, aren’t they?

        I will admit, I’ve even been concerned about my health because of how often it’s been pushed. I try to get those thoughts out of my mind, but when it’s constantly in front of you, it can be very difficult. I’ve cut back how much television I watch, and I usually record shows so I can fast forward over the advertisements. That has helped a lot. I’ve begun listening to my iPod in the car rather than the radio, so I don’t have to hear anybody talking about anything negative. That’s helped as well. But I can’t live as a hermit and avoid people, so to an extent, I am still bombarded with health scares and reasons of why I should worry about my health and get this test or this screening done. It’s very frustrating. And let’s not forget the billboards which advertise screening now, and stores which take donations to raise awareness for this or that. If I go anywhere, I still see/hear SOMETHING about illnesses.

        “Denial of death has been an issue since people stopped being around their dying relatives, stopped caring for them directly, stopped preparing them for death at home, stopped having wakes at their home.” I agree completely! I think it’s certainly less heartbreaking and easier to avoid those situations, so that’s why they aren’t as commonplace anymore. But life isn’t easy. We have to do things we don’t like sometimes. (And to the doctor who once said that to me in reference of screening – well I’m not going to say what I’m thinking because A) I don’t swear and B) Using explicitives on this site is not allowed. I feel horrible for even thinking such awful things, but this attitude about screening, especially towards women is so aggravating. Anyway, back to what I was saying.) I think we’d find more joy and meaning in our lives, too, though if we began taking care of our elders. We’d spend more time sharing in their wisdom, getting advice from them, and learning about the important things in life. I think all-around things would be better if we actually started looking after and taking care of our elders again.

        I really hate it when people say that someone’s death was preventable. Death is not preventable. Life can only be prolonged in a few cases here and there. Don’t blame someone for dying. Respect them for living.

        100,000 in 2013? Was it really that high? That’s terrifying! Of course, that’s not often publicized, I’m sure. We need to stop putting the medical industry on a pedestal and begin publicly acknowledging the truth about it.

        It sounds like your grandfather lived an incredible life. He did what he enjoyed up until the very last second. Now that’s what you call leaving a legacy for people to remember.

        Actually, you’ll die regardless of what you do. I’m trying not to reiterate too much here, but as I said, death is not preventable. Anyway, I am sorry to hear about your heart condition, but I’m glad to know you’ve chosen to live your life to the fullest in spite of that.

        I’ll check out some of his stuff! Based on that quote alone, I imagine I’ll enjoy some of his works.

      • These benign ovarian cysts are symptomatic of a woman who is OVULATING. Yeah, your friends are “lucky” they didn’t have cancer with those removed cysts just as they are lucky they were not hit by a meteorite on their way into the hospital. Cervical or ovarian cancer is extremely rare among teenagers.

        It’s difficult to get away from the disease message. Remember, it’s all advertising. They are trying to sell you something – in this case, it’s ease of your fear of death. They do their best to aggrivate that fear, then sell you the “cure” from it. You don’t need that any more than you “need” the latest fashion in shoes, jeans, cars, a vacation, or any of the other 1000s of things available for sale. Hitting you in the FEAR category – especially the universal fear of death – is very effective. More effective than telling you that you won’t be part of the “in” group or “popular” crowd if you don’t by their fashion accessories.

        More correctly, much of what passes for “health care” is in truth “health scare”. They tell you that you’ll die without this test, that medicine, or the other procedure. When you don’t die, they can charge you anything they want because you are so grateful to still be alive.

    • Obsolutely! Every damn commercial is about that type of thing, too. I remember this Irish guy wrote a list of things he didn’t like about America (Benny Lewis- he actually wrote a book about learning languages quicker & has a company that I think does the same thing), he had been saying the constant flood of commercials, a lot of them medical, was a point.

      I think to take a lot of things about America as a whole, it does come off very anti-life. Screwing with the food & water, having more problems with a topless chick on T.V. than a gruesome murder scene, constantly trying to hi-jack people’s lives or simply inflict things on them. We’ve mentioned medicine (especially considering the directing of all these problematic things toward women, particularly reproductively), but there’s a general theme of antagonism to life here. They don’t like any prowess that would facilitate life, especially in the serious realms of activity. They don’t seem to like kinetics of any kind or even the ability to do them! It’s like they have a problem with other people’s agency & then look shocked or hurt that someone would say that- since there’s been no official declaration of these things. I suppose they figure it’s up to someone else to declare it, not the one it’s aimed at to pick up on it- or just want it to be that way.

      I know that was a bit of an “If & Maybe” type of rant, but I’ve noticed on a constant level that if something IS a particular way, but isn’t blantantly DECLARED to be- people look at you as if you’ve done something appalling to reference it. There needn’t be formal laws or banners in the streets for something to functionally be in place.

      • Alex – I don’t blame him. I bet that’s an interesting list. I’m going to see if I can find it anywhere online.

        I’ve said this before but I agree that there is an anti-life approach on quite a few issues here. Which is interesting, because as a whole, society seems to obsess over living forever. Very contradictory. “Having more problems with a topless chick on T.V. than a gruesome murder scene…” finally someone said it! Thank you! LOL. I know someone who wouldn’t watch the new 21 Jump Street film because there was too much swearing. However, she watches crime shows all the time. It didn’t make a lick of sense to me. Now, I don’t necessarily condone swearing all the time, either. But swearing isn’t harmful to someone’s life and in some situations it’s very comical.

        “There needn’t be formal laws or banners in the streets for something to functionally be in place.” That reminds me of something I learned in science. If you stick a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it will have no idea it’s being boiled. That’s similar to society. When things slowly start to take place and have taken place over a long course of time, it’s more difficult to recognize them.

      • Ro- Look up “17 Cultural Clashes This European Had in America.” The site seems to be Fluent in 3 Months (it was either that one or this same thing posted on another site, but one of them took a long time to load).

        If you read Blackfoot Physics (actually, just the Amazon sample will do for this point), it gets into some of that stuff about scientists. Personally, I believe they get a lot of things wrong intentionally as well as all the stuff you said. A major thing is that they don’t generally see something as proof until they agree wtih it- like their certification is the final ingredient to something being real. This is not accurate (or sane, really)- but again, they figure this requires their affirmation. I think their ego comes into play frequently with this: they feel quite proud of their achieving this qualiification & of their expertise- if these things are of low quality, it kicks the chair out from under them & they figure they can maintain the structure of a situation they prefer by lying. Same with when they are proven wrong- they think this only happens when they “let go.”

        There’s a few comparisons between America & Europe. One was funny, but it’s more of a guy joke. It was two women sitting down & they both had that “whale tail” thing happening (when the top of the thong sticks out & it looks a bit like when a whale is diving). The one from Europe was in good shape & had good posture. The American one was… . I mention it since there was also a food comparison in the corners of those pictures. The European one had a basket of wine, from what it looked like. The American one had the McDonald’s meal. It’s interesting that there’s no campaign about that. Nothing about all the fake stuff added to the food or it being “mangled” into an unhealthy state in some way. They certainly don’t pester women about when they last ate a salad every time they come into the office.

        Speaking of which: If you were to go to a restaurant & someone (male or female) actually shoved a salad down your throat, this would be an attack. Doesn’t make a difference if a salad has some utility for boosting someone’s health or if the waiter was the same gender as you. It would still be an attack if the waiter didn’t claim any culpability, or if they identified the restaurant as their home, or you as “their” customer in the possessive sense of the word. And this is just with the concept of shoving vegetables down people’s throat- not even somewhere “less conventional.” I’m willing to bet if they were to violate someone with a carrot & they claim it wasn’t an attack because carrots are healthy, nobody’d buy into it.

      • “If you were to go to a restaurant & someone (male or female) actually shoved a salad down your throat, this would be an attack. Doesn’t make a difference if a salad has some utility for boosting someone’s health or if the waiter was the same gender as you” Alex this is soo good!

      • Alex – I read it and it gave me a laugh. Is it sad that even though I’m American, I agreed with everything on the list?

        “A major thing is that they don’t generally see something as proof until they agree with it – like their certification is the final ingredient to something being real.” I think that applies to the medical field, as well. Some of the different areas of law. Quite a few philosophy professors. Generally, people with a degree in a high-paying “public service” type job has a bit of an ego and believes themselves to be infallible. That’s not to say EVERYONE with a good degree is that way, however it seems to happen quite often, which is sad. Obviously, they are very intelligent people and they could use that intelligence for the good of human kind rather than to further their own agenda. Also, I’m typing up this comment as I go and I just realized you basically paraphrased all of that in your comment, as well.

        I HATE that there are so many fake ingredients added to food here. What’s worse is that few people can afford an all-natural, organic, GMO free, whole foods diet. It’s disgusting and it’s something that should be illegal. It’s illegal in other countries, so why not here? There should be a campaign about it and Americans should protest and sign petitions and work to get all-natural, organic, GMO free, whole foods to be the norm and accessible to everyone – even those living paycheck to paycheck on minimum wage and out of soup kitchens. It is strange that doctors never fuss about this. I was reading online about GMOs and whether or not they are bad for you. One woman commented and said she asked her doctor who admitted they are in fact horrible for your health, but the doctor told her not worry because GMO free foods are so expensive and there’s nothing we can do about it – so there’s no need to stress about things you can’t change. That made me so upset.

        “Speaking of which: if you were to go to a restaurant & someone (male or female) actually shoved a salad down your throat, this would be an attack…” Absolutely. But you see, they’re only a waiter/waitress making minimum wage. So they don’t have the clout to get away with it. I hated typing that up as it made me cringe, but it’s true. I think so much of what doctors, scientists, etc., get away with is because they make money and have power. And that’s part of the reason some people probably buy into it, as well. They’re upheld by some of society on a pedestal.

    • In the UK it is mainly cough and cold remedy adverts which appear incessantly over the winter months. I have seen a couple of adverts for cancer screening this year so far, I don’t think our NHS has got the money nowadays to advertise. I think retired people talk incessantly about all the medicines they are taking, problems picking up prescriptions etc. It is all elderly people like my mother ever talk about. I get an earful every time I see her. As for younger people, I think they gossip if someone has got something serious, but I don’t think younger people in the UK like to talk about their health. Perhaps they like to appear tough and hard, and admitting you have something wrong, gives your peers the upper-hand. One of our university students who spent a year studying in the US was very surprised at how interested other students seemed to be, when she had a minor illness, whilst studying there. In the UK, if you have a bad cold, people say, OK, don’t give it to me, see you when you’re better. They don’t get involved. But our student found that fellow American students were fussing over her in a very big way, recommending all sorts of cures to get her back on her feet again. She was very bemused by it all, as people leave you to get on with it in the UK.

      • adawells – That’s it I’m moving to the UK LOL. I think all elderly people everywhere are concerned and discuss health problems. I think it comes more from fear than anything, especially when they’ve had to go through watching close friends and peers pass away. So to an extent, that’s very understandable. Also, LOL about the student who came over here. It would’ve been interesting to have been a fly on that wall. I think people here really do have good intentions, though. It’s just things have gotten out of hand with how people view health and illnesses.

20. I found this study of men’s and women’s experiences of screening. Women found that they were not offered the choice to decline as much as men were with screening. Unfortunately they didn’t include pap screening in the study, they would have found the differences even more glaring.
    http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2814%2900178-0/fulltext

    • Men are not offered much of a choice to decline either.

      Case in point: My neighbor went to the doctor, supposedly to discuss the results of some blood tests. According to his mom, they talked for about 30 seconds about 1 blood test, then told him (at age 45) that he “needed” a colonscopy, and stressed that it’s “very important”. Without symptoms, and being under 50, it comes out of his pocket – and he doesn’t have an extra $5K lieing around somewhere. He refused. Then, when they got back home, there was a message on the machine from the office where they’d scheduled him for one on Monday. He called back, and said “no”. Then, the nurse at the office called back around 3:30 and told him that he was scheduled for 8:00 in the morning. He refused, and said that he couldn’t afford this. No problem. The hospital will “work with you” on payment. He refused it again.

      It doesn’t sound like he was given much of a chance to refuse. They won’t take “no” for an answer. It won’t surprise me if they don’t convince him that this *screening test* is somehow “urgent” and “a matter of life and death” so he goes along with it. Of course, they won’t tell him about the risks of the procedure, the risks of the drug Versed that is given as a sort of waking anesthetic, or the risks of all that comes after something comes back in something like “inconclusive”.

      • I think men are treated differently here in Australia, whereas I’ve heard many accounts from American men, similar to the one outlined by Beth. (including the male posters on Blogcritics) I heard an American doctor say they were told to push PSA testing because the unnecessary biopsies and surgeries were very profitable, nothing about good medicine.
        The same with colonoscopies, there really is no evidence that a colonoscopy is any better than the FOBT, the latter is a lot cheaper and easier. (and less risk, but of course, a positive finding leads to colonoscopy anyway) A RCT is underway at the moment at Dartmouth comparing the two screening tests.
        I’m not promoting colonoscopies, FOBT or anything else, that’s up to the individual. (hopefully, an informed individual)
        I know Gil Welch and a few others have said the use of colonoscopies as the gold standard in bowel screening is obviously motivated, at least in part, by the huge profits they generate for vested interests.

21. I wonder what would happen if someone just hung up? Or if somoene said “Okay” & then didn’t show up, you think they could charge them for not showing up? I mean, since someone didn’t actually schedule the appointment? Could cost them some money, especially if someone reschedules something with someone else. At the very least, it would aggravate them & this is an empty space where someone else isn’t racking up a bill with them, because that time was “reserved.”

    If they recorded the conversation & then said “Well, you confirmed & you didn’t show up so you owe us some money” someone could just say that they were acknowledging what they said- since someone is calling them up with fiction, maybe they just figured there wouldn’t be any point in arguing with them. They would know if someone called them & booked an appointment- especially if they record calls.

    • One reason why I have call display on my phone. I just do not answer the phone unless I know who is calling and want to talk to them. If there was a message left in my answering machine that such test was booked for me (not at my request) at such short notice then I would have been “out of town”. Charging for a missed appointment in that case is just fraud. No one should pay it. This is a trick that clinics should not get away with.

      I got that phone call trick for a Pap test. The doctors receptionist calls and leaves a message “the doctor wants to see you”. If I was there recently and some tests were ordered I would assume he wanted to see me about some test results. I did not call and ask but usually the receptionist will not discuss over the phone. I just showed up and asked her there. She said for “fat shaming and cancer blaming”. Yes there are many complaints about the rudeness of the staff employed. Then I got the doctor trying to get me to do a “well woman” exam which I refused. He was yelling at me for not getting a pap. The public insurance likely did pay him. I should ask to see the billing records which we do not see in Ontario. I am sure he is charging for procedures he is not doing, Once he did some urine tests which I did not see the lab form. (Now I copy all the tests ordered) and he did some swab of the inside of my cheek/mouth. Does anyone know what that is for?

    • Booking an appointment for the patient without the patients input and consent and then charging them if they missed it is coercion. If a clinic did that to me I would be reporting the Dr and the clinic to the medical board and the Ministry. Not only is the Dr and clinic violating their code of ethics it is also violating the patients rights which is set out in many provinces in a patients bill of rights. Patients have the right to freedom of choice and the right to refuse medical treatment or tests without an explanation or reprisal and the right to individual autonomy and the right to be treated with courtesy and respect.

      • I cannot get over the cheek of the medical profession and the screening authorities, how dare they just book us in for a screening test and expect us to turn up. An expectation that women will screen. Clearly this is another unethical tactic to push women into testing. They know some women will feel obliged to turn up, it may even make the test seem mandatory in some women’s eyes. (like a summons to screen)
        They know many women will just turn up or will call them to cancel, an opportunity to push them into another time or scare/pressure them into screening.
        I’d like them to make an appointment for me, PLEASE, make my day!

22. Beth has hit the problem on the head, we’re now communities of worried well and we seem to be spending more and more on the well, often leaving them worse off and having less to spend on those who have an actual health issue. There is more money focusing on the well.
    Look at the millions we waste on pap testing, when 95% of women aged 30 to 60 are not even at risk and cannot benefit, yet we keep pap testing and wheeling many of them into day procedure.

    Breast screening: if more women were aware of the evidence, not many would bother with it.
    But the message we’ve been getting for decades is “simple”, screening is a must and life-saving, “If you don’t have a mammogram, you need more than your breasts examined!” is the sort of insulting and powerful message we get, especially women.
    So women fear not screening, often fear screening (but feel they must) live in fear waiting for results, are terrified if they’re labelled “abnormal” and then the trauma of biopsies and treatments.
    So many women simply live in fear, full stop. On health forums women often say they start to feel sick a few months before a pap test “is due” and if you’re having them 2 yearly from teens to 70, that’s a lot of anxiety. Some women find the test itself quite traumatic and painful.

    IMO, we don’t celebrate life, we focus on illness and death. We’ve been trained to think that way and if you don’t, you must be some sort of idiot destined for an early and preventable death.

    I saw the ads on TV when I was in Hawaii last year, so many of them, one after the other…”ask your doctor about X and Y”…focus: health issues, act or they may get worse, this is better for you…all fighting for an audience/market for their product.
    I think medicine is actually the greatest threat to our lives when we’re well. (and even if you’re unwell, stay alert!)
    I look back and recall my father’s feisty sisters, they focused on life, were always positive, opinionated and busy (even in old age) lived fairly simple lives focusing on family, friends, cooking/baking, their vegie/fruit/herb gardens, pets, community activities etc. Now the focus is so often quite negative, many people go through stressful (and mostly avoidable) medical events, people do seem to live in fear, carry anxiety and focus on illness and death. Women (who haven’t managed to get to the evidence) who don’t screen, fear every twinge is cancer, those who do, are going through other negative emotions. (embarrassment, pain, fear etc.)

    I know which approach I prefer. My father’s older sisters lived very long, healthy and happy lives. I can’t recall them seeing a doctor unless they were unwell, and that didn’t happen very often.
    Today they’d be called, “hard to reach” or reckless etc. back then they were just healthy women.
    I understand the concept of only seeing a doctor if you’re sick might miss things like high blood pressure, the right balance is probably, somewhere in the middle.

    There’s a book called, “Saving normal”, also, an interview with the author online. The same thing is happening in psychiatry, (especially in the States) normal emotions are increasingly being labelled as mental illness and people are being medicated, often with serious consequences to their health and well-being.
    Saving normal, indeed.

    • Worried well is a perfect explanation. Health anxiety is the norm and people are afraid now of every bump or lump or hiccup (literally and figuratively) their body makes. A lump in a woman’s breast is called a breast cancer scare and a different looking mole is labeled a skin cancer scare. Everything is pre this or that. Pre cancer or pre diabetes or pre hypertension. Our bodies are not perfect and we will develop bumps and lumps and hiccups and odd looking moles but it does not mean they are cancer nor is it a scare. The body also has an amazing ability to heal itself. That’s not to say the persistent symptoms should be ignored but there is no read to run off the Dr for a sore back after a day of gardening. Behind it all is the fear of death but we are all pre-dead and it’s much better to live a happy healthy life without constant medical monitoring and interference and the worry that brings.

23. Hi Ada,
    unfortunately I have the memory of a goldfish and can’t remember whether I got an information leaflet with my first screening summons, which would have been in 1992. It may very well be that the women who were sucked into the programme at the beginning may not have been given any information at all, aside from the usual ‘could save your life’ cobblers.
    So, this woman may have been regularly testing long before ‘The Facts’ were available to her (or as Michael Baum might say, ‘The Fibs’), and didn’t bother reading it because she already knew it all. Or so she thought.
    And with the NHS bleating on for so many years about how this is the *perfect* test, it’s no wonder that so many of victims of false negatives feel that someone must have screwed up along the way.

    In regards to medical records, yes you’re absolutely right, they’re obsessed with this stupid test!
    My sister took her own life a few years back – she’d had depression for years – and when we received her paperwork there was a medical form listing her meds her meds. Further down the page there were questions on her screening history. Yep, you guessed it, mammograms and smears. WTF is going on?

    • Hi Kate, I’m so sorry to hear this news about your sister. I seem to remember reading somewhere, that if you have negative screening results and then go on to get cancer the NHS pays out a settlement of £250k, so that’s why I think they are so keen to get themselves off the hook, when someone dies. It is deeply insensitive to bereaved relatives for them to see that the NHS just sees the deceased as a screening target. The cancer screening tests are merely insurance policies that they may have to pay out on.

      • Hi Ada, thanks for the kind words. I felt that my sister’s death was inevitable, really, due to the standard of care being so appalling. That’s one of the things that anger me about mass screening – we waste so much money hunting for diseases that will never occur in the majority, and those who really do need care are suffering because of the lack of resources.
        I don’t think cervical screening has ever been cost effective – Angela Raffle was prompted to do her research because she was shocked at the vast numbers coming into the colposcopy clinic. I guess, without an RCT, they had no real idea how innaccurate this test was. If the NHS is so worried about being sued, why isn’t it easier to opt out of the system? Oh, I think we all know the answer to that one.
        All this stuff about preventing disease, whether it’s via screening or drugs (statins for example) is all very well in theory, but doesn’t work in practice. Helps a few, harms many, and the cost of ‘prevention’ all too often is far greater than treating the disease. I think the public need to remove their blinkers and see that a lot of medical intervention is really state interference and start rejecting the notion that we’re all disease riddled unless the doctor says otherwise.

24. I was just thinking of some things & figured maybe it would be a good idea to mention them:

    I figure that it’s important to mention that when someone gets assaulted along these lines (doesn’t strictly have to be penetrative, but it can be), there’d most likely be a feeling of being weakened. It doesn’t actually detract from your abilities to counteract things or the capacity to sharpen your abilities. I guess maybe it’s helpful to imagine someone sticking soemthing up a tiger’s ass, then being mauled to pieces. It’s good to see this is somewhat (repeat: “somewhat”) along the lines of a strike, that way someone doesn’t lose that fighting drive- whether that’s for payback or prevention.

    Maybe someone loses faith in themselves because other people WOULD probably lose faith in them, similar to losing a regular fight. Just like if someone loses a regular fight, it doesn’t mean that you’ll lose the rematch. I realize it’s different from a punch in the face & would be the type of thing to stick with you, but I figure this aspect of the situation is a serious point. It IS a self-defense concern.

    A few other important points is that sometimes the good “guy” DOESN’T win & quality DOESN’T always get treated like quality. What’s the concept? That fucked-up shit can only come FROM you, not AT you? That’s nonsense- since when it comes FROM someone else, it would be AT you or whoever else it. That might very well BE dishonorable conduct: to treat someone in a manner they don’t deserve, particularly when things get strange.

    It’s a false belief that someone is immune to whatever they do, also. I’ve noticed some “people” seem to think if they’re behind the trigger, they’re immune to being shot. They then might go about exciting this sense of safety by DOING all the stuff they’re worried about happening to them. They’re not some sort of innocent creature that got “confused,” they’re still an enemy- I just figured it might be helpful to understand what someone might have running through their head.

25. I know America is different with the standard of care that covers all sorts of excess and abuse, but if a doctor, nurse etc. told me pap tests were compulsory or I had to have one for the Pill etc. I’d decline and then lodge a complaint with the surgery or Medical Board. (if it was a doctor)
    I think many women give in and have the pap test or walk away feeling guilty etc. so they get away with this appalling conduct.
    If more women made a fuss, they’d have to rethink their approach.
    Of course, the system has made it difficult to refuse pap tests, so many women simply don’t know they can reasonably decline screening or that pap tests have nothing to do with the Pill etc.
    I’d urge women who feel able – complain, complain, report and report, you’re in the right.

    • Right, Elizabeth. Mass resistance is the only way to beat the bad system!
      Evey person who fights back against medical, government or any other wide-spread abuse, is contributing the the common good. If we ever achieve free and just society, it will be because of people like that.

      • Absolutely right. If people can get together across continents and find out what healthcare other countries are offering, this has to get people questioning the system. This is why this website is so good. It would be great if we could get some Dutch or Finnish input about cervical screening, but it looks as though women are happy with their programmes in these countries and don’t feel the need to blog about it!

      • Adawells- that my (part-time only ATM) job at the moment, and not just screening, but generally access to women’s healthcare technologies..Only I would not like to reveal too much IRL stuff, but I can say we beated 11 other organisation to get the funding we got. I think the time is ripe for this kind of discussion, with a wider cultural counter shift happening to rape culture.

      • Women I talk to seem to think that cervical screening is an important political issue along with access to birth control and abortion. They are often outraged that the Ontario government has reduced Pap test to once every three years which is really too often. They do not know that HPV tests are paid out of pocket. They do not the statistics about certain cancers, regression rates from dysplasia nor the incentive payments doctors receive for meeting screening targets. They seem to think that their right to pap testing is the same as the right to vote or hold office.

        The “no pap/no birth control” issue is never brought up. I do bleuve that is totally about human rights and a political issue.

        As for the other issues concerning reproductive freedoms that is more about the control that is creeping in over reproductive rights. Midwives are offered but only for low risk pregnancies. Any three off the list including age over 40 and other very minor conditions and a midwife is not allowed and a referral to an obstetrians is required. The questionnaire for pre-birth is long and includes details about the woman’s relationships and personal life and whether the pregnancy was planned. Also when was their last Pap test. Women are almost forced into all prenatal testing to assess “risk” and sometimes refusing will mean that child protection services or police are notified. After birth they are also coerced into well baby visits, immunizations and screenings and post natal Pap tests and treatments. A public health nurse is also sent around to check on new mothers to see if their housing and living conditions are up to standard. The guise is to offer “help” but when a woman might admitted to having survived child abuse on the prenatal questionnaire then she is suspected of abusing her own children and at risk of having them removed by the government.

        I think I really need to meet with a feminist and ask them how they feel about these issues or even if they are aware of them.

      • Moo- feminism has became such an empty word. Most “mainstream” feminists are busy with twittering and hashtags and trying to police media representations. I do not think much of liberal feminism, I think it has in fact very much made a pact with neoliberal state power and corporate interests, actually it becoming part of the mechanisms producing the neoliberal subject, all the “Lean In” crap. Look at UK screening, it is very much nudge policy in effect (Demos advising the GPs to try on opportunistic screening) and after thinking about this for a long time, I think we have to put up with the whole ugly scheme because a, it is too hard to get rid of, after decades of propaganda, b, it is a sort of social engineering, “teaching a lesson” and the idea of an unregulated, unchecked female body scares too many. Also feminist politics is politics, and the whole idea of a “natural body” to be freed up from technology or whatever is out, which is fine, but post-structuralist ideas about bodies are more nuanced then the slogans they get reduced to, to combat “essentialism”. Alongside the natural body, the second wave of feminism is out, which is a shame, I would give so much for a radfem-revival. When I read Mary Daly I knew and felt she speaks the truth, but nowadays she gets shut down with nonsense like she is “transphobic”. There was this idiot trainee doctor here, with her #NotAllDoctors# crap, who said second wave feminism has no place in a civilised society (would she not agree with the legal recognition of domestic violence, for example, i wonder) and she cited of course TRANSPHOBIA, I have to say I have seen some poor strategic use of trans-issues, but it was beyond a joke. All things trans- is hot topic now (Hope B. Preciado’s book stops the madness, and we can all agree now) and trans activists deem reproductive rights “boring”, the penis is now supposed to be a “female organ” and the libfems do not have the guts to tell a bunch of men taking hormones and wearing frilly skirts to not speak in the name of all women, regardless whether they feel “they are one of us” or whatever. It is just really ugly POMO BS, which will of course not deconstruct any gender binaries, but further fuels the idea that the medical industry has a control over the female body, as if it was a car, which can be assembled and re-assembled based on some instruction manual. (Insert usual thing here how I don’t mind blabla and everyone with their own body blabla- I am talking about politics.)
        Instead of “conventional” feminists the best theory comes form Science and Technology Studies, a sort of cottage-industry of sociology, and medical anthropology. for example this woman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Leigh_Star has done amazing work about technology and feminism, but sadly she is not very well known.

      • Karen, I’m old enough to remember the feminist demands back in the 1970s, “A free pap for every woman, that’s our right”…I tried to block out that chant when it happened on campus a couple of times. In those days they wanted a formal program, and got it, lots of political brownie points in women’s “healthcare”. I always felt vested interests used/manipulated/deceived the feminist movement to get what they wanted, the huge profits they knew would flow from a screening program, especially one that sent most women for colposcopy and biopsy (or more) at some point.

        Somehow that “offer” of a pap test turned into an aggressive corralling of women, a shocking abuse of our legal rights and bodies. I watched and listened as the noose tightened around women and felt quite afraid. Thankfully, I’ve never wanted or needed to run with the herd and was happy to walk alone (it felt like that sometimes) as a non-screener. (although I didn’t really talk about it back then and avoided doctors, the Pill was also, out for me) I found out later other women also, rejected pap testing, but felt too intimated to admit that fact, so they let their friends think they were screeners. Some of these women were captured though, if they later wanted the Pill or pre-natal care.

        IMO, most women were being assaulted, because it was impossible to make an informed decision TO screen, many were coerced or pressured into screening when they wanted the Pill or medical care. We had posters in the toilets attempting to “educate” women, when nothing could have been further from the truth…I thought it was propaganda.

        I could see the VERY thing the feminists complained about…THEY were now doing, treating women like public property with no rights or say over what happened to their body. I called myself a feminist, but it was MY brand of feminism, believe in myself, respect my body and values and make my own decisions, part of that was protecting myself from this sort of abuse.
        I know there are many brands of feminism, but all of them seemed to buy into the systematic abuse of women by these programs.

      • Elizabeth- I suddenly remembered Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Whole_Woman.html?id=VNW8MQnDbOsC&redir_esc=y, which has an extensive section on the harms of female cancer screening and hysterectomies. Just out of curiosity, did it have much media feedback in AU, as she is Australian, and quite a well-known feminist?

      • I have also been wondering how people regard the case of Prof Herb Green from the National Women’s Hospital in Auckland. He died in 2001, and was accused of leaving some women to die of cervical cancer, because he recognised that not all cases of abnormal cells would go on to invasive cancer. Has everyone forgotten about this case, or are people beginning to think that he may have been right? I know some of his patients are still alive.
        http://www.womens-health.org.nz/index.php?page=unfortunate

    • It’s scary that women don’t think they can decline medical tests. It shows how successful the propaganda and hyperbole has been. When a Dr said to me that I “should” be having pap smears I corrected him and said that it was an optional test and I make the informed decision to have them or not. He then tried to take the route of well let’s talk about why you’re not having likely with the expectation that I would divulge a history of sexual abuse. When I came back with it’s an inaccurate test for a rare cancer and I have less than a one percent life-time and he should also test me for kidney cancer and brain cancer and pancreatic cancer because they’re more common he had no reply. He knew I was right. Women need to be told they’re rights as a patient and that no test or treatment is mandatory. They have the choice. But those facts are kept hidden.

      • Isn’t it interesting that they go right to the idea that someone was abused? Maybe they figure someone is going to notice the parallel that this is something imposed in that situation? I’d imagine a lot of doctors don’t say: “Hey, this is a risky & inaccurate test for something massively rare to begin with.”

        Never mind the amount of disclosure the doctor elects to provide, they get coercive & dictatorial anyway. They could always mention all the potential problems & levels of utilty, then say “You don’t get this without that” or “It’s a law” or “We’re going to do this now.”

        Not to sound sarcastic, but women need a bit of a Spartacus situation with medicine, in general. It really doesn’t HAVE to be this type of subject & there seems to be a more dictatorial and/or disregardive style with medical influences toward them. I was thinking about that earlier: how someone (at least in this part of the world) basically wants to preserve an enemy. They don’t seem to want them gone or to “harm” them by countering their actions. It’s like trying to fight against something without actually doing anything counteractive.

        People don’t even tend to call something a problem! I think that’s out of fear that someone will argue that it’s not & then they’ll be posed with the impossible task of finding a way to say something so that no one can argue or twist their words. They don’t even want to try, since their victory hinges on the opponent’s nod- a severe conflict of interest, I might add. If someone were to attack you in a more conventional or ostentatious way, would it be up to them if you defended yourself? Would you stop if they claimed they were oppressed by these actions?

        You could always make the point that they precipitated this situation by what they did & I’ve found for whatever reason that sometimes works to end things. Maybe it has something to do with a control freak liking to feel like they had a choice or that they had some sway over the situation?

        I remember hearing that about dealing with cops: that you should try to phrase it as a choice on their part to go away & leave you alone. You might not really care about their feelings either way, but they’re more likely to cut the shit if it’s framed as less paperwork for them or them “granting” you something- also potentially less risk (whether directly or from secondary review, chancy to say but it’s there).

      • I cant belive things have not changed in US. Most woman just go along with the forced pap for birth control. IT violates womans right to choice. Why is it still standard care hear for birth control. Its so upseting. How did they ever think a forcing woman to have a pap smear to get birth control was just fine. I guess the woman who pused this thought that all woman wanted to have pap smears or if they didnt they were incompent and needed some one to for ce them. I wish woman whould team togeather and protest this instead of just ecepting it.

26. http://avivaromm.com/pelvic-exams#comments

    Has anyone heard of this doctor?
    Quite impressed with the quality of most of the information and she seems open to other people’s opinions. Of course, pap testing is never presented as a choice, the guidelines are treated like some sort of law. I wonder whether she holds the Pill hostage, might ask her.

    • “So gals, you can stop worrying about the shave and a haircut, and your Sunday best panties every time you go in for your annual physical ” only If they would ever stop with this language.

      • Karen, agree with you, 100%
        Like they’re doing us a favour allowing us to keep our pants on (I hate the word “panties” probably because it’s a word often used in this context) and ridiculing us if we have a problem with that perverse thinking.
        I was surprised by the honesty of some of her responses though, pretty rare for an American doctor. (i.e. not good for business)

      • I went into my hysterectomy completely unshaved because I thought, why the heck should I make things any easier for them, and glad to say they didn’t remove a single hair. It was all there when I woke up.

27. Pretty rare for most doctors actually, not just American doctors.

    • I’m afraid I’ve used the word panties in a previous post. I used this to avoid any confusion with the American/Canadian audience who use pants for the over-garment with the long legs, which we call trousers in the UK. Is it safe to stick with the word knickers, and does this mean the same in all anglophone countries?

      • Knickers works for underwear over here, it just sounds very distinctly British.

      • That’s funny, Ada, but you’re right, these terms can cause confusion.
        It’s just me, but I hate both words because they’re used by marketing gurus working for the screening authorities, trying to make pap tests sound casual and modern…no big deal to drop your panties. “Time to drop your knickers” etc.
        I’m not bothered by any term used here, but get me onto Papscreen and every article annoys the hell out of me.
        I guess most nationalities would understand the words, knickers or panties. I tend to use pants, but you’re right, some probably think I’m talking about trousers.

28. I was reading about the dangers of silver nitrate, which they use to cauterize after a biopsy. Do you think it could build up in the body over time? ( I hope this link works)

    silver nitrate

    • Silver can build up in the body over time.

      Generally, small amounts given infrequently pass through the body in about a week. More frequent or larger amounts of exposure can cause it to build up. More of it builds up if it’s eaten or inhaled than if it’s used topically.

      Click to access silverfaq.pdf

      It can cause a condition called argyria where there is sufficient silver to cause the person’s body – skin, eyes, mucus membranes, etc a grayish-blue. It is a permanent condition, but it is essentially harmless to the person. You can see pictures and read about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria

29. Over the winter I was going thru a personal issue and keep having panic attacks. My Aunt found out and started telling my mother that I may have problems with hormones and she should take me to see a gyn and that they could prescrib me a type of anti depresant for pms mood swings. I keep telling her no that this was an issue i was going thru at the time that was causing the panic attacks. My aunt didnt like that I had gone to a syc doctor and she gave me klonpin. I keep trying to explan that it was an issue i was going thru and not hormones. She just keep after my mother to take me to see a gyn. I have since worked out all the issues and do not have panic attacks any more. But my aunt thinks every problem can be fixed by a gyno. I think her gyn has lead her to belive all health problems are gyn related. It just got on my nervs.

    • Keligh- How old are you that your aunt is pestering your mother to take you anywhere? Or is it just the way she acts?

      I wonder if she’s had any problems that were actually FIXED by them? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a doctor fixing any problem! Next time she starts up with that, maybe you should say something sarcastic like: “Yeah, Aunt (whatever her name is)- that’s what I need. I need someone probing me & maybe infecting me with a disease that I’ll get blamed for after the fact. I need someone giving me a miscarriage-inducing injury. I need someone giving me false results, so I can go get all kinds of parts cut out of me. Hey, perhaps I can get a disease just from being in the hosptial, but maybe I can ALSO have some kind of complication from surgery. I’m sure they’ll let me pay for all this.”

      It’s as severe as the situation is & maybe she’ll see the prospects for herself last minute.

      • I am 29 and live with my mother because of her health problems. My aunt took some kind of meads for pms and she thought they whould help me. My mother respects me as an adult and whould not push me to see any doctor. MY aunt didnt mean for my mom to force me she just keep saying that it might be a hormonal problem and that she got help from a gyn. On a side note she also thinks woman have to a see a gyn for uts and that they have to do a pelvic exam to test for it. bc her gyn can precribe meads for a uti and they always do a pelvic any time a woman goes there i think she asumes that a uti is gyn related and only a gyn is good for treating that. Not to be gross but i tried to explan the placde were woman urinate is not the vagina and she just didnt get it. And yes some woman do use gyns a a primary doctor like a one stop shop bc they think they already need to have there reproductive organs cheeked so why have to see another doctor for unrelated problems. And also woman hear are made to feel there vaginas are dangerus and a pap is more inportant than a heart issue. Or thats how it seems.

    • I heard in the USA gyns are often primary care doctors, and women go to them with sore throats and things like that.

      • That is indeed true. In television advertisements for prescriptions, if it’s a prescription unique to women in any way, they recommend getting a prescription from your primary care physician OR gynecologist. So they’re treated as being essentially interchangeable.

      • Karen
        I am one who has a gynecologist as a primary care doctor. It started because at twenty I needed bc pills and couldn’t stomach the thought of a male doctor examining my privates. The only close female doctor was a GYN and she agreed to see me for everything. When she moved out west I reluctantly agreed to see the male doctor who replaced her. To my surprise he is a better doctor than she was. I had put up with her always being in a hurry and giving very rough and uncomfortable exams in order to avoid the embarrassment of being seen by a male doctor. He is a fabulous doctor. His demeanor, attentiveness and exam skills are exceptional for such a young doctor. He only does a pelvic and pap every three years as recommended so the embarrassment factor is kept to a minimum,

30. I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about treating people in aged care with respect and as individuals. The female DJ made a remark about having male nurses bathe older women in aged care ( and I know from knowing some women in aged care, that they find this very distressing) and apparently a male nurse texted in very offended that his “professionalism” was questioned. The DJ then apologised. I wish I could have made a comment or two about his lack of empathy, sensitivity and sympathy. How dare he put his feelings before his patient’s. And why doesn’t he realise that some women from different cultures and eras are particularly sensitive to opposite gender care. I was boiling! What a terrible nurse he must be.

    • Mary, that speaks volumes to me. It’s unprofessional and uncaring to dismiss a patients concerns about opposite gender intimate care.
      I’m surprised a decent nurse didn’t call up and make that point.
      The texting “professional” male nurse needs to be set straight, not receive an apology.
      A nurse who doesn’t get that is a major concern. I also, wonder whether some of the outraged “professionals” (some can be quite aggressive, even abusive) are using that term to hide behind, to maintain intimate access over reluctant patients for perverse reasons.

      A professional nurse puts his or her patient’s concerns and wishes ahead of everything else. Using professionalism or claims of discrimination to dismiss the concerns of your patient means that’s a nurse best avoided, definitely needs a refresher course.

      Elderly people are especially vulnerable to abuse and those who are mentally ill, these people are sometimes viewed as perfect victims by predators, because they can’t defend themselves or complain about their treatment or no one believes them.

      The nurses I respect (and would be more likely to trust) are those who respect their patients wishes and wouldn’t dream of making a fuss or taking it personally if a patient prefers same sex care for something like showering. Common sense should dictate why some prefer same sex care.

      • I really don’t give a stuff on how “professional” you are Mr Male Nurse, I will refuse your care. Funnily enough, if I’m lying in a hospital bed, feeling all together unwell, it IS actually about ME and not YOU.

    • Again, there’s the point that reality doesn’t take a coffee break for these people. He calls up pissy about how some old woman has a problem with some guy scrubbing her? “Professionalism?” To mean what? That the structure of the situation is a certain way, but it isn’t that way?

      I really think the medical profession (at least the allopathic kind) needs to be conquered. Not in a joking way, more like in a medieval or maybe a Roman way.

    • That happen to my greate grandmother. She was in the hospital for a sickness and a male nurse came in to bath her she refused and said I only let woman can do that. She said the way this hospital was set up that amle nurse was assined to be her nurse and he got offended and was rude to her the rest of the stay. She said that she did not belive in other men seeing her naked esp her late husband. I guess he wasent used to woman refusing like that. She also was in her 90s and back when she was younger they didnot do well woman exams or push them on woman like they do today. It botherd her that they didnt respect her.

31. Actually a refresher course may not work with some nurses.
    If a nurse has an aggressive/abusive nature and does not respect a patient’s right to decline opposite gender care, IMO, they are unsuitable for nursing.
    To me it’s the difference between good and sloppy care, when my mother was in hospital last year I noticed patients were asked, “you have a male/female nurse looking after you today, would you prefer a male/female nurse to help you shower?”
    It makes all the difference, treating people like they matter, not just lumps of meat.

32. Actually if you look at some of the forums for nurses, this is a real issue. There are some nurses, both sexes, who’ve seen it all (so?) and think if the nurse is professional, their gender is irrelevant. Others say it’s too difficult to accommodate patient preferences.
    A few are highly professional and always respect the patient’s choice and don’t take a rejection personally. Then you have the strident ones, some are abusive and aggressive, “they” will not be discrinated against, “they” are trained professionals, “they” don’t have sexual thoughts, only professional ones…they…they…it’s all about them = someone who’s missed a vitally important part of being a nurse, the patient’s welfare, comfort and emotional health comes first. This isn’t about YOU.
    It’s a concern these strident “professionals” are out there, they just don’t get it or choose not to get it. I suspect some of these people will end up being reported or worse, leaving a trail of damage and distress in their wake. The hospitals who employ these nurses should address their self-centered attitudes. Professional, hardly…

    • I have my husband read everything on this site. Then we discuss it. As I’m already disabled, and he’s my advocate/caregiver, I trust him to watch over me when I’m in the hospital. Several times in our marriage, he’s run afoul of faminazi nurses. He goes with me to ob-gyn appts. He’s told the practitioner to use a pediatric speculum on me instead of the plastic crocodile jaw.

      Few years ago he had hernia surgery. He was told not to prep…the concern being infection. And that “they’d do that for him.” Well, too bad for them. We informed them we’d do our own prepping. We shaved and cleaned him the night before using Hibiclens. Surgery day, he was sedated and left on a table. Nurses returning from lunch arrived for “prep.” They thought he was already anesthesized, but he was awake.

      They untied and ripped the loose gown off him, making jokes about unwrapping the afternoon’s gifts. He felt gloved hands running over his chest and arms, checking heart monitor leads and IV’s. Then more hands lifting his legs, and touching his penis and testicles. Of of the three or four nurses, none noticed he was already shaved. One took a razor, and then wondered aloud, “hey, did somebody else already shave this one? …where’s his file?” They continued handling his genitals w/o any coverings on his body at all. He remembered it was cold, but their hands were warm. He was worried about becoming aroused. Then two of them begin painting his abdomen and genitals with antibacterial alcohol gel.

      The nurse wielding the razor dropped it twice. Once was on the tray. Her reply was that “he” didn’t see that and they didn’t care. Next time it was dropped off his body onto the floor. The same nurse remarked about the “3 second rule–does it also apply here?” They all laughed. More jokes followed, plus talk about who went where and ate what for lunch.

      After all this, “nurse with razor” remarked that they should all thank him (my husband) for doing their job. More laughs. She patted him near his left hip, and said “how about we just affix a post-it note to him right here?” They all laughed, and another held and leaned on his right leg laughing so hard.

      When he tried to see them, there was panicked whispers. Then another female came up behind his head, and he felt drugs flushing into his arm…that was it.

      His best friend is an anesthesiologist. The excuse given for this was “they do their best to protect the patient’s dignity, and you’re always covered.” Next call, more confrontational. He admits that for rare, very brief times a person is naked while things are changed. Finally, last night, the truth.

      My husband suggested that perhaps for 10 minutes a person is completely naked. At first there was a lot of nervous laughter. Like it was amusing how the nurses handled my hubby’s genitals. My husband pushed. The doctor finally admitted that an “average” a person is completely naked is “10 minutes or so.” But he insisted a “sterile environment must be established; and a person has to be naked and scrubbed in order for that to be done.” Like that’s the justification for all the lies?

      So, be it known that a person is prepped, left naked until the surgery team arrives, then drapes are placed and surgery begins. And, at the end, the reverse happens. This is why a person arrives in recovery in a new, untied gown, freezing cold, and wondering why so if wrapped in a warm blanket. Take note of this. Requesting an all-female team mean nothing. You’ll be drugged out so the “professions” can all do their work.

      My husband inquired about pelvic exams. The response was, “now what’s wrong with them? …what business is it of mine to ask my girl friend anything about that?” My husband ran through 45 minutes of talk about this site, and examples you’ve all written about (including my own). The response? The doctor “admitted” that it’s completely possible for all this to be true, and that abuses happen. But they are so rare… He cannot grasp why they are useless. So we are going to send him a large letter…

      The one piece of advice? He refused to have his kids vaccinated with Hep B. He said a PhD researcher indicated that the vaccine could possibly bring an immune response against the pancreas, causing diabetes type 1. He said, “it’s all because of sex, drugs, and blood or fluid exchanges that they created this vaccine…” But he said the vaccine is ok for adults.

      • Oh, Cat and Mouse, I’m going to have nightmares about that, but I can’t say I’m surprised, my cousin is a nurse/midwife and she’s turned me gray with some of her accounts.
        Interesting it sometimes comes down to the hospital and individual nurses. A friend had a procedure at a private hospital and she was prepped in an ante room by two female nurses, draped, and then moved into position, there was no door on the ante room, just some sort of curtain, but it was all very private. Of course, she was awake during her procedure, had an epidural, so you have to wonder whether the same care is taken when you’re asleep. A nurse told her that particular hospital was respectful, but others couldn’t care less. Some of the nurses there thought the privacy measures were a waste of time, obviously the “professionals”. (yeah, sure…)

        That’s why we need to remind them, it DOES matter to us. Hospitals should do more to protect their patients privacy, it could be achieved, if they actually cared. Have you ever been naked in a day spa, but you never really feel naked with careful draping etc.? You can’t tell me there is a medical need to leave someone naked for 10 minutes and totally exposed to whoever happens to wander into the room. That’s disgraceful. Are these nurses happy for people to giggle over their exposed genitals if they ever require surgery? Sometimes it seems like a “them” and “us” situation, with some in the medical world going to great lengths to secure a closed theatre etc. for their procedures.

        I fear ever needing surgery in the future, knowing how I’m likely to be treated while I’m under…as far as I’m concerned, being careful while you’re awake and not giving a damn when you’re asleep, is highly unprofessional. I expect them to take extra care when I can’t protect myself, I know that’s unrealistic when I see how they treat us most of the time when we’re awake. (not painting all doctors the same way, I know some share our concerns) When trust is compromised and so many can’t see the problem, it becomes a real problem.

        Also, predators are cunning, they put themselves in places with easy access to their prey, and naked, powerless/vulnerable people are on the top of the list. You can’t tell me some of the orderlies, theatre techs etc. absolutely love the fact they don’t give a damn about patient privacy and leave people exposed for all to see.

33. Mary and I have discussed how Australian women don’t worry about ovarian cysts because routine pelvic exams are not recommended here and we know they’re a normal part of your cycle, ovulation.
    Yet American women worry about them and call them “scares”, so many have had procedures and surgeries and are then told, “you’re fine, it was clear”.

    There’s an interview on You Tube that explains this perfectly, the idea is to convince women to still go in for an annual. The story line: young woman decides she will go in after all, the doctor “finds” something and the woman faces procedure (I assume surgery)
    So they find a normal and harmless ovarian cyst.

    The woman then says, “I had no symptoms, I didn’t know it was there, it could have led to tragic consequences if I hadn’t come in for my annual”…so she’ll keep having her annual.

    IMO, this woman has been used and deliberately misled, she had an unnecessary exam, that resulted in a false positive and an unnecessary surgery, she should be angry and seeking legal action, not thanking the doctor for his “help”.
    I’ve heard a few American doctors use this angle on women. I think they should be reported, but I know the American “standard of care” covers them for all sorts of outrageous excess.
    I had a feeling I posted that You Tube, but it might be hard to find so I’ll hunt for it and post it again.
    These doctors are either incompetent or deliberately misleading women, risking their health, surely that amounts to serious misconduct or even criminal conduct. I find it incredible they’re allowed to keep getting away with it, even with a “standard of care”.

    • American doctors are also pushing for all woman to be on the pill if they r noit trying to conceve. And they push girls hear to take the pill as a cure for overian cycsts. They use the pill as a cure all for woman issues and it keep woman tied to doctors. Its crazy.

      • Kleigh, that’s why they’re VERY concerned the Pill might come off script.
        The pap test and Pill-on-script is a great business model, it forces women into the consult room and into testing, so HPV self-testing, evidence based testing, things like condoms or the Billings method, informed consent, de-linking the Pill and pap testing are all major threats to that great business model.
        The Pill can cause issues for some women too, so that’s more business.
        Condoms are promoted as very unreliable, when in fact, if used correctly they offer good protection. (with some added health benefits)
        Also, the Billings Method is scoffed at, but it’s the only form of contraception I’ve ever used and it worked well for me. (it took some time though, I took a short course and worked with a teacher) It also, gave me a deep understanding of the normal functions of my body.
        If you control your own fertility they have fewer opportunities to “capture” you.
        I know pre-natal care is another difficult area where women are pressured into all sorts of things. (also, women on HRT)

        I saw a study a few years ago that showed non-screeners often relied on condoms, so of course, avoided the consult room pap test pressure/coercion.
        Women acting independently jeopardizes their business model, they’ll always have a “problem” with women being in control of their own lives, healthcare decisions and body.

        It seems we’ll change our program, but they won’t offer self-testing until you’ve declined the invasive HPV test for 6 years. Controlling women is the most important thing as far as the medical profession and these programs are concerned.

      • I don’t get it. First they tell us for contraception that the pill causes everything from high blood pressure to blood clots to weight gain to strokes, and tell us how dangerous they are. Then, they prescribe the pill for everything from menstrual cramps to to “heavy periods” (meaning one loses more than 2 oz per period! It SHOCKED me!), and then for perimenopause. We are told that the pill – and its associated estrogens and progestrins are highly risky if we’re over 35, but then push HRT – with the same ingredients – on every woman approaching menopause or post menopause – into their 70s.

      • The hormonal medical model for women is just about control and making money. I thought maybe it was just my doctor and I am not happy. I had a miscarriage and I found out that he asked me all these questions after http://ocfp.on.ca/docs/default-source/cme/new-antenatal-record-and-guidef9a835f1b72c.pdf?sfvrsn=0 which is for prenatal care. This was three months after a miscarriage. He asked me when was my last alcoholic drink along with questions like if I was taking prenatal vitamins. I rarely drink and said maybe I had half a beer like in three years. He told me off and said if I was trying to get pregnant that I should NEVER have alcohol. We do use any birth control and I have been trying to get pregnant for 10 years. Am I never supposed to have a drink? This is ridiculous and even more offensive is that he did the questionnaire as if I was pregnant and I was not. I had a miscarriage which I blame on him. He only did the questionnaire to make money. He does other tests which he does not tell me about (blood and urine) since I did not see the request ion form. He does not show me reports from lab tests unless I pay for a paper copy. He was a yearly “family fee” for that.

        I am trying to find out how much he bills the public system for my care and make an official complaint about him. I recently found a hotline to call. This what health care has come to in Ontario, Canada.

    • The doctor will urge the woman to leave her husband or partner outside as the exam to be performed is so “personal” and of an “unknown subject” that “might provoke unknown reactions.” Best left to “detached” professionals… In her fear, she will practically invite the doctor to perform a very thorough pelvic too.

      Including two fingers in both vagina, then one in vagina/one in rectum, then both in rectum while the doctor accidentally touches her clitoris and probes every erogenous zone she has inside her body. She may experience involuntary sexual excitement while being overstimulated. Her clitoris and breasts will be engorged; she will become naturally lubricated. All for a “thank God that turned out to be normal. So lucky you came to me today…!”

      She will go home embarrassed, violated and very angry. She will vent this on her loved ones. Whenever questions are asked about this, she will react with vitriol the doctor should’ve received. Forever, there will be tension between her and her loved one over this. Her husband (partner) will never be privy to why the exam room will remain, in the future, off limits due to this recurring fearful reaction. The problem will grow, and eventually spill over to when the couple wishes to bring children into the world. Agree?

      • What do you mean “vitriol”? I get the term, but what kind of stuff would she level at them, instead of the doctor? I’d think it wouldn’t really carry over, since they didn’t do anything to her & weren’t there to prevent anything by her hand. If she wanted things to not go on, wouldn’t the drive be to do things differently. I feel like I’m missing something here.

34. Sue- I posted something & it said “awaiting moderation.” I was just wondering if my comments were a bit too severe lately or if this was a general thing? Also, if I close the screen before it gets approved will it still load?

    • Alex, I’m not sure why it got hung up because I could see nothing wrong. And not to worry – your comments are always AOkay and then some! Some reason why comments get held for moderation (that I know about) include: two or more links, no email address, and something about an IP that triggers WP to mark a comment as spam. Sometimes someone will make an error in typing an email address and that will trigger WP to hold the comment for moderation, but none of these things applied to your comment that got help up so bottom line is I don’t know what happened. I have some control over the settings, but WP can override them. In any event, your comment is up now. Thanks Alex!

      • Thanks, Sue. I didn’t change my address or anything, so I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe because I was posting on two threads at the same time? I found that if you have two screens going & click “post” one after the other, it says you’re posting too fast & the second one gets erased.

        Anyway, glad to find all that out.

    • Every comment I submit says awaiting moderation. I thought that was the norm.

35. Elizabeth thanks for linking the video clips! Your comment did go up, but your Gravatar didn’t show up under “Most Recent Comments”. Probably because References and Education is a “page” and not a “post”. The “pages” are all the articles accessed by clicking on the top bar (for example, “References and Education”, and “About”, etc). The “posts” are all the articles accessed from the home page. There have been some changes on WP that I didn’t know about and that must be one of them. Basically it appears that if you post a comment on an article that is accessed on the top bar your comment will go up but your Gravatar won’t show up on the home page to indicate you made a comment. One of Alex’s comments didn’t go up earlier but that was on a post, and I still don’t know what happened there. I unfortunately don’t have any control over the changes WP has made to the top bar, but I wanted to let others know about your comment and videos on References and Education.

    I watched the first video and it looks as Gilbert Welsh has tried to simplify the information by reducing length and slowing it down a bit. It is a great explanation of how futile and harmful cancer screening can be, but still no mention of cervical cancer in the list of over diagnosed cancers. I hate that the one cancer that is so obviously over diagnosed and is the bane of our existence is never mentioned!

    On a different topic I wanted to share something that happened. A few years ago I had some irregular bleeding in between periods. After going through the usual tests (this was before I knew what I know now) nothing unusual was found, and the irregular bleeding resolved on its own. I eventually decided the bleeding was due to eating chicken, because I had been traveling on a regular basis and I usually ordered chicken when I went out for dinner. I suspected eating chicken every day for weeks might have had something to do with the bleeding due to the high levels of estrogen in chicken. For years I have cut chicken out of my diet because of concerns about the estrogen, and I have been regular as clock work ever since. But the other day I was offered a piece of pizza loaded with barbequed chicken and cheese and I couldn’t resist. So . . . a few days later I once again had a bout of irregular bleeding in between periods. Kind of creepy. Could it be that estrogen is so disruptive to a woman’s hormonal balance as to cause irregular bleeding? And just how much estrogen is in chicken?!

    • and I wonder what other such foods are out there..

      • Other foods that can contribute to gyno issues are dairy because of the hormones, soy because of the phytoestrogens (although there is debate about this and I believe in moderation), and any factory farmed meat because they give them hormones. To help with gyno issues eat leafy greans, omega fats such as hemp seeds, and cruciferous vegetables because of the Indole-3-Carbinol which helps with estrogen metabolism.

      • Flax and soy are naturally very high in something called *phytoestrogens*, which the body uses as estrogens. So are some other fruits and berries. These are not being added, but the fact that so much more soy is in our diets now than in the past explains part of it.

      • There’s a bit of a debate about phytoestrogens and their effects on estrogen and estrogen sensitive conditions. Some say that their raise estrogen levels and therefore make the condition worse while others say that they can help as the phytoestrogens will take over the estrogen receptor sites and because they are a weaker form of estrogen they therefore can help the condition impove. My opinion is eat a whole foods diet and everything in moderation.

    • There are different reasons for spotting between periods. But some women do get it with certain hormonal birth control and they are usually switched to a different brand. It is the balance of hormones that matters more than how much.

      About food causing estrogen excess. I have read much but still confused. I found this website http://foodforbreastcancer.com/. Some of the articles just seem ridiculous such as HPV causes breast cancer. Other such as 80% of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) do not progress to cancer just proves to me that mammograms are not a good idea.

    • Another experience regarding periods- I used to shrug at the thought of those organic menstrual pads, right until once I bought a pack on sale. It has completely eliminated the itchy skin that I used to have during periods, and all the irritation. I was so used to the itchiness and the irritation, I did not even think about it, even tho I consider myself aware of women’s health matters. (Natracare brand, usually available from Waitrose).

      • I’ve been using reusable cloth ones for several years. That COMPLETELY eliminated the itchiness and rashes!

      • I have heard about several women having sensitivities to the materials and adhesives in pads. They were better when they switched to other methods either cloth or silicone cups.

        I really have to wonder what is in tampons and if their manufacturing is controlled or monitored by government regulations. Tampons are not sterilized although some people think they are. They are not considered “medical devices” even though they spend quite a considerable amount of time inside the body.

36. I just sat down with my evening meal to watch the UK Channel 4 news programme, eager to hear the main story about how they have moved closer to a simple test to predict which women may go on to develop breast cancer, even if they have no family history of the disease, and are not BRCA women. Great news, I thought, this should be the end of widespread mammogram screening, but then I nearly choked on my food. How are they going to get these samples from women, why the pap test of course! The presenter went onto to say that our smear tests could be used to also detect who might be going on to develop breast cancer.
    I’d rather eat shit. Did anyone else in the UK catch this news item?

    • is this a prank

      • only if they could ever find a way to tie benefits to pap tests..

      • It was on the Channel 4 news just over an hour ago, and Cathy Newman did the story. Can you view it on catch-up? I’ve been trying to find the story on their website, but it’s not there. I also read about this news in today’s Guardian
        See if this link works:
        http://bcove.me/vg9ct56l

      • I’ve just watched the clip, but it is still not clear how exactly they plan to tackle on a blood test to smears, or they use interchangeably smear tests with cancer screening, I do not really get it. I would have rather heard about this, instead of seeing another recap of the grotesque leg-pose of Angelina Jolie.

      • Hi Karen, I took this newsclip to mean that they would use the actual smear sample to check for breast cancer indicators, at least, that’s what it sounded like to me. The news story in today’s Guardian, seemed to be suggesting that a blood sample would be taken to be checked, but the Channel 4 news story implied to me that the smear sample would be used as a kind of 2 in 1 test. It’s just the kind of thing they would do IMO – running the two programmes is expensive and numbers are falling in both programmes, as the over 50’s are not bothering with their smears, if they’ve had a run of negative ones and the breast screening programme has been proved to be ineffective. Why not put the two programmes together. The over 50’s might jump at the chance of a more accurate mammogram-free test, but they’ve got to open their legs for it, boosting the cervical screening programme figures in the process to way over the 80% threshold and ensuring the success of this crap programme for years to come.
        Am I jumping to conclusions?
        I’ll be following this up for sure.

      • Here’s another item saying the smear test could be used to detect breast cancer
        http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCQQqQIwAA&url=http://www.express.co.uk/news/health/485135/Breast-cancer-test-predict-risk-10-years-ahead-and-could-save-millions-of-lives&ei=6t6tU4JMqIzsBoeHgKgF&usg=AFQjCNGeDUd3-lwoCN2HXTMBrf60ErHt4Q&bvm=bv.69837884,d.ZGU:

      • Adawells- thanks for the other link, and the clarification. It is just jaw-dropping, they expect women to prostitute themselves for a breast cancer test. It is indeed jaw-dropping. These people have gotten away with too much for too long. You bet private companies will sell the test for a few hundred pounds or something anyway and only those who would not be able to afford it will have to resort to the medical rape-test.

    • I searched for the blood test, and this has jumped into my face in today’s Guardian.. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/27/experience-my-dog-found-my-cancer
      I know dogs work with diabetics, and there is even artificial intelligence aimed at dogs developed to aid them in assistive care. Surely some research grants would be well spent investigating the possillities of dogs sniffing cancer.
      (but what if she is just another 24 years old with a lump in her breast that might have just looked bad under a microscope? Her cancer has not spread, Would it have spread? Who can know?)

    • I only heard the headline on the BBC news, which mentioned a blood test. They said it would tell women if they “may” develop cancer. What are you supposed to do with that information? Especially if it’s not a high percentage chance. I think a lot of women who are told they have any chance at all, would be straight into having a mastectomy. The same way that women who have pre-cancerous cells detected in a smear go into invasive treatment to “save” themselves. Maybe it would allow low or no-risk women to avoid screening, which would save the NHS money and allow them to focus on high-risk women, which would be better than the current situation of screening everyone over 50. I’m open to new ways of actually helping people, but don’t really see it as a great step forward if women are still going to be left in a position of having to take quite drastic pre-emptive action. I think some people would see it as a victory, “project accomplished” moment if women just had pre-emptive surgeries done, rather than going further and looking at the root cause of cancer. They see the surgeries as a success, as the best possible outcome because you’ve avoided cancer.

      • Hi Victoria, I find the whole thing very sinister. The Express was the only newspaper to carry the smear test story, and it’s a bit of a sensationalist paper, but I’m surprised the Channel 4 news programme also aired it because I think it’s a much more truthful news programme than the other channels, which didn’t run the story.

        You are absolutely right in asking just what does a woman do with this information when she has it? Nearly all breast cancer occurs in the over 50’s, so a test would need to be done from about age 40 onwards, if the test has a 10 year prediction rate, far too late to do anything about it.

        I do feel that this is one of those “Let’s promote screening” stories, which they run, to fill in for some other report, which hasn’t come off, but it is worrying the lengths they will go to to shore up the screening programmes in the face of continuing bad press.

37. It’s that time of year again – skin cancer scare time as I’m now calling it. Yesterday, I saw a PSA about skin cancer. They said that skin cancer is typically NOT caused by spending lots of time in the sun, so even if you’re not going to be spending much time outside or going outside at all, you should still wear sunscreen every day – what?!? Does that even make sense? Wouldn’t the logical conclusion here be that most cases of skin cancer are then, in fact, not actually caused by exposure to the sun? Possibly toxins and pollutants in the air? Perhaps the harsh chemicals in sunscreen itself? Another thing, the only ones doing the PSA were women. There were no men. Based on my own personal observations, I’ve seen more men end up with skin cancer than women. Since men and women have different chromosomes and DNA and what-have-you, perhaps men have skin that is more susceptible to these toxins. I might be way off base here, but it’s definitely not adding up. This is very confusing and I smell a rat, or possibly several.

    • I’m impressed that they’re even saying that skin cancer is not caused by the sun. I keep hearing the message to wear sunscreen and coverup in the sun or stay out of the sun. From what I’ve read it’s lack of vit D that causes the serious skin cancers. Your body gets vit D from the sun and only if you’re not wearing sunscreen.

      • That’s a bit counterproductive, isn’t it? Sounds like another run-around tactic.

38. when I get tan I cant tell you how many people come up to me and scold me for having a tan and going in the sun. One girl at a makeup counter said to me “please tell me you will never go to a tanning bed ever again. IT was annoying and i dont think it was any of her bussnes. This was after i asked her to help me find the right shade of make up that mached my tan skin. I also had a friend at the beach tell me I need to go have pap smears bc my bio mom died of lung cancer. And she said “cancer” ran in my family also a male friend keep telling me i shoulnt tan bc cancer ran in my family. My mother smoked since she was 11 and passed at 36. She was a chain smoker . I dont smoke and her lung cancer has nothing to do with me sun bathing i dont belive that and nothing to do with cc. Also the type she had was not inherited and no others in her fam ever had it. So i refuse to belive cancer runs in my family. And i think it is convent for the meadical comunity to scare peoples relitves into screening. So they lable familys as high risick i dont think that is always the case.

    • Kleigh – That is ridiculous! It’s no one’s business if you have a tan or not. I will admit that, personally, I feel strongly against tanning beds. I don’t have anything against natural tans or spending time in the sun, it’s just that the lighting in tanning beds in man-made and synthetic, so I have my doubts about it. But as you said, it’s none of my business OR anyone else’s for that matter. I’m just very cautious, I suppose. How does lung cancer have anything to do with pap smears? If someone in your family has lung cancer, it would be wise to avoid smoking, considering moving somewhere with minimal pollution – things like that. THAT would be sound advice from a friend, in my opinion. It is convenient for the medical community to scare people into screening. Even if you weren’t to have the misfortunate of a false positive or negative, they’d still be making more money off of you (or your insurance). Try not to listen to what people tell you. Do some research, do what YOU feel comfortable with, and make informed decisions.

39. Ada – from your link –

    “Surprisingly, we found the same signature in large cohorts of women without the BRCA1 mutation and it was able to predict breast cancer risk several years before diagnosis.

    We would be able to predict breast cancer risk using these signatures as part of your smear test. It is very exciting – Professor Widschwendter, head of the Department of Women’s Cancer at UCL.

    Professor Widschwendter said blood was not the best source for a test because the disease usually starts in skin cells”.

    – if that’s the case Professor, you don’t need to scrape my cervix as my hand will do!

    • Will they have the guts to tell us coincidentally these signatures are the easiest to read from cervical cells? Surely they can not go so far…
      ?

      • I think that some doctors etc just see women as a pair of breasts and a cervix. We are just the sum of our reproductive organs. What ever prompted these “scientists” to even consider the cells collected during a smear test as a link to a breast cancer cure? Can you imagine a man having cells taken from the end of his penis to find a cure for breast cancer? Men can get breast cancer too.

      • that was a stupid comment.. (I am doing my tax returns tonight, my brain is all over the place…) What I have meant to write, why automatically speculate about the cervix, and then suddenly the doctors jumping on the wagon and tackling this shiny new possibility onto the dinosaur of the pap programme…

      • “http://genomemedicine.com/content/pdf/gm567.pdf The original paper. If the blood works, why not stick with it?”- this the comment I wanted to refer to, not your spot-on one Mint!

    • Like I said in my above post, Mint, I think the idea to do this may have sprung from having two expensive to run, ailing screening programmes, which are barely getting enough attendees to be effective. Some bright spark has had the idea to merge them together, so you can’t get the breast cancer test without the pap. It’s sickening that they’ll stoop to this level. It seems all womens healthcare is through the vagina nowadays.

      • Ada – I think you are spot on.

      • http://genomemedicine.com/content/pdf/gm567.pdf The original paper. If the blood works, why not stick with it?

40. I think it’s interesting for them to be saying that sunscreen prevents skin cancer, but it blocks vitamin D & that deficiency is generally what causes the skin cancer. I guess they can’t say “Make sure you do this (whatever it is) so that you”ll get cancer (or whatever other problem).”

    They just lie with a straight face & then other people dispense those lies with equally straight faces. I’ve noticed that basically everything the current president says tends to be the polar opposite, as well. Not necessarily related, but since he screws around with the medical situations so much it’s something to keep an eye on. If he ever starts saying “There won’t be any internal exams mandated,” watch out! Also, because I find that scenario perfectly plausible, keep in mind that an action has to be engaged in order to occur & “Your mandate is cancelled” is a good response to someone trying to play those kinds of mind games.

    Could you imagine? “Oh my God, it’s a requisite & it not happening!” I’d hope I’d be right there to soak it all up- maybe even to cause the situation! I’ve noticed that in this part of the world, someone can do whatever they want to someone if they even claim of charitable intentions or potential utility.

    • I didn’t really have any idea that Vitamin D prevented skin cancer, until I saw your and ADM’s comments. So basically, they’re encouraging people to block out something that fights off cancer? Should I be surprised?

      I don’t think there should be mandatory exams of any kind. I’ve actually decided off playing any sort of sports or joining any teams in college because they all require athletic physicals and I don’t like looking for problems when I don’t have symptoms. I don’t want to be “diagnosed” and “treated”. That happens to far too many young people, in my opinion. Even though things are tight, I’m planning on starting a medical fund for myself so that if I ever do have any health problems, I can go see a naturopathic doctor, chiropractor, or herbalist.

      Another thing, I was reading some posts on another website and it’s interesting to see how people think of doctors who rely on natural methods as “quacks” but doctors who use harmful methods as “life savers”. I read a comment where someone was going off about how all natural types of medicine should be completely outlawed because they just kill people in the end. One woman commented and said that her naturopathic doctor has helped her when her medical doctor could not. The other commenter got so angry. Then, someone commented with actual statistics proving that more people have been harmed at the hands of medical doctors. The first commenter said something to the extent of medicine being science based, therefore being proven and more accurate in actually helping people. I wonder why people get so angry about naturopathy? If you don’t like it, no one’s making you go. You can choose medical doctors – and at least if you do, you have insurance to help cover the cost (a lack of insurance for natural-based care is another form of coercion in my opinion). Furthermore, even if it WAS true that naturopathy helped no one and medicine cured everyone, people should still have the right to decide their own treatment – if they want any at all. I just find it very interesting that some people are so against anything natural. Reminds me of the people who are against labelling things with GMOs, because they don’t want the companies behind GMOs going out of business and “messing up our already fragile economy”. Give me a break. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that a lot of people these days, especially in my generation, really do view scientists as gods who are perfect and know everything. And when you place any human on the pedestal of perfection, that’s a very scary thing and the perfect opportunity for deception.

      • Hi Ro, I just thought I’d weigh in a little on the natural vs. western medicine debate. While I agree we should be free to choose our own medical care, I would always look for evidence first (just as we do with the cervical screening data) regardless of the type of medicine practiced. I’ve added a link on a beautifully designed model that uses a comprehensive evidence based meta-analysis on many of the health supplements, vitamins, minerals and ‘super foods’. I agree a holistic approach is good preventative medicine and compliments evidence based western medicine, though I wouldn’t completely throw western medicine out; you might need it some day, natural medicine can’t treat emergency conditions like, a severed arm, internal bleeding and some chronic illnesses. Unfortunately it sounds like there are a lot of unethical medical practices going on in the States, it must be so frustrating to have to fight to get good medical care.
        http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/

        There’s also a very good book called “Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre, it’s well worth reading, according to him you’ll find degrees of bad medicine in both the western model and the natural/complementary/alternative variety. You always need to do your own research, look at the evidence and not completely rely on the say so of some one who professes to be a professional.
        http://www.badscience.net/

      • This is the anger of someone that is in favor of all these problems happening & sees the potential going away. If they are hearing about a situation where this problem has been thwarted, they’d be really upset. They’d mourn the death of a disease.

        Another thing is that all that shit about herbalists & such being “quacks” & the ones that use dangerous chemicals & surgeries as “life savers” seems to come from the early 1900s in America. One of the Rockefellers funded all kinds of allopathic bullshit & did the rival business thing with the other forms (spreading lies, having various laws conveniently passed, etc…). There was something called the Flexner Report that played a role in that, apparently. After that, the AMA was declared by Congress to be the only body that could grant medical licenses & they’d only give those licenses to this particular style. There’s also all kinds of “regulatory capture” that goes on legally, as well (ex: the Supreme Court declaring that it’s illegal to sue pharmaceutical companies for the problems they cause).

        As for the economic arguments, who cares? Sure, you could mention that all these problems cost a massive amount of money. Sure, you could mention that the development of all these problem-causing things costs a massive amount of money, too. Sure, you could even mention that it costs massive amounts of money to train medical personnel.

        All of that misses a foundational issue: That all of this is supposed to BENEFIT people, not be something vampiric that is sustained at their expense.

      • Si- Actually, the natural medicine has some ability to handle those things- particularly chronic illnesses. Internal bleeding can be helped with yarrow tea, at the very least. It would also help with stopping the bleeding from a severed limb. The Egyptians & Romans apparently used honey successfully for sword wounds.

        I get that re-attaching limbs is a bit of a hard trick to pull of with natural medicine, but then again maybe someone doesn’t have to worry about diabetes from the side-effects of whatever medications rotting anything off of them. There’s so many things that this style of medicine causes, I wonder if maybe the balance would be better without it. People would probably be a bit more careful without the perceived safety net & maybe a bit more aggressive about quality in the things they come in contact with (ex: food not being screwed with).

        I’ve never in my life heard of an acupuncture mishap that would give teenage boys breasts! Oddly enough, this drug was supposedly for attention problems (yeah, growing tits won’t be a distraction), as an anti-psychotic (because this wouldn make someone crazy- especially if things were on thin ice already), and if I’m not mistaken an anti-depressant (deformities & dating problems wouldn’t cause any depression).

      • Si – I do look for evidence first. Also, the fact that every medication I’ve ever taken has reacted in a negative way with my body (i.e. more severe side affects) has helped form my decision. I’d much rather look for safe alternatives that will not make me worse off than how I started. In my comment, I was not referencing super foods or supplements or anything like that. I was talking about proven medicinal alternatives, such as what herbalists provide. I did some research on the practice, starting with Native American healers since that is where the practice began here in the US. They have a cure for nearly everything and there was quite a bit of evidence as well as testimonials to back up their claims. I have a feeling this type of treatment would be made much more popular if higher-ups could get a patent and copyright claim on herbs. Then again, since it’s so effective, people might actually stop going to their doctors as often which could hurt the system. So maybe it would never be made popular or considered an acceptable means of treatment in society.

        Obviously, there are possible emergency situations where one would need to go to the E.R. That being said, if I get a sinus infection or the flu or anything like that, I’m definitely much more inclined to go see a naturopathic doctor or herbalist.

      • Alex – Alex – I suppose it just stuns me because I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would wish harm on someone in a situation where they’re meant to be helped. I just cannot wrap my mind around it.

        I’m pretty sure nothing you said about licensing a particular style, outlawing lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies, etc., is actually legal. There has to be something in the Constitution or something in regards to the health and well-being of citizens. Although, back when that was written, it wasn’t really an issue as almost all healthcare was still natural.

      • There is nothing in the US Constitution about healthcare, although Roe vs Wade did find a right to privacy, which is not spelled out in the Constitution, and the preamble contains the phrase “promote the general welfare”. It has been taken to mean that promoting the general welfare includes things which are beneficial for all people in the US. There is a right to regulate commerce, especially that occurring between states. That would include the licensing of one type/style of healthcare, (effectively) outlawing others, leaving some others to caveat emptor – they are not licensed, but neither can you sue for getting something which was not good for you.

        Healthcare is, first and foremost, a business. A century ago it was practised mainly for altruistic reasons, but today, it’s all about business and finance. That is part of why a medical degree and thus license is so expensive. To maximize profits, you have to have paying patients to cure. If there are not enough people with diseases, thanks to drinking water purification and sanitary waste disposal, diseases are made up. Or, they are directly CAUSED with the inaccurate diagnostic tools or the treatments which cause more problems than they solve. Get paid to cause disease/get paid to cure disease. It’s a GREAT business model! It’s just not so good for the customers/patients. That is one reason why the US has by far the lowest life expectancy of any industrialized country, by far the highest infant mortality rates and highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world – below the numbers for much of the third world. One place where the US is #1 in healthcare is cost – we pay by far the most, either in terms of dollars, dollars per capita, or percent of GDP of anywhere in the world.

        Now, they’ve minimized the number of nonpaying patients – the very poor and uninsured. Those people now have to buy health insurance which has to pay a given % of their premiums, as well as more government funded healthcare (e.g., Medicaid). So, the amount spent will certainly increase, and the US will have WORSE – not better – health because of it.

41. If this isn’t an act of desperation, I don’t know what is…they know most women can’t benefit from pap testing and that population pap testing is on the way out, largely because too few women are buying the, “have a pap every 2 years, it could save your life”. (but is MUCH more likely to harm you!) So it’s business rationalization, how can we still sell the pap test to the herd?

    They’ll make good money from HPV primary testing, especially here, if it’s introduced we’ll build in a little something for vested interests, like testing from 25 and testing all women (or those who screen) every 5 years until an absurd 74. So lots of unnecessary tests that will send many women for colposcopy, biopsies etc. The HPV test is also, a more expensive test. It’s a much easier and more reliable test to “read” though, much cheaper than employing pathologists to “interpret” the pap test sample.

    I think vested interests will be frantically working to find another “life-saving” use for the population pap test, I know there is research into the pap test as a screen for ovarian and uterine cancer.
    So why not have a crack at adding breast screening? It doesn’t matter if it’s unreliable, in fact, that’s better, more profits! They’d just have to sell it to the authorities and that doesn’t seem difficult when those advising the Govt often have a vested interest in excess and non-evidence based testing as well. (especially in women’s cancer screening)

    This is not about healthcare, but commercial interests maintaining market share. The female body has stakeholders and they’ll fight to protect their very valuable turf.

    We may get HPV primary testing with excess to keep vested interests from raging in the papers and frightening the herd, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to protect population pap testing.
    We’re talking about a fortune, they couldn’t care less about us.

    • Elizabeth it looks like an act of desperation to me too. Which when you think about it is a good thing. I wonder how many women have been discovering the truth and refusing to screen? I have a feeling the real numbers are kept hidden and that when they reveal any information they pump up the numbers. The cytologists’ comments I found suggested the numbers of women screening have dropped dramatically over the last ten years. HPV can be tested using urine but we aren’t likely to see that take off: http://www.trovagene.com/Press-Room/Latest-News/Trovagene-Launches-Urine-Based-HPV-Test.aspx
      I agree with Karen’s comment in relation to breast screening via vagina: “Is this a prank?”

      • Thank you everyone for your responses, but I just hope too many women are discovering the truth about screening and will refuse to roll up for it.

        Just supposing we could identify now exactly which women would go on to develop breast cancer, what options would be open to them? The authors suggest preventive surgery. So you might currently have two healthy breasts you don’t want to lose. Which one would go on to develop breast cancer? How could you choose? The only way to be sure would be to have a double mastectomy like the BRCA women. Surely it is better to wait until there are signs?
        The authors suggest lifestyle changes could be instigated. Like what? Finding something that needs breastfeeding for the next 10 years? Having more children?
        Apart from the usual eat more fruit and veg and losing weight, which they keep telling us to do, I don’t see what changes many women would be in a position to make. I think some women would even contemplate suicide, if they were told they were on track to get breast cancer within 10 years.
        Screening means you end up finding things, that no-one knows what to do with, and it’s always finding things in women’s bodies…

    • My reaction was also that it’s an act of desperation. Now they can convince women that not only will the pap detect and possibly save them from CC but now also from breast cancer. I don’t understand why they’re discussing using the pap when a blood test can also detect the gene. Will they get women’s consent before they use the pap sample to test for the breast cancer gene. Probably not. Some of us don’t want to know.

42. Thanks for the comments re: estrogen chicken and irregular bleeding. It’s interesting how I’m not the slightest bit concerned about the irregular bleeding this time around. When the bout of irregular bleeding happened a few years ago I was worried sick. Since that time I’ve learned not to fear my own body and I trust the bit of irregularity will resolve as soon as the estrogen clears my system. Women are genetically superior to males – we are more resistant to disease, and we live longer. We do have the ability to bring babies into the world after all, and Mother Nature knows what she’s doing. Here’s an article (men have higher rates of cancer) http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20110712/men-have-higher-cancer-death-rates-than-women

43. I confess to major confusion with Vitamin D. So many contradictory studies. A lot of people here are having their vitamin D levels checked regularly and there is concern it’s largely a waste of money, except for certain groups, like post menopausal women.
    I’ve read low Vitamin D levels are assocaited with cancer and other things, but more recent studies suggest cancer may cause the levels to fall, so causation is the question, the chicken and the egg theory. It seems clear to me though that bone health and Vitamin D levels is important for older women.

    Millions is made from Vitamin D supplements, it seems for most people they’re a waste of money.
    We had a very successful slip-slop-slap campaign in the 80s and 90s that has resulted (many believe) in lots of us being deficient in Vitamin D.

    I read and heard a while ago that melanoma has nothing to do with sun exposure, there seems to be a genetic link and research continues into other causes. Excessive sun exposure and sunburn is not good for the skin though and can cause damage and premature aging. I’m fair and have always stayed out of the sun, but I try to get some exposure and don’t put sunscreen on my arms in the winter months, but always protect my face and neck.
    I’m careful over summer and use sunscreen on arms and legs, I have vitiligo which means I’m more likely to burn. Thankfully, having fair skin means it’s not that noticeable.
    I had a serious sunburn when I was about 10, still recall the pain from numerous blisters on my shoulders…ouch!

    Someone mentioned sunbeds, some doctors believe they are dangerous, especially for young people, there seems to be a link with melanoma. I get the feeling that most people here avoid sun beds because of the possible link with melanoma and use spray tanning instead.

    • I’ll post this here in response to all the above discussion on vit D and skin cancer. This article explains the Vit D and skin cancer link: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/20/deadly-melanoma-not-due-vitamin-d-deficiency.aspx

      I take 5000 IU of vit D during the winter months and during the summer I don’t wear sunscreen and get sun exposure of at least 15 mins. I don’t burn. If you burn easily and can’t do the safe sun exposure you can continue with taking vit D all year round.

      • I should add that in terms of mental health we have vit D receptors in our brains that are linked with depression. Lack of vit D can cause depression type symptoms. Dr Andrew Weil talks about it in his book Spontaneous Happiness.

      • Thanks ADM,
        I’ll have to spend some time on Vitamin D deficiency and where it can lead, I find the research is all over the place. I attended a conference last year and a specialist there said to be careful of research funded by those who profit from Vitamin D supplements. (he believes it’s important for bone health in older women)
        I take a supplement daily, the only thing I take, but my levels were very low, it’s just getting me back to normal. Of course, “normal” moves around a bit and that can be suspicious too, I know they fiddled with cholesterol levels and bingo…lots more people got an unsatisfactory reading and in many cases, went onto statins etc. You have to wonder what’s it’s really about when huge sums are made by vested interests with these adjustments.
        We have to be so careful, sometimes it’s exhausting, we have to check everything…is this actually in my best interests or am I being misled by the medical profession and /or the pharmaceutical industry?

    • This article more clearly explains the sun/uv cancer risk.
      http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/14/6/12222/pdf
      The risk factors depend on race, sun/uv exposure, vit D and or existing moles, sunburns. The body cells do have mechanisms to repair uv related sun damage however.

      I did hear about people going to the doctor to get vitamin D levels checked. Then the government decided that too many people were doing this and banned all but a few reasons for people to get it.

      Basically I am tired of all the hype. I do not totally avoid the sun but I do not use sun screen either except when I am going to be in the full sun for hours at a time. I wear more clothing and a hat. I find the chemicals in most sunscreens could be a risk. I bought a more natural sunscreen with zinc oxide in it.

      I got complimented by a dermatologist on my huge prairie style sun bonnet. I love wearing it but then the risk is that it cuts the vision off so much I am at risk of getting run over by a car. Even on park trails I could get run down by a bike.

44. The following story fits with our theme of state control over women’s bodies. As Elizabeth said “We’re talking about a fortune, they couldn’t care less about us”. Cesarean surgeries are by far the most common surgeries in hospital (even ahead of hysterectomy) and the most lucrative. According to this story it seems giving birth at home without medical “supervision” is a crime – they must be very concerned about the threat to profits when women take control of giving birth: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-confiscate-healthy-baby-born-home/

    List of most common surgeries (Canada): http://www.cihi.ca/CIHI-ext-portal/internet/en/Document/types+of+care/hospital+care/RELEASE_3JUNE2014

    • Holy shit! I almost had an aneurysm reading that one about the baby being abducted. Hey, if this chick decided to not feed her baby, wouldn’t that be child abuse? But they block this situation from happening & these people are a reliable source of protection for children?

      Even if it’s just to die on different soil, I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t see having a serious relationship, much less a family here. It’s just not good enough far too often. You can have all the patriotism you want, you can get angry, you can make jokes & all these things are somewhat addictive- but none of them change the fact that this is the lay of the land.

      Something else that drives me nuts: I was always told there’d be a war if shit like this started happening & I have yet to see it happen. I guess there needs to be an enemy that flies a banner that says they’re attacking the people & that it’s okay for them to attack back? There doesn’t need to be a declaration of anything, a starting gun, or anything. Someone can just engage. There doesn’t need to be some kind of commemorative event to initiate hostilities!

      • Alex I love how you put that! Exactly how I was feeling too after reading the article. I’ve heard stories of women who have left hospital against doctor’s advice in order to avoid a C-section, only to be arrested in their own home and brought back where they are strapped down against their will, sedated, and sliced open. Lots of money to be made, or lost if women manage to escape:
        Top 5 reasons for inpatient surgeries in 2012–2013:

        C-section delivery: 100,686 surgeries
        Knee replacement: 57,829 surgeries
        Hip replacement: 47,297 surgeries
        Hysterectomy: 40,127 surgeries
        Coronary artery dilation: 40,074 surgeries

        Top 5 reasons for inpatient hospitalizations in 2012–2013:

        Giving birth: 369,454 hospitalizations
        Respiratory disease: 76,705 hospitalizations
        Heart attack: 68,835 hospitalizations
        Pneumonia: 60,077 hospitalizations
        Heart failure: 56,260 hospitalizations http://www.cihi.ca/CIHI-ext-portal/internet/en/Document/types+of+care/hospital+care/RELEASE_3JUNE2014

        Notice how out of the 369,454 giving birth, 100,686 were C-sections.

      • Adawells- I also live in a large coastal town south of London, so good to hear things are not so bad around here. A friend of mine had an abortion in Scotland(small town), and she had a horrible, really horrible experience, she got no information whatsoever, and the hospital staff treated her like dirt. Other people tell me as well that is is largely different around the UK.

    • It makes me really sad that home births are seen as so unacceptable. Even in the UK, they are allowed but only about 2% of women opt for them. I keep reading stories about women who are low risk and give birth easily, ending up giving birth in the backs of cars on their way to hospital. This is far more dangerous for mother and baby, and IMO, if the mother is low risk, more home births should be encouraged.
      Both my two kids were home births and I haven’t regretted it. I was a home birth myself and have always been proud of this, as it was in a house my parents built themselves, so I come from a family, which likes to do things for themselves in a big way! I think it has given me independence to question the established view.

      With the home birth, they ask you to collect your bag of equipment (absorbent pads, mats, latex gloves etc) from the hospital about 2 weeks before the due date. I was told that this is because the midwives can’t always carry all this equipment in their cars. I suspected that it might have been a last ditch attempt by the hospital to talk me out of the home birth, so I went ready to stand my ground, but I needn’t have worried. When I got there the nurse had got my home birthing pack ready with my name on it. “If only they were all as easy as you, and having their babies at home”, she said, as she handed over my bag. I was amazed.

      My second home birth was a whopping baby boy, which caused me a 3rd degree tear, requiring hospital repairs, but no way were we rushed. We spent about 2 hours after the birth drinking cups of tea and chatting. Because I had no-one to drive me, the midwife called an ambulance (no flashing lights), and again, I thought I’d get chastisement from the ambulance team, when they arrived for having a birth at home, but no. They told me they were so pleased to get such a worthy case to deal with, ( it was Friday night, and they’d had nothing but alcohol related cases so far that evening). They were fantastic, and telling me jokes all the time. Even when I got to the hospital at about 3am, there was no criticism at all about my choice for a home birth. I had a spinal block to enable my repairs to be carried out, and went home later that day, when this had worn off.
      My children now have their place of birth on their birth certificates and passports and it makes me proud.
      I feel very sorry for this couple who were treated like criminals.

      • Adawells- just out of curiosity, whereabouts in the UK was this?

      • I’m in a large town on the coast due south of London, mentioning no place names!
        However, acceptance of home births does seem to vary throughout the country, and I think the attitude of the GP has a lot to do with it. An acquaintance of mine lives in the county next door, and twice booked a home birth, and both times the midwife failed to show up, leaving them having to make a last minute dash to the hospital, which is making the situation more dangerous for mother and baby, but her third child was born at home.
        There has been a bit in the news lately about home births being made more popular, and I think they should be. I don’t know why people think they are so problematic, as you can set up your own birthing room with cushions and comfy armchairs, and have your own bath and shower on hand. Create your own music and atmosphere. Get pizzas delivered. If you need stitches afterwards you can take your time and go along to the hospital a couple of hours later and get them done with anaesthetic. Birthing is always portrayed as a dangerous medical emergency on films and TV when it’s not like that at all. I’ve also read that it is better to tear, than have an episiotomy, and it is better to leave it to heal than get stitches, but if you go beyond a 2nd degree tear, then you definitely need to get hospital repairs done. The midwives told me stories about women, who buried their placentas in the garden afterwards, marking it with a special plant, or storing them in their freezers. I was happy to let them take mine away for disposal.
        My only regret was that my GP bullied me into having a smear test when pregnant, and I felt I had to keep her sweet or she would pull the rug on my home birth plans. This was in the 1990’s, by the way.

      • For births in Ontario, Canada there is supposed to be choice. Either midwife at home or birthing centre, family doctor in hospital or obstetrians in hospital. Midwives are only allowed for low risk births and they are not easy to book. They book up quickly. One woman called at 7 weeks pregnant and they were booked up. The criteria for low risk birth is also hard to meet. It also means that a woman has to comply with all the tests including pap during pregnancy if she is “due”. Any three risks of the A type mean she gets referred to an obstetrician. She could be over 40, previous cesarian birth, GMO over 30 for the three factors. Anything like B list: gestation diabetes, previous cesarian, pre-eclapsia and a midwife is not allowed and the woman has to be referred to an obsterician. I doubt many family doctors do births just because it is inconvenient. They get offered a bonus fee for more than 5 births per year but how much experience are they getting doing births then? I do not know that I would choose a family doctor to deliver with zero births over a midwife with experience.

        The reality is that midwife births are rare and women who want them are not getting them. It is just a huge lie about choice because it hardly exists. I am sure if a woman could get a midwife and refused some test like a pap or some genetic screening she would be told by the midwife that she had to have it or go to an obsterician. I think also she would be afraid that the children services would be involved is she refused. So much for women having control over their bodies. No abortion law in Canada but almost forced treatment when pregnant.

        Some go as far to pretend they are going through with the prenatal care and the induced obsterician birth and then just forget to go to the hospital and give birth at home. There are naturopath doctors advertising herbal inductions to beat the hosptial ones.

        If anyone has some experience contrary to this in Ontario, please tell us about it.

45. I agree with the comments about diet, eat real and clean food…it concerns me too many eat processed and fast food every day. I’ve just watched an interesting series called, “The men who made us fat”…fat was the demon for years, but sugar is also, a concern. The consumption of fizzy drinks was discussed, all the sugar, and some believe it’s a major factor in childhood obesity, along with inactivity. (and obesity generally)
    Having said that, I don’t live on organic vegetables, I enjoy my wine and the occasional pizza or fish & chips. Life’s too short, but I buy free range chicken and meat. It’s more expensive, but we prefer to eat less of something and buy better quality. I don’t eat red meat anymore, but buy it for my husband and family. I bought them some pork, organic and free-ranging in an orchard, I’m told it’s absolutely delicious. This small business struggled to survive, but now business is booming, more people seem to be buying less meat/food, but better quality.

46. http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2014/06/think-care-better-us.html

    I like posting on this website, the articles are written by those in the medical profession (in the main) and so lots of doctors read our comments and we can respond to their comments. It’s a good opportunity to let them know how we feel about the treatment of women by the medical profession. I just posted…the article is, “Why do we think more care is better care?”
    Do they understand many women are coerced into “more care” simply because they want medical care or the Pill or HRT?
    One of the things that annoys me about those who promote an informed decision about screening, they must understand many women don’t have a choice, the profession does not respect consent and certainly not informed consent for women. Time to start addressing the barriers that prevent a woman from exercising her legal rights.

    • Great comments on the think-care-better article Elizabeth! I contributed under a different name. Feeling the need to use a different name made me realize I still do feel a bit “hunted” after all.

47. They understand. They certainly don’t do these things by accident & they tend toward protecting each other. “Protecting” looks different for different people, though. It’s like self-defense in that way.

    Something I figure is that these people pursue something in a very undiluted way & that throws some people off. “Pure” doesn’t necessarily mean “innocent.” It’s sometimes odd for people to go against someone that is aligned in whatever way at the ground floor. They are 100% in support of themselves & there’s no “momentum” to use against them. That can be a bit daunting, especially if people are used to asking questions as a way of winning an argument.

    There’s usually this style of getting someone to incriminate themselves (literally or figuratively), and there’s also usually this weird presumption that no one else does something harmful on purpose. It’s like there’s no recognition of threat. Supposedly, this is what killed the dodo bird- they didn’t run into anything dangerous for a long time & then the sailors found them an easy meal whenever they’d come ashore. Despite this, they didn’t start doing things to avert this situation. They just kept acting safe, basically.

48. http://www.wayfair.co.uk/aresidence/2014/02/17/cure-cervical-cancer-can-help-make-available/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cure-cervical-cancer-can-help-make-available

    This is unbelievable. A pill that cures cervical cancer. Some places you can even get it but noone seems to know about but a few. It will not be available for more women for more than ten years though.

    Do these researchers get any of that pink ribbon charity money? Anything from the cervical screening programmes?

    • You know I can see the medical community having at least two problems with that:

      (1) The self-applied part. They’re not going to like anything that anyone can do themselves, as a general rule- but given that it’s something inserted they’d probably be highly against it.

      (2) That it fixes something. The destruction of any ailment seems to be something they have a problem with- financial as well as psychological.

      A possible third one is the simple alteration of there “methods of practice.” Any deviation from the pattern is usually a problem for them. This doesn’t seem to apply to doing more of the same thing or the same kind of thing, but any REDUCTION tends to be met with severe stiffness. I guess the whole OCD control-freak thing runs deep & it’s more along the lines of tastes & sensations, rather than deductions & articulated thoughts.

49. I recently discovered this newspaper article from 2010, where Peter Sasieni recommends that all smear tests should be phased out by 2015, and replaced by HPV testing, every 5 years after 30 and every 10 years after 50.

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/210613/New-cancer-check-to-phase-out-smear-tests
    So with just 1 year to go, what has happened?

    It seems a few days later, this article was written by those who want to keep the pap smear firmly in http://vactruth.com/2010/11/15/glaxosmithkline-influences-experts-to-boost-hpv-vaccine-sales/:

    It is very disparaging about Sasieni and also Anne Szarewski, who was also in favour of winding the programme down. Incidentally, Anne died suddenly last November at the age of 53.
    Clearly, the pro-screeners are out to trash any of the medical profession who are now speaking out against screening.

50. The antiviral drug Lopinavir has been show to successfully treat cases of cervical cancer. Yet it is not been licensed for this use. It is used orally for HIV patients. Research was being done in Britain, Canada and Kenya.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/10642431/End-in-sight-for-cervical-cancer.html

    So what has happens to this drug? I know the Canadian manufacturer discontinued the gel capsule some years ago and only makes tablets. This is because the soybean oil base was supposedly a risk for allergies in paediatric patients. Only it could be used to make a cream or pessary for use in the vaginal for stage 1 cases of cervical cancer. The women treated did not need surgery.

    This seems a deliberate block of useful therapy for a woman’s cancer. These researchers are complaining that they get little funding. They get dozens of emails from women begging them for the drug that they are not allowed to give them.

51. Thank you Idealistic Rebel for nominating this blog for the Community Heart Award. I am honored to be included among the chosen bloggers: http://idealisticrebel.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/community-heart-award-for-bloggers-who-care/

52. Looks like Canada will resist the call to end the routine pelvic exam, it’s amazing the spokesperson seems to think it’s misleading to say “no” to routine pelvic exams due to an absence of evidence of benefit…surely that’s important, especially when it exposes the woman to serious risk. Whether she likes it or not, the evidence has been clear for a long time, poor clinical value and lots of risk.
    She also, states the test screens for early ovarian cancer, wrong!
    Amazing so many doctors, often senior doctors, still rely on that old chestnut, now that IS misleading women. I can’t comment, it’s Facebook only, but someone might like to challenge her thinking. People often forget Canadian women face coercion, excess and non-evidence based testing as well, and it’s difficult to order the Pill online. (one of our Canadian contributors had her Pills confiscated by Customs…incredible!)
    http://o.canada.com/health/women/stop-performing-routine-pelvic-exams-on-women-says-american-medical-group

    • From the above article:

      Dr Blake says this pelvic exams give the opportunity to discuss topics that patients might be too embarrassed to bring up otherwise”. I feel that the whole well woman exam issue has the exact opposite effect on me. I do not want to discuss what might be going on with me re perimenopause or whatever because I do not want a pelvic exam or Pap test. Just sit and chat fine, hands off. Why do I have to get naked and have objects shoved up my vagina? That is supposed to make me talk just like torture does. Ok. Now I get it.

      Please tell Dr Blake this what should be
      1. Approve a urine based HPV test
      2. Approve a lepinvar or green tea extract vaginal cream
      3. Give cream to women who test HPV positive. Kill HPV infection.

      So the first part says that pelvic exam are really useless but she defends them as useful.

      I just read a newspaper article today about a woman who was duped into having a mastectomy for DCIS in Toronto. No one ever told her that she did not have cancer. She was tricked into getting a mammogram during a well woman exam the doctor told her she had a lump in one breast. The mammogram showed DCIS in the other breast. I hope he is happy with his breast cancer screening incentive payment. I guess no one told her about that either. Now this poor woman is reminded of her trauma every time she takes a shower, dresses undresses. The suffering inflicted on her and her husband is terrible. I feel rage.

      • It’s truly the weirdest phenomenon. “You might have an issue that you’re embarrassed about, so in order to get you to talk about it, I am going to stick my fingers in your vagina, that should make it easier.”

        In that artiicle there is the comment about how the pelvic exam is not appropriate for women who have been sexually assaulted. No argument there. But for those that have not been sexually assaulted or have been, but do not want to talk about it – how do they/we get out of this pelvic exam? Well the answer is, we say “no thank you, I do not want your fingers in my asymptomatic body for a exam that could possibly lead to further investigation that will most likely be unwarranted.” But the way the article puts it, it almost seems like this doctor is “expecting” everyone to just step on up and get into the stirrups if they don’t fit her criteria for excusing them from the exam.

        Also the quote : Some women have been brought up to feel ashamed of their genitals and ashamed of their pelvis. Sometimes it’s a matter of helping them to feel better about themselves. WOW! You’ll make women feel BETTER about themselves by putting them in stirrups, putting on your gloves and examining them? If there are women who have this shame, I can hardly imagine that a cold medical setting, stirrups and an unnecessary pelvic exam would help them to reconcile their feelings.

        GAHHHHHHHH!!! (ok scuse me, had to let that out)

    • I’m not surprised. It’s interesting though how when information came out the DRE was not needed because of the PSA test they were dropped from the mens medical exams.
      Why do Dr’s think that they need to stick their fingers up the most private part of our body to connect with us. What happened to talking and building a therapeutic rapport through taking our medical history and finding out what we do for exercise and other things about our lives that contribute to our health and wellness or could cause illness.

53. I just need to vent. My grandmother got her yealy pink reminder to have her mamogram at the local womans imaging center. The fact that its pink is anoying to me like a fiminen color we are delicate and need speacal meadical attention. See my great gran wich was her mother. Was told she had breast cancer after using the pill back in the 70s when the hormons were stronger. She was a 40 somthing year old and it was to regulate her period. Well they cut her breast off and gave a her a cancer pill. Well she lived to be 95 years old. So I dont belive she had true cancer. But she belived every thing doctors said. Well now my granmothers doctor and other are saying she needs a mamogram every year. So shes been going evey year. She is in treally bad health copd, high blood presuer, diabetes. Thyroid problems and degentrative bone. She can barly walk around or breath. Can these quacks tell me how a yearly mamogram is gona save her life. She whould not survive chemo or sergery. And thin peopl are telling me bc are greate gma had breat cancer I need regulaer mamos when i am older. No i will not tell any doctor about my great gma. I dont belive cancer runs in my fam as no others have had breat cancer other than my great who got it after taking hormones. She was 3 generations before me and i refuse to belive her chimicaly indused breat cancer makes me high risk. I told my gma she should just refuse but she belives it will save her if she has cancer.

54. I truly think they back off a bit with women that have been abused for the simple reason that she might be tougher prey. They’d be a bit less likely to miss the parallels, if nothing else- less room for acting like it’s not an assaultive situation because of it’s designation & low-key methodology. A woman like that isn’t likely to be too receptive to that. You’d think it’d be that way with everyone, though- regardless of their history.

    Another thing: Let’s say a woman was never abused. Them getting something like this imposed on them in the doctor’s office would BE this situation. That would be the START of this kind of history. So what is someone arguing? That if there’s a history of things being imposed on her, then this shouldn’t be done- but it’s fine to direct a first-time experience at her through medical methods?

55. Sorry the bit about a woman who was sexually assaulted is not going to get pelvic exams. Wrong. The woman will be hounded even more because they do not know their attackers medical history, if he had HIV, any STI. So she has a higher risk. Probably a pap should not be done right after a sexual assault because that would spread infection but three months later it can be done and forever “VICTIM” on their chart.

    I really do not care about risk. Why are doctors so obsessed with risk? I do not want an annual physical but the doctor will make any excuse to have me come in a get a lecture about my “risk” of not getting these screenings. I am even wary now of answering questions because I am being screened without my consent.

56. I had a sort of idea… I was thinking about it, what made people interested in this whole topic? In my case it was a family tragedy. As an adult I had to learn I was born from a birth rape, which almost killed my mother, and the perpetrator was a relative of mine, who did some really horrible things to other family members (can’t be too specific over the internet). Also when I was younger and more naive I had STD tests and despite never having any STDS lets just say they were not going very well.

57. Karen- What do you mean? The subject of if someone’s been abused the doctor backing off?

58. I might be only addressing British, Australian or Canadian women here. What is the purpose of cancer registries.

    Click to access sp95-chap3.pdf

    The purpose of cancer registries

    It is not to harrass women with letter and phone calls, provide doctors with extra income for reaching targets, nor to perpetuate employment for those who work for screening programmes.

    I do feel that I should have a choice to participate in data collection or not. Right now I have no choice as Ontario passed legislation that all pap results processed in laboratories are collected and my personal information can never be deleted. Residents’ names, addresses and date of birth are released form taxation bureau and census information to cnacer registries.

    • Reading about what British and Canadian women go through with these registries and their sometimes attendant harrassment makes me feel lucky in some ways that the U.S. doesn’t have national healthcare, but of course as we all know our system has plenty of its own flaws. Coercion and lack of informed consent in women’s healthcare seem to be the norm no matter where you’re from.

      • It seems to be that way, at least in the “Anglosphere.” It seems that out of all of those countries (America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K.), the UK is the best out of them on that level. At the very least, these things get called out as an issue instead of getting exalted to the level of a non-issue. This would amount to an abrogation of reality, I guess. The idea that reality takes a coffee break & making the argument that what happens ISN’T what occurs.

        It’s seems to be this way in the more German-esque countries, as well. Not trying to come off racist or whatever the word would be, but that’s the general trend I’ve noticed. It’s sometimes amazing to find women that think a situation is what it consists of & that, since these are interfaces with sexual areas as a product of someone else’s decision-making, this is an assaultive situation done with medical methodologies. Part of why I’m looking to move. If this is the type of stuff that flies, this & plenty of other things can be a problem.

        Something of this nature being imposed is an attack, whether someone wears a ski mask or a surgical mask. Why is it Shakespeare is a genius for saying “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” but when someone says “an attack is an attack, whether done by a doctor or not” there’s all kinds of bullshit as a response?

59. The fear and deception is built into the cervical and cancer screening programmes on purpose.

    http://openi.nlm.nih.gov/detailedresult.php?img=3539913_1742-4755-9-11-1&req=4
    Google health belief system cancer screening and see what I mean.

    It is all about “perceived threat” and social conditioning factors.

    • I loved the line from the conclusion, “There is an urgent need for more enlightenment about cervical cancer especially by health workers.” I AGREE WITH THAT! They need to understand just what *cervical* screening can do and what it can’t do. It can detect “precancerous” cells. It can lead to a lot of overtreatment. Collecting those cells can lead to abuse. It can’t detect ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer…. all of which are more common than cervical cancer. It can’t detect “infections” of various types, and moreover, is likely to spread them.

      I did your search, looked up a couple of articles. Most were about breast cancer when I did it on your terms, but I added cervical to the search and read some of the studies. OH MY! I read that cervical cancer is either the leading or second leading cause of cancer deaths or ALL deaths for women worldwide, how screening greatly lowers these risks. Interestingly, the studies I read about breast cancer mostly said IT was the leading or second-leading cause of all cancer deaths among women.

60. I just realized something. As a contact lens wearer, I have to go in every year and get my eyes checked. The reason is because I’m inserting foreign, synthetic, man-made objects into my eyes. Even after being thoroughly soaked in anti-bacteria disinfectant solution over night, there’s still a chance for them to cause infection (which has actually happened to me before, unfortunately). Anyway, in contrast to that, when women are not inserting foreign, synthetic, man-made objects into the most intimate part of their bodies, they’re told that, THAT is EXACTLY what they need to do in order to stay healthy. But when it comes to your eyes, that’s a potential danger that one has to be incredibly cautious and careful about. I just find it to be very contradictory. I can’t believe I didn’t realize how contradictory it was until now, actually. It’s ridiculous.

61. http://www.smh.com.au/national/sexual-assault-against-the-elderly-frequent-but-invisible-in-community-report-20140706-zsy11.html

    We’re not even safe in old age, it doesn’t surprise me, predators prefer easy targets, some/most of these women would not be believed, especially those with some dementia. Awful…

62. http://www.6minutes.com.au/news/latest-news/share-decision-making-why-bother
    This is a publication for doctors. (hope you can at least read some of the article)
    This article promotes shared decision-making, doctor and patient, IMO, screening is rarely a decision made jointly with the doctor. (unless you just agree with the doctor’s recommendation)
    IMO, most women are pressured to screen, or coerced, misled or scared into screening. If the woman refuses, she may be challenged, threatened with an early and preventable death or even insulted, and perhaps, sacked as a patient.

    Shared decision making has never been extended to women, even in my case, I “told” my doctor there would be no screening tests for me, we briefly discussed the matter and my file was marked. I wasn’t interested in sharing the decision-making, I knew the evidence and had made a firm and informed decision. It annoys me too when you get propaganda to persuade you to screen, rather than the evidence. I think some GPs have no clue when it comes to the evidence, they’re used to giving women orders or simply recommending the program or using the propaganda as the evidence. (I think some actually believe the propaganda)

    I’ve heard so many women over the years tell me their doctor just talks over them if they decline screening or they challenge their “excuse” in a disrespectful way. A friend tried to explain as an older woman she found the test very painful, the male doctor just raised his voice and said, “it’s a horrible death, far worse than a pap test”. (that woman BTW used the Delphi Screener last year, knows she’s HPV- and the significance of that fact, is no longer sexually active and has told her GP to shove his speculum…very happy woman)
    So shared decision making in women’s cancer screening is a joke really, I can’t see it happening while these attitudes remain unchallenged and when we have screening targets and target payments in place. (and undisclosed)

    • A good article here about how little doctors understand the statistics, which accompany screening programmes, and on the mainstream news too. Cervical cancer screening programme strangely absent though…
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28166019…

      • Good article. The first paragraph sounds eerily familiar though, doesn’t it? I seem to remember it being given as a reason for trying to get all kinds of procedures done to younger girls.

    • I think some Dr’s believe the propaganda and it could be a mixture of them not understanding statistics or not stopping to think about the numbers. If a Dr states that 1000 women got CC last year as a way to incite fear they have likely never stopped to think that the population of women is in the millions which makes it a rare cancer.

      This is very true: “It’s surprising that in the 21st Century, many still think of doctors as Gods and you don’t ask God,” says Gigerenzer.” “A physician is someone who can help you but also someone you need to challenge in order to get the best treatment.”

      However there are many Dr’s out there who think that they are god.

63. Some posters may have already seen this article, as it is from 1998, but it is one of the only ones I know which challenges the totally unethical bullying and coercion, which the British cervical screening programme relies on to keep screening attendances high. It is from the Journal of Medical Ethics, and is pre-HPV, but I’m sure a lot of GP’s haven’t changed much.
    http://jme.bmj.com/content/24/3/151.full.pdf.

    • It goes back to the”health belief system”. It is about ” perceived threats” not truths, consent, information.

    • Thanks for that article. So many points stood out but these are the main ones that hit home with me:

      – ” In 1989 1,816 women in England and Wales died from cervical cancer, by 1994 the death rate had fallen to 1,369.” I’m going off 2011 census figures (27 million UK women aged 15 and up), but the 1989 mortality rate is 0.006%. The 1994 death rate is 0.005%. That’s a difference of a one-thousandth of a percent! Even taking into account a slightly smaller population in 1989 and 1994, that’s such a tiny decrease in mortality.

      – “without it the numbers of women dying from cervical cancer would have risen significantly, due primarily to an increase in risky sexual behaviour by young women” – if risky sexual behaviour is the primary cause of new cases, why are women who don’t engage in that treated exactly the same way as those who do?

      – The words “guesstimate”, “unknown”, “unproven” and “no clincial trials” come up a few times…

      – A “much lower” number of women were dying from cervical cancer before screening was common. Then screening comes along and 17,000-odd are found to need treatment.

      – Women need info on their risk – well, I was never told I’m very low-to-zero risk despite explaining my situation clearly a couple of times. Any discussion has been to question why I don’t want to take part, they’ve never suggested there are high and low-risk women.

      – Screening offers “only marginal benefits in terms of lives saved”

      • High risk women might also want a choice. They do not need to be harassed either.

        These “screenings” questionnaires for various conditions are based on questions about certain behaviours: sexual activities, bowel habits, diets, family violence, past abuse. The problem is with screening everyone this data is stored somewhere and comes out and bites a person later. History of depression and bang no job decades later. There is no privacy anymore.

        This is what I would like to be done: have the doctor diagnosis what problems I am coming into the office for. Maybe have a online resource he can refer me to to use privately without records to determine if I feel that I have some other concerning symptoms I might like to get checked for. It should be my choice. There should be no doctor chasing me down.

      • Hi Victoria, this article takes me right back to the 1990’s and the hassle that was put upon women to screen in those days, but a lot of it is still around today.
        Regarding the bit about risky sexual behaviour, I think this is all referring to the introduction of the pill coming into widespread use during the 60’s and 70’s. There was a famous article by Peto,

        (The cervical cancer epidemic that screening has prevented in the UK,
        Peto, J ; Gilham, C ; Fletcher, O ; Matthews, FE
        Lancet, 2004, Vol.364(9430), pp.249-256),

        which Margaret McCartney pulls apart in her book “The Patient Paradox”, which predicted that the end of the 20th century would see a massive explosion in STDs and risky sexual behaviour because of widespread use of the pill. The pro-screening lobby hasn’t stopped blowing their trumpet ever since for their programme in protecting us from this envisaged explosion in cervical cancer cases. Margaret argues convincingly in her book, that this explosion was only a projection by Peto et al, and the disease has steadily declined naturally, screening programme or not.

      • Moo – I agree that all women should have a choice. I was trying to follow the logic of the medical establishment, which says that some women are higher risk than others but doesn’t use that to create a more streamlined screening programme (e.g. HPV testing first). When I speak to a nurse about this they don’t acknowledge that there are slight variations in risk and say everyone should test. The medical profession don’t seem to have acted on their own beliefs. I don’t agree that some women should be treated differently or pressured to test more than others. The NHS has taken “treat everyone the same” to mean high-pressure screening for all, whereas I would swing the other way and say choice for all.

      • Hi Victoria, I have also read that the reason that they screen all women is because they are afraid that the minority who do get the early signs of cervical cancer might feel stigmatised and not come forward. It is, after all, a sexually transmitted disease, about 5x more common in the lower echelons of society than the upper groups. I’ve read a number of academic reports which stress the importance of making out that this disease is all inclusive for this reason. I think this is what’s behind Jo’s Trust’s “We’re all in this together girls” advertising campaign.

64. On the Jo’s Trust website I found this alarming suggestion: “Work alongside companies and employers to educate staff on cervical cancer and encourage working women to take time to attend a screening.” So not only would they like women to be pressured by their GPs, they would also like employers to take a peer-pressure approach as well!

    • Their whole website is quite insidious, as it would be because they’re pro-screening, but even so their wording leaves a lot to be desired. This is in the FAQs: “If cervical abnormalities are not cancer, why do I have to have treatment?” I realise that’s a question asked by other people, but to leave in that phrase “have to”, that idea is going to stay with readers even though they used the word “offered” in their answer. “You may be required to attend a colposcopy clinic” – erm, no-one is required to attend anything! Speaking of abnormal cells, NOT cancer, they still use the word “cured”. Can you “cure” someone of something that isn’t currently a disease/infection/problem? It perpetuates the idea that abnormal cells are a problem NOW and that anyone who has treatment has dodged a bullet.

      • It’s really brave of you to look through Jo’s Trust website. I can only take so much of it myself, before it leaves me fuming and utterly depressed. They keep promoting cervical cancer screening as though it were a kind of Ann Summers party. They are very much into girls clubbing together and “normalising the speculum experience”, just like girls going on a hen night. Pass me the sick bag quick.

      • Thank you Moo so much for the info re Lopinavir. Especially to Elizabeth in Australia for this site, and for all who bring education and discussion here.

        Re this Jo Trust site. This to me is an example of women “owning” or flexing ownership and control of, in this case, unassuming girls. The same warped logic, when applied differently, is used on girls by women in Africa, Egypt, and other places for FGM. Here though, one would think that some kind of child abuse law, or child endangerment act would apply. That said, this is another example of possible lesbian programming into the same group of girls.

        These girls have no idea. To them, this is not much different than getting together and discussing cookie sales. But to the crooks in control, lesbian malingering or not, this is a way to “normalize” as those of you have said, the manipulation of these girls vaginas. If a man were involved here, all womanhood would scream about predatory behavior. A man doing similar regarding prostate upkeep would be viewed the same.

        No girl needs to be educated about speculums. And, along with that a lecture that it’s to be kept secret and away from any man–even their later husbands should they choose. If authorities cannot keep us in the stirrups, scared, then they will prevent us from getting to the next generation. Whomever educates first…seems to win.

        Also, while I’m here. Today I spoke to a doctor from a San Diego Kaiser. A family member is in the hospital…but that’s another subject. Anyway, I told her as I tell every woman I can about this site. She agreed with everything I spoke about. Tonight I’m going to buy her some coffee and discuss Lopinavir!

      • Adawells – to be honest I went there knowing I’d get annoyed, to have a peek at the other side and see just how far they take the propaganda. On the forum many women have a timeline of their smears and treatments. That comes across as a mixture of scaring others into getting screened (“look, there was something wrong with me all along”) and – weirdly – wearing the treatments as a badge of honour.

        There was also a video where they interviewed women on the street. They allowed in some comments worried about the initial smear (which are valid on their own but it was telling they didn’t include concerns about over-treatment). Those women all agreed they should go in future, surprise, surprise… They also included someone laughing away at the thought of her and her friends “bullying” another friend to go – clearly condoning that kind of behaviour.

      • That’s just what gets me about that charity, that they think it’s all a bit of a saucy, cheeky giggle, and women who have made a decision not to attend are fair game for a bashing. We are talking about cancer for heaven’s sake, not a dare to get someone to do some childish prank. There are twice as many people get mouth cancer, and twice as many die from it than cervical cancer. Is there a charity badgering people to go to their dentist?

      • They see the badgering as acceptable because (a) they don’t see the smear test as a big deal and (b) let’s just not mention the high rate of over-treatment and how distressing that can be. I saw this on the Mumsnet discussion as well, the idea that it’s “just 5 minutes to save your life”. Well no, that 5 minutes can turn into hospital visits and invasive treatments for tens of thousands of women, all to save a handful of lives. So much importance is placed on those lives saved, but not the lives of many, many more women who can suffer long-term as a result of their unnecessary “cure”.

      • Those tens of thousands of women referred for more invasive tests risk death from anaesthesia, death from infection, death from other complications from surgery that shows that they do not have cancer. These women, who die of “complications” are not counted among the casualties. Now, I’ll grant that such women at the very least don’t die of cancer, but dead is dead.

        When you first said “tens of thousands” my mind put DOLLARS after that phrase. At least in the US, a woman so diagnosed and treated has tens of thousands of DOLLARS of un-reimbursed expenses from her overtreatment.

      • Cat and Mouse, thank you, I wish I could take credit for this site, what an amazing achievement that would be, but this forum is the result of Sue’s hard work.
        I marvel at the graphics and layout, so professional, an appealing site to view and roam around, our precious space. Unfortunately, when it comes to creating websites etc. I start to resemble a dinosaur. Thankfully, we have people who are passionate about this subject, prepared to give up their valuable time, and are capable of moving mountains.

      • Moo, your dentist sounds like a good one. At my dentist in the UK she goes around your gum pricking it with one of her sharp implements. Not nearly so nice. I was told that this is to check for inflammation, and if your gums are are soft and bleed then they give cause for concern. This is done to the over 50’s at each check up. I’ve got this treat next week. You raise a good point that why couldn’t the blue light be used to detect cervical cancer too.

65. Jo’s Trust, I can’t bear that site, IMO, they protect screening, not women.

    Look at this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2679068/Model-Nikki-Phillips-oozes-sex-appeal-sheer-lilac-lace-vest-pants-strips-underwear-iconic-brand-Jockey.html

    A few things worry me about this article…some/many women believe they had treatment for actual cervical cancer when most have simply had “treatment” for “pre-cancerous” cells. (like HUGE numbers of other women) There are a few things about this young woman’s ordeal, she had, “Stage 3 Cervical cancer” and was treated with a loop excision. What?
    Umm, does she mean CIN 3? Precancerous cells, not cervical cancer, most CIN 3 does not progress to cervical cancer. (somewhere between 12% and 30% progresses to invasive cc) If she had Stage 3 cervical cancer that would mean progression through the pelvic area, why would you bother with a loop excision, my guess is you’d be looking at a hysterectomy and radiation/chemo.
    It sounds like a pap test produced a CIN 3 result.

    Another thing, she’s Australian and young which probably means she had early pap testing and serious over-screening so the likelihood of a false positive is way up there. Young women can produce highly abnormal pap tests and a normal one a few months later. Pap testing does not work in young women and can only help HPV+ women aged 30 or more.

    This woman tells her story to the world and lives her life as a cancer survivor.
    Now whether it’s true for her or not, I’m sure there are scores of women who’ve been left with the impression their “cancer” was treated, when there was no cancer in the first place and unlikely to be in the future.
    Naturally, no one corrects these women, it’s great PR for the programs. Honestly this testing is insidious, what a cruel burden for these woman…survivor, MOST unlikely, cc is rare, rare is rare.
    It’s concerning that some doctors must leave women with the impression they HAD cc or they don’t take the time to fully explain the situation, almost all of these women have simply been over-treated. Perhaps, some GPs don’t understand CIN 3 is not cc, CIN 3 is sometimes called carcinoma in situ, which sounds like cancer. Hopefully, the word carcinoma will be removed from pre-cancerous states in the future so we don’t keep calling pre-cancerous cells, actual cancer. (including DCIS) At this rate we’ll all be survivors.

    • Elizabeth, those are my observations also. An incredible amount of women don’t know the difference between CIN3 and Cervical Cancer Stage 3, or CIN1-2 and Cervical Cancer Stage 1 or 2. When they hear “something three”, they, out of lack of knowledge, add the most familiar, scary and widely-advertised word — cancer, and then presume “three” mans its stage.
      Then they run to get a treatment they don’t need for a disease they don’t have. And then they self-proclaim to be cancer survivors and tell the story to their friends and family, urging them to get screened.

      Doctors and screening-pushers are totally aware of this misunderstanding, but they often do not correct those women. The ignorance works wonders and acts as a very emotional and free advertising campaign for the screening. They prefer the women and their families to live in an enormous emotional shock if that benefits the screening program, justifying it as a sacrifice for the greater good.

      And the most sad and dangerous part is that the last thing a woman with CIN needs is a shock. She needs a happy, balanced, calm time to be able to clear the infection and avoid getting cancer.
      Therefore, we can say that the medical establishment deliberately risks the life of the patients to benefit the program. How this can be called “health care” is beyond my comprehension! It is manslaughter at the very least.

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