forwomenseyesonly

Discussion Forum (Unnecessary Pap Smears: Part Two)

This post has been created to provide an additional forum for discussion.

Thank you Alex for suggesting the addition of an open forum devoted to discussion on this blog.

3,978 comments

  1. Ada, it’s interesting there was a similar “secret” meeting on breast screening too, concerned doctors and critics were silenced and the program was pushed through, if you watch, “The Promise” you’ll hear all about it. I think these attitudes are the norm in women’s “healthcare”, forget women’s rights, others know best, women can be captured, scared, frightened, talked into anything…some might be unhappy, but it’s unlikely anyone will actually take us on, sue us, go to the media etc.

    I think many people can’t see how inappropriate and offensive these attitudes are, women have always been treated badly and viewed as a herd to be bullied into this or that.
    I view a lot of their actions as illegal, as well as highly unethical. The medical profession and others conveniently sanitize this abuse by calling it preventative health that’s in our best interests. Of course, if we end up harmed, tough luck, just shut up and be grateful you don’t have cancer. It really is a them and us thing, all real information is locked away, it really is astonishing there is virtually NO critical discussion on this testing, even after decades of abuse.

    It’s amazing we haven’t seen a class action, but then they’ve done everything in their power to intimidate/silence critics and keep women in the dark…and to accept all of this is actually in their best interests.
    I think it’s still a shock for doctors to face an informed woman, they’re used to simply providing the pap test “story”, issuing an order “all women must screen” or talking over the top of us…dismissing us.
    My GP tells me it’s still rare, at least in this country, to come across an informed woman. (more are questioning breast screening though)

    • What about someone not choosing what’s “best”? What’s the difference if they don’t choose whatever’s optimum?

      Right off the bat, I’d say “best” is what’s most suitable- but, apparently, medical personnel don’t hold that to be true.

    • Thanks for this. I will follow up The Promise. My research into the history of cervical screening has turned up some very interesting information. I’m reading up on some things by Ilana Löwy at the moment. Because she is a French national she has a different take on the blind mass screening hysteria, which has swept the Anglophone world. She provides an interesting history of how screening came about in England in her article here, which is freely available online.
      http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0104-59702010000500004&script=sci_arttext

      I’ve also ordered her book “A woman’s disease: a history of cervical cancer”, but I’m still awaiting it’s arrival from Amazon.

      From what I have gathered to date, it turned out that a doctor gave a talk at a women’s peace group meeting (in the 1950’s) saying that there was this test in America, which would save 3,000 British women from dying from cervical cancer every year. It seems to have been understood by the women/or the doctor giving the talk, that the pap test was a total, easy cure for the disease, as they then campaigned through Parliament, to get this test forced onto all women by the late 1980’s. Going through the parliamentary debates, the pap test seems to have been viewed at the time as being like a test to totally eradicate the disease, just as though it were tuberculosis or smallpox. They did not understand the course of cervical cancer was any different, and IMO they did not feel the need to get consent or ask women’s opinions about it, because they thought they could eradicate this disease in a decade if every woman was made to have this test.To them, it was a no brainer that this test should be rolled out WITHOUT the consent of women. All their hopes were pinned on the British Columbia study, which claimed a drastic reduction in cc, and there was, no doubt at the time, an arrogant belief in the righteousness of a study done in the “British Empire” to be correct, even though screening studies done elsewhere in Europe were showing that pap screening was making no difference to the death rate, such as those highlighted by Petr Skrabanek. A great shame that he died of cancer himself. He would have been a great thorn in the side of the screening programmes had he lived. Interesting that other very advanced European countries such as Germany, France and Norway, stayed away from introducing call and recall screening programmes.

      The more I find out, the more interesting this topic becomes.
      I’m also very interested in the Herb Green busines at the National Women’s hospital in NZ, and would love to get hold of Linda Bryder’s new book on the subject, Women’s Bodies and Medical Science: a history of cervical cancer
      http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/womens-bodies-and-medical-science-linda-bryder/?K=9780230236035
      as well as Angela Raffle’s book Screening: Evidence and Practice, but they are both still quite expensive.

      • It all follows the Victorian times when any woman in the a street could be accused of being a prostitute, detained and give a speculum exam to determine if she had syphilis.

      • I find it disturbing they tried to normalize the pap smear to woman and take dignaty away from woman so they could pap smear every one.

      • Ada, It was almost viewed as a public health imperative and that was partly used to override the legal rights of women. (like compulsory detention/hospitalization for victims of SARS) Archie Cochrane is another one to study, the eminent epidemiologist, he told them it was too early to introduce a cervical screening program. He wanted them to wait and do independent randomized controlled trials. (which should be a requirement for all screening programs) He was dead right, but no one wanted to hear it, he was thrown to the lions.

        I shudder to think of the harm that was done in the early days, how many women had hysterectomies for “abnormal” cells? In those days they assumed abnormal cells meant cancer, then it became clear these women could not all be destined for this always fairly rare cancer, there were too many of them. Do you recall the woman who posted over at BlogCritics, she had a hysterectomy when she was in her early 20s for abnormal cells, she now realized it was unnecessary. It was heartbreaking and it was clear she was still traumatized by the experience and of course, she was unable to have children. I can’t recall the details now, but I have a feeling she had never been sexually active.
        Another woman posted on Dr Sherman’s site, she went through the same thing and remained single, she wanted nothing to do with sex or the medical profession and felt the best way to protect herself in future was to remain single and celibate.
        How many women are out had their lives destroyed by cervical screening? Many probably don’t know to this day the hysterectomy was unnecessary and their female relatives probably consider themselves high risk.

        IMO, this program was an experiment, women were used as lab rats…others made the decision to take a punt with this testing, to risk our health, peace of mind, our lives etc.
        We see something similar with breast screening, pushed in on the back of poor or biased studies conducted by those with an undisclosed vested interest in screening, critics bullied and silenced.
        J Epidemiol Community Health 2008;62:284-287 doi:10.1136/jech.2006.059246
        Public health past and present
        Debates about cervical screening: an historical overview
        L Bryder
        (behind a pay wall, naturally…)
        There are quite a few articles on Archie Cochrane and his concerns about cervical screening, wise man.

      • Thanks for the article – I had no problems getting it through my uni library, and my book arrived this morning too, so a lot more reading to get my teeth into.

  2. Sue, just a new thing I noticed: when I click “Like” it goes up & then back down in a few seconds. Just thought I should let you know.

    • Hi Alex. Thanks for letting me know about the “Like” buttons. They seem to be working okay from my end, but sometimes I’ve noticed it takes a couple of clicks for it to “take hold” properly. They are a bit finicky from time to time. Hopefully it will sort itself out soon. Thanks again Alex.

    • I read somehwere that paps were pushed hear in the US as a package deal with birth control to take the stigma of woman coming in for birth control that they were also there for cancer screening. i dont know if that true.

      • Probably not. Here’s why:
        First, a purchase at a pharmacy is much more innocuous. Second is that if she’s on them, she’s on them- doesn’t really make much of a difference if she goes to a doctor’s office or not. There’s her simply being on them to make it noticed. On top of that, there would just be a cover story in that case- not an action taking place.

        One more thing is that they’d attach imposed probing to getting married in America during the Cold War- purportedly to determine if a woman would like sex & if so, it would lead to a good sex life with her husband, that would lead to a strong marriage, that would lead to a strong family, and that would lead to a strong country. Of course, there’s a major difference in the structure of the two situations- the one involving the doctor is imposed penetration & the one involving the husband is consensual. So it’s saying they are the same, despite that the two are different- which is a contradiction between description & situation. It’s not a uniquely American situation, but there being a contradiction between description & situation is a very common thing in America.

        Anyway, the people that do that are not likely to be backing women up & giving them an avenue around a stigma of being slutty (or whatever their problems with it were).

  3. We love reading what some of you have done in denying providers pap access. Many great laughs at “no period in ten months,” “I’m menstruating,” etc. Great work!.

    Along with news of Dr Abrams (above) I wanted to share this. Health Net of CA just mailed me its packet. Included is a schedule for age groups when things “NEED TO BE DONE.” [note one of you already pointed out “need” vs “recommended” etc]

    For newborns the HEP B vaccine. A Phd has studied this, and proven this series in children is associated with increased juvenile diabetes b/c the body views the vaccine closely to its own pancreatic cells and the immune system attacks both. In adults it’s ok.

    At age 11 HPV vaccine, both sexes. We know all about that freak fiasco.

    Adult women: Pap by age 21 regardless of sexually activity; then every 3yrs. Chlamydia: every year until age 24 if sexually active. We all know a chlamydia test is done in concordance with a pap. If a woman is at the lower end of the economic scale, she is treated as an illiterate, disease carrying, deviant who must be sexually policed.

    • You know what’s a bit off-kilter about that? Besides the situation, itself, there’s the concept that they viewed these people as inferior- so what would be the point if these things don’t apply? It’s like using crazy people (or people that are deemed crazy) as a model of sanity!

      Actually, that was a fairly common thing on its own. They do all kinds of observations on crazy people & then say “Well, this is what the mind is.” There’s so much bullshit in the medical profession that it makes you wonder what actually is their basis for determining expertise. They have such a tendancy to try to map things out & ultimately they don’t care what the picture is.

      Anyway, for sure I figure malice is a major reason for a lot of these sorts of things (not just including the Nazis). Money’s a potential reason, but I think malice comes first.

    • Didn’t have enough time to write more fully before, but I’m finding the history of how pap testing came about very interesting, and this article is definitely one for my folder. It would seem that very many people at the time were sceptical of Mr Pap and his test as being an accurate diagnostic tool for cancer, as we have now seen to a great many women’s costs over the decades. So many hysterectomies were done simply for abnormalities, which would likely have cleared up on their own, and hysterectomies done at this time carried such a high risk of death and complications. Widespread mutilation of women to spare a decreasing minority from a rare cancer.

      • I was thinking what else would be left of the equipment needed to do a pap test? Brushes were hardly invented by doctors, neither the glass slides they put the samples between.
        Women should know what sort of history they are engaging with intimately when they allow the pap-crap. I am now researching Dr Papanikolau, and finding stuff like this:

        http://www.amednews.com/article/20070903/health/309039956/4/
        “”When the Pap smear was first proposed, the pathologists were generally opposed to it, because it was an extremely complicated, very time-consuming test with uncertain results,” said Leopold G. Koss, MD, a pathologist and chair emeritus of Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y. He worked with Dr. Papanicolaou and carried out the first studies suggesting that the Pap smear could detect cervical cancer early.

        But while this caused controversy, it attracted financing for more research from the Commonwealth Fund. In 1945, the American Cancer Society started promoting Pap smears as part of an effort to encourage early cancer detection.

        “The American Cancer Society promoted it relentlessly,” said Adele Clarke, PhD, author of several papers on Pap smear history and professor of sociology and history of health sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

        But these efforts were not enough to push the Pap smear quickly into the medical mainstream. According to a story from the Oct. 24, 1952, New York Times, ACS’s medical director, Charles S. Cameron, MD, complained that most physicians were not willing to cooperate with his organization’s efforts to promote cancer checkups that included the Pap smear. Similarly, an Oct. 23, 1961, NYT story reported that, according to ACS research, 40% of women had never even heard of the Pap smear.

        “You had to convince people that there was, in fact, a precancerous state,” said Ralph Richart, MD, professor emeritus of pathology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was instrumental in establishing the first classification systems for the Pap smear in the 1960s. “As surprising as it may be today when this is universally accepted, it was not accepted then at all.”

        gems from the the same article:

        “It’s been apple pie, the American flag and the annual Pap smear ingrained in the American tradition for so long,””

        “The true impact of the HPV vaccine also will not be known for decades, and the difference it may make on cervical cancer deaths may be muted by the fact that current formulations do not protect against all strains. It’s also unknown how long protection lasts.”

      • Let’s try to do an inventory: colposcope invented by nazi war criminal, speculum invented by racist slave holder, first large-scale cervical smear human trials in Auschwitz…

  5. New game rules for the cancer blame game.
    http://www.seminoncol.org/article/S0093-7754(09)00182-1/abstract
    This research paper examines the relationship between adenocarcinoma in women caused by HPV. How do they get it either by HPV infection in their cervix moving through the blood stream OR …… Get ready for it ……. Dangerous sexual contact. Like what? They do not mean fellatio do they? Since when is fellatio dangerous? Maybe blame flush toilets and faulty respirators or even the really bad surgeries for cervical HPV infection and cancer treatments which destroy the immune system.

    Apparently the new oligoprotein trio made in tobacco plants maybe be effective against many viruses including RNA filovirus (Ebola and others) as well as for HPV which can cause adenocarcinoma. The patent was filed by Defyrus. It is easy to find online. This is a whole pandora box.

  6. Alex, I’ve seen you comment about this a few times and just now remembered to ask. You said that these kinds of things were imposed on women during the Cold War in America. I’m just curious to know if that was only in specific places (like cities that were being built up or states that didn’t have a very high population) or if there was a specific set of years this went on as the Cold War went on for a very long time. I have family members who got married here in the early 50s, and those women never participated (willingly or unwillingly) in anything like that. So I was just curious as to where you heard that and whether or not it was applicable everywhere throughout the entirety of the Cold War.

    • Not sure, actually. As for the timeframe, I remember hearing about it being in the 1960s as a definite. I don’t know if it was throughout the Cold War or for part of it. It might not have been referenced as that reason, either- it might have just been tacked-on as a conditional for getting married.

      I tried looking up specifics a couple of times, but I kept coming up with the same information. The only thing I heard was THAT this went on & the 1960s being mentioned. Maybe it was one of those initiatives that didn’t really take hold? I could see it being a “catch as you can” thing.

      Well, even if it didn’t happen (and it DOES seem to have occurred) there’s always all that stuff that went on in Romania during Causescu. Not for nothing, but one thing that caused problems was exporting the country’s agriculture & labor- sounds like what’s going on in America. Caused a whole shitload of unrest & lower quality of life, then it seems he got majorly dictatorial & started his other shit. He got shot in the head eventually, but still.

  7. I’d like to do a little exercise but am having trouble finding the stats. Could any of you point me towards how CIN results break down into CIN1, CIN2 and CIN3? E.g. 60% are CIN1, 30% are CIN2 and 10% are CIN3. Thanks.

    • I would have thought that in the UK these figures would be in a document somewhere on the ONS website, but after having a quick look, I’m unable to find anything. It may be that it is very difficult to get figures, because there is so much debate about which lesions are dangerous and which are not – it is completely down to the interpretation of the person reading the smears and whether they want the risk of litigation if they err on the side of assuming it’s OK.

      There is a famous case from the 1950’s where 25 borderline smears were given to 20 pathologists, who had to decide what level of CIN they were, and none of them could agree on them. Ilana Lowy writes about this in her document Cancer, women and public health: the history of cervical cancer screening, 2010. It’s freely available on the web, but I can’t seem to get the link to work at the moment. The paragraph “Agreement on the principle…” about halfway through is about what happened. She also quotes the famous quote that “one man’s dysplasia is another man’s carcinoma-in-situ” as there is no real consensus between pathologists, and “When in doubt, cut it out”.

      Someone recently posted on here, that a woman on Jo’s Trust website was told that they didn’t know what level her abnormalities were at, so they always carry out a procedure to be sure.
      As Angela Raffle said in an article some time ago, so many of their pathologists live in fear of litigation following a missed lesion, that where there is the slightest doubt, abnormalities are upgraded to require further invasive procedures.

      • Many online complaints about cytologists saying their workload is too high. They have quotas to examine a large number of samples per shift. They have only a few minutes to examine several thousand views. (There is a standard number of views to be done for each sample and a maximum samples per shift a technician is allowed. Sorry I do not have that information handy). So of course they err on the side of saying something is more serious than it is. The responsibility then goes to the doctor to order colposcopy.

        Also the individual HPV strains are not usually typed or even taken. High or low risk typing for HPV is not even done in some countries.

        Apparently Pap smears during pregnancy are particularly difficult to interpret yet these are pushed by doctors as opportunitic screening. I might add that the manufacturers on the pap sample brushes recommend that it is to used beyond 8 weeks pregnant. So it is really safe at 7 1/2 or 6 weeks? Usually an ultrasound dates the pregnancy at 9-10 weeks by crown rump measurement. Is no one concerned about causing miscarriage from using a cervical brush?

        As the Swedish and Dutch programmes were discussed, are these populations more homogenous in race? I had some understanding that certain racial groups are more likely to have strains of HPV that might cause cancer. This might be the resistance to adopt those protocols in other countries. However I think the statistics for death due to cervical cancer in some low resource countries is overinflated or just false.

      • Hi Moo,
        My GP pressured me into having a smear test in 1996 when I was 12 weeks pregnant. I was very much against it, (as she wrote in my notes), but I agreed as I felt she would prevent me having the homebirth I had requested. In those days it was the wooden spatula method, it was painful and made me bleed, although she insisted it would not harm my baby. Of course, with the blood on the slide it came back as an inadequate sample. Forcing that on a pregnant woman is disgraceful. At 36 weeks my waters started to leak, but I said nothing to anyone, and my daughter was born successfully at home at 37 weeks. I have always suspected that the rough smear test forced on me at 12 weeks might have had something to do with my waters breaking early. I can’t tell you how much I hate my ex-GP for doing that to me, and to then force another pap on me 6 weeks after the birth, which caused me excruciating pain. I had no problems going the full term with my second child. In fact this doctor told me herself, she would not be doing a smear during my second pregnancy, (how many other women had she caused problems to, I wonder? Had someone else had a miscarriage from her forceful pap tests?), and I knew damn well not to turn up to my postnatal. I didn’t see a doctor for years afterwards. IMO she is a danger to women and should be struck off.

      • For Adawells & Moo. What you say about pap smear processing is absolutely true. Twenty+ yrs ago this became a crisis. I can’t recall the magazine, but the expose was long and revealing. Human techs couldn’t keep up with the workload. Certified techs were expected to test a certain number of slides per 15 minute intervals. Errors of differing types & number were expected and allowed. As a fail safe, questionable slides including random samplings were sent through again along with pathologist pre-rated slides to monitor accuracy. While management partially controlled fatigue and eyestrain, being bent over a microscope all day and the ever increasing workloads broke the system.

        The fix? Making sure specimens were properly preserved and stained, and having computers replace humans. Computers check cell numbers, sizing, internal structures, and what they probably represent based on geometric algorithms created from normal slides. Computers can check their own work. Minimal expenses after initial investment. Slide processing cheap & easy. Supposed to be a win-win. But in reality error rates continue. Abnormal cells outside the “viewing window” will be ignored, as will anything outside parameters. False negatives/positives, proper specimens rejected/unreadable. Essentially, nothing replaces the human eye.

        In USA, doctors generate two incomes off each patient by investing in medical processing or treatment centers. Public policy is used protect this cash cow. Finally we have alternatives to pap. Although slow, debate involving cause & effect is turning into an informed consent rebellion. Sunset looms for the old carrot & stick approach. Educating the public and especially men how our vaginas deserve respect and love, not lies, scalpels & pain, will speed this into reality. Burning bras will be replaced with crush the colposcope.

      • I’ve managed to find some stats showing the rate at which each type of CIN becomes cancerous (although I agree those figures aren’t set in stone – not by a long way). Basically I wanted to work out how many women were going to end up being over-treated. When we very first become aware of over-treatment it would be fair enough to have a thought such as, “Out of every 100 women, 3 had treatment unnecessarily. The other 97 would definitely have gone on to develop cancer.” We might be prepared to accept that level of over-treatment, even though I’d still say that in that situation they should strive to make the screening 100% accurate. As we all know, with cervical screening it’s a case of the majority of women being over-treated. I’m curious as to how big that majority is. I’m hoping to use the stats to be able to make a statement along the lines of: “For every 100 women, only 10 would have gone on to develop cancer and the other 90 would never have developed the disease.” I just like understanding things in terms of numbers. Plus I like to use pro-screening stats, that are supposed to encourage us to screen, to prove that it’s a highly flawed system.

        In my quest to find those stats I found the Cancer Research UK FAQ guide (that many women would find themselves reading after being called for further investigation). It simply said that if you’re told you have abnormal cells then you have “a risk” of developing cancer. Well is that a 1% risk or a 99% risk – because there’s a bit of a difference between the two! It provided no further information on the level of risk.

        I also found another site, an official one for the cervical screening authority in the UK. It contradicted itself from one sentence to the next. It said abnormal cells can take 10-15 years to become cancerous so sometimes they just advise to keep an eye on them. This means going back 3 MONTHS later. Here’s the site if you want to get frustrated: https://www.bsccp.org.uk/women/frequently-asked-questions/ It also referred to the screening programme as a “British success story” (yeah, 10 extra lives saved for 10,000 women over-treated!) and very patronisingly that there is “no room for complacency”. See ladies, we’re all just complacent and should trot down to the doctors’.

    • Hi Victoria,
      I also came across this UK BBC news item from July 1998: A test of confidence for cervical screening. This was in the hey-day of screening, when all the errors started coming to light, and people were beginning to realise that the test wasn’t accurate after all:
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/140953.stm

      One very interesting comment stood out for me about halfway down:
      “Eighty of the 181 laboratories had too many or too few “inadequate” smears, …”
      As I understand it from this statement, they have set benchmarks for “inadequate” smears across the country(UK), which all regions are monitored to meet, or face penalties if they are not finding enough of them, eg. if some regions find less than the expected number of “inadequate” smears that other regions are finding, they will “grade up” normal ones to meet government targets. So that’s another problem in finding out whether inadequate smears are really inadequate.

      There were countless scandals during the 1990’s about processing errors in the UK cervical screening programme leading to women getting cancer after they’d had negative results, when we all know that it is the pap test itself which doesn’t work. (40% of women with cervical cancer would have had a negative smear test in the previous 5 years-Sasieni). One of the most famous was the Canterbury hospital scandal of 1996 where 90,000 slides were recalled, and 8 women were found to have had cancer. The 8 women successfully sued the Kent Health Authority and got a substantial payout, but the court case almost put the UK screening programme into meltdown, when the judge almost declared it unfit for purpose. From what I can gather from patchy online information, the limitations and innacuracies of the pap smear became embarrassingly obvious as the court case dragged on, and it was clear that the 10 minute time each screener had to look at each smear was too little to do a proper assesssment. When the judge said this should be much longer and other special measures should be in place, it would have made the programme unviable and impossible to run. It was at this point in time that the programme should have been called to a halt, as the safety measures required to make it feasible, were not possible for such a programme to exist. The Kent Health Authority appealed against the decision on the grounds that the slides of these 8 complainants were all borderline, and had had the fullest good quality assessment possible in the 10 minutes allowed, so had done everything they could with the resources allowed to them. The prosecution had teams of pathologists spend hours and hours looking at these borderline smears, and after spending hours on them, came up with slight abnormalities, which made the smears abnormal, and the Kent Health Authority wrong. The court found in favour of the women, however. The result was that thousands more women with the slightest element of doubt about their smears are now being referred, except that as from this year they at least have the added benefit of having their sample tested for the HPV virus.

  8. Technically, ALL evidence is anecdotal- since if someone sees something for themselves & then conveys the information to someone else, that is an anecdote.

    • Anecdotal evidence could get published in a study when all the subjects are asked the same questions, a quantity of data is recorded and anaylazed according to a few parameters, some statistical calculations added.

      I just do not buy that one quarter of pregnancies will end in early miscarriage for apparently “no one knows the reason why”.

      People just tell me I am too much for conspiracies and cover ups. People are just blind to what is in plain sight. Also reading a current article about a canadian politican who is getting surgery for a benign mass on her ovary. Not 100% sure she has cancer but she recommends that people not google these medical matters because they could get confused.

      • Moo, I’m looking f/w to reading any relationship you or others find re adenocarcinoma and HPV, cause & effect per your 10/27 note. That’s one part of my letter to my gyn that we’re covering. It’s laughable a doctor could suggest that fellatio could bring HPV to our cervix; but hey they got the pap accepted…

        Adawells, I checked that document from 11/3. Interesting that CIN3 is 45% compared to all others below 10%. Are those false negatives that got through or exaggerations to ensure treatment is followed through? And, I also notice in this report that women are “invited” in for screening. How warm & fuzzy. Yet the cards & phone calls always say “need.” Another four-letter word warped into something bad by the medical industry.

        In the Spirit of Good Medicine, I “invite” you to check out “Women Against Stirrups.” Moo has invested much of her time there researching issues & one of the lonely few offering comfort, advise, and hope. It is grossly shocking, and acutely saddening to read how many women have been “gently” bullied into extremely painful paps during pregnancy. How they were discounted even when instruments and hands afterward were covered in their blood & fluids. Obviously, paps are causing miscarriages. Until some brave researcher or doctor comes forward, we’ll never have official validation and procedural changes. Imagine the lawsuits waiting to happen; and denial is the only prevention which also propagates further tragedy & pain.

        Why isn’t to obvious to therapists, doctors, and policy makers that gyn & baby delivery industries are precursors to divorce? Nothing divides husband/wife, mother/father like assholes wearing scrubs telling us what’s best & how we’d better cooperate, listen, and live if we want to keep our babies.

        Unfortunately it’s surrounded by “happy” sites recommending paps during pregnancy with blind advice, empty industry assurances that these are safe, and doctors would never “deliberately” give a mother to be bad advice. Did you know certain web sites for pay will seed sites like those (yelp for another) with fake praise?

        Articles accessed here show the whys & the patterns of paps during pregnancies. Regardless of stupidity, m/c risk, & likelyhood of positive results. This screening net captures everything. Very vulnerable pap-resistant women are captured into compliance. Women are speedily funneled into follow up. So much money spent. The oodles of documentation ensure doctors against malpractice for any missed cancers coming up during pregnancy. Doctors can prove any cancer was not there at first visit and at last when postnatal women is d/c. Nothing like settling a case to provide for infant through age 18. All this time, providers have been asking sexualized questions. Gathering data on our behaviors. Adjunct to paps. All this to see what’s on that “surface layer” of the cervix. Now linking adenocarcinoma & several other things to desperately hold onto the most unnecessary & invasive waste of money–and sexual thrill ever invented.

  9. If you have not understood this, I am quite anti-medical. I prefer no screening and more natural treatments. However I have decided to respect other people on this four who might be just critical of the current cervical screening programmes and not ready to dismiss them totally. It might not be the few women in 1000,000 that get cervical cancer are needing care and compassion.

    About the previous post on the court case and accuracy of cytology, the bell curve is used. So it is expected to have so many errors and such is science. The problem is that if it was your life or your family you might be looking for someone to blame.

    Using vinegar visual test and doing pap might be better than doing just a pap. Take a photo and type the HPV strain but that is also just as invasive.

    I am also starting to wonder about older women who get Pap tests (coerced by doctors) and the. They are sent for colpscopy, biopsy and treatments, quite soon later (months or years) they are diagnosed with panceatic cancer and other cancers in the region. If whatever “cancer” I their vagina was left alone they might live longer. As squamous cells are lining the whole body inside and out so once a tumor is disturbed those cancer cells are going to travel. I would really like some stats on cervical treatments and any relationship to other cancers especially lung cancer I the same patients (excluding those with HIV).

  10. Arrgh! Yet another woman (with a mostly teen/early 20s viewership) with a lot of influence doing a sales pitch for smear tests. It’s another incidence of women genuinely thinking they’re being helpful and reassuring, saying it’s so easy (which is not easy to hear if you’re the woman who’s had painful and humiliating smears in the past), saying it’s all part of being a woman (like we’re some collective herd of broodmares). Watch here, http://youtu.be/17iOT5BZ4lg – around 1:30.

    I’ve replied (as Sylvia) and will no doubt get a load of “but it’s better to be safe than sorry” replies, which have completely missed the point. Even though the inaccuracy of the test is up there as my main problem with the test, the “you have to” “I’m told to” (that 4-letter word mentioned above: “need”) rhetoric concerns me greatly. As I said in my reply on Youtube, decisions about your health should be based on facts, not peer pressure (that includes pressure from medical staff).

    • Unrelated, I went to see how the UK prostate screening compares (I knew it was a lot better) and learned it’s not even a screening programme but “risk management”! The prostate page also has this wording: “The aim of Prostate Cancer Risk Management is to ensure that men who are concerned about the risk of prostate cancer receive clear and balanced information about the advantages and disadvantages of the PSA test and treatment for prostate cancer. This will help men to decide whether they want to have the test. Information packs have been sent to General Practitioners to assist them in the counselling of men who enquire about testing. The pack will help the primary care team to provide men with information on the benefits and limitations of the PSA test.”

      Not one of those things applies to women and the cervical screening programme.

      • Prostate cancer screening is not pushed the same as cervical or breast screening because women’s sexual organs are considered expendable. Men are wise to think twice about any surgery or treatments that could render the unable to have another erection in their life ever again. Yet for a woman to lose her breasts, cervix, uterus or ovaries is supposed to not be a big deal at all. Women are often ignored for pain of fibroids or whatever and not given much choice than a hysterectomy with removal of the ovaries (since they could go bad and require another surgery they are told). There are options but few doctors with training to do these alternatives. Sadly women read the HER a foundation website too late. For younger women out there questioning cervical cancer screening and STI testing, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

      • RE prostate testing. Appears to me, government is getting their gloves on, ahem, and pressing a finger or two into this sometimes gooey issue. It should also have to clean up any mess it makes.

    • Which one wins the most ridiculous comment of the day? 😉

      1 – “quite a lot of women have died because they were refused smear tests”. Oh where to begin?! No woman over 25 would be refused a test in the UK unless pregnant. Under-25s are refused tests because of medical evidence. Women of any age are refused smear tests if they’re symptomatic because it’s a test for non-symptomatic women.

      2 – (this is my winner) “I had a HPV scare” Wow. So now not only are abnormal cells a “cancer scare” but a virus that most of the time is cleared by the body and doesn’t cause any problems at all, is worthy of being called a “scare”. People need to revisit their statistics classes from secondary school, because “99% of cervical cancers are caused by HPV” does NOT mean that HPV becomes cancer 99% of the time.

      The level of ignorance on that Youtube thread was astonishing and proves that women are making very UNinformed “choices” to have a smear test.

      • Unfortunately, Victoria, a lot of doctors & nurses themselves are very ignorant about this god-awful test – I guess the medical profession have been telling us lies (it’s the perfect test, saves gazillions of lives etc.) for so long that they’ve begun to believe their own bullshit. It’s not unheard of for doctors to perform a smear on a symptomatic woman over 25 in order to ‘rule out’ cancer – many of them do still view it as a viable diagnostic test. Old habits die hard, especially within medicine, right? So it’s hardly surprising that so many woman think that the smear is a valid test if you have symptoms.
        Part of the problem is that while the programme began in 1988, the NHS didn’t start sending out information leaflets until much later – I think it was a good ten years later or so – and of I suspect women who had been suckered into the system by then probably didn’t bother reading it. Of course, those leaflets are nothing more than sales brochures, designed to get us up on the couch, and most of the information in them is utter nonsense. But that info has changed on a regular basis, usually after some kind of scandal, and there are some useful nuggets in there. The most recent one I received had a paragraph written in bold type stating: ‘Screening isn’t used to investigate cervical symptoms’ and that you should see your doctors if you’re experiencing symptoms. Who will probably want to do a smear test, ya know, to ‘rule out’ cancer!
        I’m sure many women ignore the leaflet because think they already know it all, so will be completely unaware of any new information. And of course, since these leaflets are aimed (in England, anyway) at women 25 and over, younger women simply read the garbage peddled in the media or trust what older women tell them.
        Every time I see one of these stories of ‘young woman denied a smear’ splashed across the newspapers it makes me want to tear my hair out, because the real problem in those cases is that the GP’s weren’t doing their jobs properly. Symptoms need proper investigation. not a bullshit screening test, yet time and again they were given the brush-off when they should have been examined or referred for diagnostic testing. NHS guidelines actually recommend doing so when they cancer is suspected in young women. It’s frightening when GP’s have so much power, yet so many of them seem to be so damned stupid!!!

      • Couldn’t agree more Kate. I’m flexing my muscles on the Youtube video comments, pointing out glaring misunderstandings about the test, in order to prepare for the big one: the repeat pill prescription appointment. I’ve asked for the nicer nurse there, but last time she did still say, “As long as you know it’s important.” She was respectful in her tone but I’m going to have to politely say that I don’t think it’s important, and am not sitting here stubbornly refusing a test I know to be important. I’m refusing a test I know to be… and at this point I’ll reel off a long list of issues! Plus the fact she wanted me to agree to it based on “it’s important” is so far removed from informed consent – a phrase I will repeat many times! Wish me luck. Hope I don’t get flustered. I always get a little nervous knowing I’m going to be put on the spot and patronised but this is the first appointment I’ll have been to since finding this forum so I feel better armed. 🙂

      • Well done, Victoria. I had a look at the YouTube website, and couldn’t take any more of it. You are doing great work putting the rational points across to this group of young women, who clearly haven’t a clue. We need to go out into the world and let women know that the constant medicalisation of their bodies is not necessary. Very best wishes for your appointment. Could you print out some useful information to give to the nurse to read, or take a list of written points to back up your argument when you go? Best wishes.

      • Victoria: You know why she was probably saying that? To try to get some “momentum” going mentally. She seems to have wanted you to say it’s important so as to get your mind to follow your words (“Say it like you mean it!” seems to rely on this “echo” principle).

        It’s really not important, but if she agrees- she knows she’ll be shit out of luck in deception department. It’s like how liars pretty much NEVER admit a lie, not even once. If they do, the image of them being a liar sinks in better & they can’t lie as effectively after that. Proof by indication can work fine, but it usually is more convincing to hear a confession or to see something with your own eyes- I guess because there’s no extra effort of imagining something (even though it’s not making up bullshit, there’s still a GENERATED image- rather than an observed one).

      • Update: the nurse I saw today (who I’ve seen twice in the past) was fantastic. She’s always had a respectful attitude, even if she did once say “it’s an important test.” This time the conversation went:

        Nurse: Are you up to date with your smears?
        Me: No. I’ve formally opted out of having them.
        N: That’s fine. [She goes to start blood pressure test].
        Me: This is why I asked for you in particular, you’ve been very respectful of my decision and other nurses have looked at me like I’ve just grown horns.
        N: I’m very sorry to hear that, some people can be quite rude about it. It’s just not how I go about things and I think us older generation of nurses have a different approach. [She implied here it was the younger ones who were evangelical about smears].

        She didn’t say it, but I’m guessing her years of experience will have revealed the true cost of cervical screening. She’ll have talked to – possibly consoled and dealt with distressed women – who have had false negatives and traumatic over-treatment. She’ll have spoken to women who are completely put off further testing either by having a smear test done badly or distressing treatment.

        The nurse then raised the topic of over-treatment and false positives. When I said there were many downsides, that was the first she volunteered. I also mentioned informed consent and she nodded along. She also mentioned the harm caused to under-25s in particular and said that some young girls (the under-25s) just didn’t understand. I get the impression she’s aware of – probably speaks to in person – the under-25s calling for the age to be lowered.

        So it basically became a little chat about a couple of the problems with screening, and not me having to defend myself. I feel like writing to the head of the surgery to say all other staff should follow her example.

  11. I haven’t done my little statistics exercise yet (but thankyou for providing links to useful resources), but I found this quote from Angela Raffle: “Over 80% of women with high grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia will not develop invasive cancer, but all need to be treated.” That’s around what I expected to get as well – a staggering 80% minimum rate of over-treatment. I don’t think people realise that when over-treatment is first mentioned to them. They think, “maybe 3%, 5%, 10% have unnecessary treatment – it’s a shame but it’s worth it to save the rest”. No, we’re talking about a situation where the vast majority of treatment is completely unnecessary.

    • EDIT TO ABOVE Sorry I mis-read, the 80% quote is from Margaret McCarthy but I think she was going off Angela Raffle’s research.

      • Yes, a minimum of 80% overtreatment. Factor in all of the Cryotherapy or Leep treatments for the cases of CIN 1 & 2 which would never progress…. it’s appalling.

    • It was wonderful to read that your experience with this nurse went so well. It must be a great weight off your mind to know that you can go there again without it being a battle. It is great to hear some good news for once. One place you might wish to comment on your experience is the patientopinion website, which is full of women saying how wonderful their smear test was. They could perhaps hear your story about not having the smear test!
      It ‘s true that cervical cancer is so rare that many of the older healthcarers must have realised by now that in all the years they have been screening women, many nurses probably haven’t come across a single case of it. It must play on their minds that they are chasing a very rare disease, I have read somewhere that in a GP’s entire professional working life they will encounter just 1 death from cervical cancer, and that on average they will get 8 newly diagnosed cancers across all patients in any given year, (that includes men and women). Really puts it into perspective doesn’t it?

  12. The television show “The Doctors” is really pushing paps and pelvics this fall…damage control for falling rates of women willing to get screened, or the new guidelines? On my Facebook feed I came across this clip, in which a comedian is getting her “annual exam” on camera, by one of the doctors on the show. The doctor in this clip is the one who also keeps trying to insist that the bimanual exam is valuable even though the ASOG disagrees. I honestly couldn’t even get through this clip, it disgusted me so much…they have this platform on national television and they use it to scare/coerce/mislead women into getting exams like this every year. I guess one shouldn’t be surprised, the show is called The Doctors and they’re going to press a doctor’s ulterior motives. And I can’t help but notice that only one of the six doctors is a person of color, and that while the male doctors are of varying ages and looks, and one of them wears scrubs as he would in a hospital, the female doctors all have high heels, short skirts and Barbie makeup and blonde hair. God forbid they have an older female doctor or one that actually dresses as she would in a hospital, right?

    http://www.thedoctorstv.com/videos/judy-gold-gets-an-annual-ob-gyn-exam

    • Check out the comments after the article. The CDC funds cervical and breast screening but women know that they cannot afford the treatments if they are diagnosed. It is not really free. Interesting that a woman said she was still charged for a well woman exam when she went in her doctor discussed how she did not even need a pap every year and talked to her for 10 minutes.

    • I just saw this on the news this evening. I typically don’t watch the news, but I was flipping through channels and they mentioned screening so of course it caught my attention. I can’t remember what exactly the reporter said, but it was to the extent of, “women need to be getting pap tests every year, most cases of cervical cancer are incurable and found in women who have never had a pelvic exam (which is obviously not the same as a pap test so I’m not sure why that was said; an abundance of confusion and misinformation)” and the typical spiel. It’s interesting, though, because there is so much contradiction. Pap tests just detect abnormalities (which the report did admit to) and they aren’t a diagnostic test. They can at times catch things that will go on to become cancerous and maybe there have been cases where it has detected cancer, but it is highly inaccurate with the number of false positives and negatives it generates. Of course, they’d never report on the risk of false negatives and how many women die from cervical cancer because there was no real diagnostic test done beyond a pap test. Oh, and you all are going to love this one, they said that colon cancer in young adults has increased by 2%. So now, starting at age 20, we’re told to discuss our risk factors with our doctor and start screening at the appropriate age (determined by the doctor, of course). I know that colon cancer is a far more common cancer, and I personally have a family history of it so it isn’t something I take lightly. That said, I don’t think I’d take up screening any time soon. I don’t even think I’d discuss it with my doctor unless I was symptomatic. Otherwise, I’d wait until I was older and make an informed decision based on ALL risk factors (including the family history, but also: my diet, how often I exercise, if I smoke or drink regularly, etc).

      • Like I said (at some point, at least): they’re pervy little saboteurs with all kinds of problems. At minimum, their teaching seems to descend from those that are like that- twisted source, or whatever that’s called.

  14. This isn’t about CC, but on the Youtube thread I notice many are linking “becoming sexually active” with needing to have six monthly/yearly pelvic exams to detect “irregularities and diseases”. I feel like saying, “Sexually active does not mean you’re a *prostitute*!” There is a big difference between someone who has a limited number of partners, always takes precautions, understands their own body and would spot anything unusual, would say, “Umm, no, I’m not going anywhere near THAT” if they spot something on their partner and someone who has sexual contact with anyone regardless, doesn’t always take precautions, can have multiple partners per week (or night), and would put off seeing a doctor with symptoms because of shame about their work/lack of insurance. Note: I understand there are many sensible prostitutes who behave more like the first group in that example. The women who are having these six month/yearly exams are being grouped together regardless of risk factor just because they have the right anatomy that could go wrong at any moment apparently.

    • http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/10-men-explain-why-they-became-gynecologists.html

      Interesting…it annoys me to hear a doctor say women often don’t care who does what down there after they’ve had a baby, like that experience changes this area into a public space. I happen to know quite a few women who’ve had a baby, but also, continue to care about their bodily privacy.
      I think this is a convenient way of dismissing a woman’s feelings, “you’ve had a baby, surprising you still care…” etc. like that makes her immature or silly etc.
      Assumptions and expectations should never be made about how we feel, there is no “we” anyway…only individuals who’ll all feel differently about these things.
      I believe this is one of the reasons women have been stuck with pap testing for years, this notion that women must “get used” to these exams, “if you can’t cope with a pap test, how will you manage having a baby?” is something that’s thrown at women or, “if you’re old enough to have sex, you’re old enough to get your exams” etc.
      Of course, we don’t have to get used to anything, pap testing is a choice and women should be treated privately and respectfully during childbirth. Note: most invasive exams are unnecessary during pregnancy and childbirth.
      I’ve read many times that they had to find an alternative to the rectal exam, men found the exam unacceptable (and men can’t be easily “captured”) so the PSA blood test suddenly appeared, many doctors said things like, “women have to get used to invasive exams, they must have pap testing all their lives, and they have babies”…news flash: we don’t have to “get used” to anything.

      • You can trace these attitudes right back to the antiquated and always unfair idea that women are baby-making machines. As you’ve written about on here, women’s health isn’t about their whole body, it’s about their reproductive organs and breasts. Even if doctors nowadays aren’t thinking, “We must protect the baby-makers” have they ever stopped to wonder why women’s health is only about the reproductive area? The system is presented as a very 21st century thing, but actually has its roots in a time when women were viewed very differently.

        I don’t know what planet someone is on if they think having a pelvic, smear test, having sex, and having a baby are one-and-the-same. I was in counselling for something else, but we ended up discussing the fact I find childbirth horrific. The counsellor’s response was, “You’re having a baby so you don’t care who sees what.” She also thought the tale of a friend who had a 20 minute labour and didn’t make it to hospital was going to reassure me! Me, the person who had told her the only way a baby would leave my body is while unconscious in an operating theatre via caesarean. I don’t know how she thought the prospect of giving birth naturally against my wishes was supposed to help. She left me with no faith in the NHS in general to respect my wishes, or her ability as a counsellor since she was *telling* me how I should feel about something. I thought Lesson 1 of Class 1 of counselling would surely be that everyone’s thoughts are different? I actually cancelled any further appointments after that.

        I’ve since decided I don’t want children, but at the time I was worried about the attitude of medical staff who assume that once you’re pregnant, and certainly once you’re in labour, that you can’t possibly know your own mind – be that to go drug-free or to go straight to the operating theatre.

      • I’ve had 2 children and no way do I feel it has made me happier to expose my private parts to anyone, any more than before. In fact, with all the saggy bits I’ve got now, I’d say I’m even more embarassed! I still feel the same way as I did before about paps and pelvics.
        One thing that struck me when I was pregnant was that some men were more understanding than women. I had pregnancy sickness the whole 9 months and felt very ill and exhausted most of the time. I found 2 female doctors (neither been pregnant) and other female co-workers totally unsympathetic, but a couple of guys where I used to work came and told me that their wives had been equally sick when pregnant, and they really appreciated what I was going through. I’ve never forgotten their kind words. They had more empathy with pregnancy sickness than a lot of women I knew.

      • You know that “you’re old enough to have sex, you’re old enough to have these exams” argument? Isn’t it basically saying “if you’re old enough to do things by choice, you’re old enough to have things forced on you.”

  15. I would like to request to,the website owner to consider adding some articles about breast screening. There have been some recent studies criticizing the breast screening programmes. There is not much unbiased information about overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Also I am finding conflicting advice and information about damage, radiation dosage and reliability on mammograms. There are newer technologies such as hole breast ultrasound that uses less compression but is more accurate than conventional mammograms only it is not considered reliable.

    I really feel,this information about breast screening would benefit women. I find that turning 50 means that I am facing triple the coercion for cancer screenings with cervical, breast and colon cancer screening all shoved at me at once. Finding a lack of good information about what to expect during perimenopause compounds it all.

    Please consider this appeal.

    • Moo, there are quite a few articles under References, I’ve covered the topic thoroughly, I always had concerns, but age 50 tends to focus the mind when the pressure really starts. I was also, a bit spooked by a colleague diagnosed when she was 47, thank goodness (after all I know about cervical screening) I assumed they’d also, be covering up risk and exaggerating benefit with mammography, and they were…no surprises there. Once informed you act on the evidence, not fear, peer pressure etc.

      I think the situation is so serious now we may see more legal action in the future, powerful vested interests instantly dismiss anything that threatens this highly lucrative industry. The evidence of risk mounts ever higher and now it seems any benefit of screening is wiped out by those who die from heart attacks and lung cancer after treatments. So the risks exceed any benefit.
      I’d suggest you start with the excellent summary put together by the Nordic Cochrane Institute, go to their website. It’s the best I found by a country mile.
      Gilbert Welch has also, written a lot of informative articles, if you’d like an American reference, and of course, anything by the amazing Professor Michael Baum, UK breast cancer surgeon and advocate for informed consent in cancer screening.
      There is a lecture on YouTube, “Breast Cancer Screening: an inconvenient truth” by Prof Baum and there is also, a DVD called, “The Promise” featuring Prof Baum and Peter Gotzsche from the NCI, you have to pay for it, but I’d say it’s money very well spent.
      Let me know if you need more references, I have lots…and it’s not pretty! Tread carefully Moo, breast screening CAN damage your health and well-being, and this last sentence is not an exaggeration, it can even take your life.

    • Hi Moo. Thank you for your suggestions, I appreciate the input. From my experience the input from others has always turned out to be great additions. Elizabeth suggested the References and Education forum, Alex suggested the Discussion forum, Diane has contributed two posts, and there have been other great suggestions and/or comments that have found their way into posts, and of course the comments that help keep it all alive – all have advanced this site and have helped other women find their way. I agree more information could benefit women and I will try to give a go, thanks again Moo.

  16. Sue, I’m going back & forth with someone on Youtube (it was a link to a video from here, actually). She doesn’t seem to be too confrontational, but seems to be of the mind that there aren’t risks or inaccuracies to these tests that are “suggested” to women. Is it okay if I refer her to this site?

    I don’t see it being like with that guy I was arguing with on Happierabroad (he seems like he’d have been a shit-stirrer & so do a lot of the other guys on there), I just figured I should ask first.

      • Well, I have a little confession to make: I actually had referred her before getting your reply- I wanted to post before the internet flicked on & off or did something else weird on me. I figured that other people had done it & you didn’t seem mad & that she seemed regular (she wasn’t on a tirad about how all women need to do these things & everyone that has a problem with it is immature/stupid/crazy). My apologizies, if they’re needed.

      • Hi Alex, thank you and of course I don’t mind! The women here are a force to be reckoned with and I have no concerns about negative commenters. If anything I feel concerned for the negative commenters 🙂

  17. Hi guys I havent commented in a while -and btw I decided to let my beloved eric live after he hijacked my laptop and posted here 😉 – but I thought now would be a good time considering I got a little booklet from my work today explaining how I could use my benefits for womens healthcare. Sure it was meant to look all friendy with some shallow drivel about certain yoga poses (i know WAYYY more about it than they probably do) and coupons for various healthfood gimmicks. AND of course the “friendly reminder” written in pink DONT FORGET TO SCHEDULE AN APPOITMENT FOR YOUR ANNUAL WELL WOMAN PHYSICAL with the assurance that all preventative care and screenings are covered. Needless to say I was disgusted and tore it up on the spot whilst muttering various obscenities which greatly confused my father in law. He said “Easy there girlie! they’re just letting you know about your benefits” To which I replied “Yeah and I’ll use them when I’m damn good and ready.” But of course it got me thinking if not for this site I might have been as docile and brainwashed as everyone else and may have very well gone along with it so I went on google and stumbled across this forum http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.healthboards.com%2Fboards%2Fsexual-health-women%2F837966-traumatic-virgin-pap-smear.html&ei=fqpeVKmbGcb2yQSL7YDABw&usg=AFQjCNEDVlST2pzMPpYUd2XHy84cZjSPzw&sig2=qsP6NTtpR2TQqNNAsTu9GA&bvm=bv.79189006,d.aWw ….there are no words to express how appalled I am at the attitudes of these other women! After what that poor girl went thru! She should not have had that happen to her nor should any woman. It’s a pity it was 2 yrs ago or I’d give them all a virtual slap and tell that girl she has every right to feel that way and that her body is HERS- not a playground for doctors- and she has a choice in the matter. It’s disgusting the way people/doctors behave.

    • Part of the reason she was given to have the exam was that her mother (or her mother’s side of the family) had a history of endometriosis. Do correct me, but if the patient herself had endometriosis surely she would know about it, to an unpleasant degree, every month? I don’t see how an exam on a symptomless woman could have helped with that.

      • Seriously! I’ve known people with endo…you KNOW you have it, because the pain is excruciating. And not only that, but endometriosis cannot be found with a pap or a pelvic, ever! It’s uterine tissue growing outside the uterus! As far as I know they either treat symptoms (it’s one of the non-birth control, therapeutic uses of the Pill) or do endoscopic surgery in very extreme cases.

        That poor young woman went through a traumatic experience. The people on that page who were commenting that she needed therapy and was overreacting for feeling violated were completely off the mark. THEY were the ones who needed therapy, and so did that doctor, who frankly sounded downright sadistic.

    • I wonder what goes through someone’s head when they type stuff like that up? I guess written in all pink is supposed to make it seem non-threatening, like the opposite of the “dangerous/combative/battle” colors?

    • You know I think its sick that pap smears are the first thing on pples minds when think about woman needing health coverage like we are all just upset unless we can have a pap smear.

    • That doctor was outright tormenting her! Look at all the waiting naked- that’s something militaries do when they capture people (at least, it HAS come up & sometimes gets integrated into training). This is obviously something she has a problem with & that should have shut things down right then & there.

      Then she ask a question only to negate the answer- why ask if she wants to put on the headphones as a coping mechanism if she’s just going to tell her not to do it? She makes a deliberate point of displaying everything she’s intending to use & expounding on everything she’s intending on doing- this isn’t to accentuate an anguishing situation?

      Her mother is at fault, too. I know she wasn’t in the room for all this, but she shouldn’t be trying to corral her into all this any more than a father should be driving her to let some woman “play doctor” on her. Actually, I’ll bet if it was her FATHER pushing her into all this- the responses would be very different. Same if it was a MAN that actually did the actions.

      That really riles me up (the whole thing, of course- but the whole “if a woman does it to another woman it’s not an attack” thing). What’s the idea? Does someone think: “My body’s my own- and hers, too”? It’s like the idea that if someone has the same type of anatomical features as someone else, then it’s the same as their own features.

      I’ve noticed that there’s something of a general trend where someone feels some kind of propioceptive sense with anything they notice, too. If they’re aware of it, they think it’s an extension of themselves- or at least act like they do.

  18. New guidelines from the Scottish Cervical Screening Programme on opting women out of the programme.
    nhsforthvalley.com/…/Opting-out-Women-from-the-Scottish-Cervical-Sc…
    It is staggeringly patronising, and seems to be confusing women with learning difficulties with women in general. A face to face consultation must be held with the woman signing the declaration in the doctor’s surgery, so that the doctor can tell you about the benefits of screening, (no mention of harms), and assess whether you are of sound mind, or not too mentally subnormal to have a mind at all. No sending opt out letters to people to return in the post.
    It also says that although a woman has a right to choose, she can only opt out with the doctor’s agreement. In other words, only if the doctor says so.
    I was disappointed to spot that Scotland will only be changing to the slightly less stringent screening arrangements that English women have after 2016, well after the more civilised countries have introduced HPV self sampling, no doubt.

    .

    • Ada,
      they know the power imbalance means most women will be talked out of the opt-out and as usual, they ignore the fact they don’t have power to force women to do anything. Challenge this and it falls over like a pack of cards. You don’t need a doctor to agree it’s fine for you to opt out of elective screening, but of course, they know many women will just accept this sort of treatment. I wonder how Dr McCartney feels about these face to face requirements etc. I wonder whether she plans to publicly challenge them.

    • So if a women is assessed as not competent enough to opt out, is she arrested, hospitalized and forced to get a Pap test? What happens to women who just bin the letters? Does someone show up on their doorstep? Seems a terrible waste of resources and money. It must just be assumed she being held at home against her will and terribly abused and not allowed out if she does not show up for Pap tests.

      • And all that can tie into pandering to the Muslim population there. Saying “Well, it COULD happen in some of those houses & there’s no difference between your house & their house.”

      • Forgot to add: This would be in an effort to “not discriminate.” You know like how they might say that no one can wear any religious things in order to functionally ban bhurkas & such, but they come down on people for wearing crosses & yamakas. “Oh, we persecuate everybody” type of shit.

      • I thought the same: what happens if you just ignore the letters? There will be a phonecall. I got one but it was at least to say, “So you definitely want to opt-out? Okay, we’ll send out the form.” It felt intrusive but it was the only way to get the end-result I wanted. People can’t be forced to attend their GP surgery. Sadly I think they’d wait until the patient has to attend for other reasons and turn that into a chance to force them to sign an opt-out form. Part of me wishes I hadn’t signed a form because I don’t think I should have to. I also don’t agree with the wording, which was along the lines of: “I understand the risk I’m taking and that I have been strongly advised against opting out.”

    • Ada
      Do you mind if I copy your comment onto Dr McCartney’s website? I won’t include your name, just the content and link. I’m sure she’s aware of it, but it might prompt her to write something for the Scottish papers, advising/warning women and challenging this program that’s supposed to respect informed consent.

      • I’d be very happy for you to pass it onto Dr McCartney.

        Click to access Opting-out-Women-from-the-Scottish-Cervical-Screening-Programme.pdf

        I was so angry after reading it last night, I’ve hardly had any sleep and feel rubbish this morning! I could not get the link to work on my tablet so have attached again above.
        I don’t live in Scotland, but I feel for the women who are stuck with this dictatorial nonsense. They start smear tests at age 20 there, and they are every 3 years until age 60, but they are shifting to the English intervals in 2016, according to the document. In spite of the current 3 year interval in Scotland, I noticed that the document gives a screening attendance rate of only 73% for a pap having taken place within the last 5 years, so their 3 yearly attendance rate must be much lower than 73%.

        The latest row which has blown up over personal liberties is that the government has come up with a plan to pay GP’s £55 to diagnose a person with dementia, as apparently, they are not diagnosing enough of them on the UK. So this is what will happen – the GP will diagnose a woman as having dementia to get the £55 and then say that the woman is in no fit state to make a decision about whether to attend screening!
        http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/clinical/therapy-areas/neurology/gps-to-be-paid-55-for-every-dementia-diagnosis-under-new-identification-scheme/20008243.article#.VGHzkslZ4a8

    • A big problem with that is if they try to force the issue, she’s actually in the building- turns things into a trap. It’s not like they don’t ambush people with things (at least in America).

      That thing actually says “a woman has a right to choose, but she can only opt out with the doctor’s agreement”? Does that mean from the test or getting nagged about the test & getting that “opt out/off-the-mailing-list status”? It’s not unheard of for them to say that people are mentally unfit to handle themselves when these people argue with them.

    • Hi Victoria,
      I agree with your post that it is so wrong of them to phone you up and ask why you are not attending for screening. I feel angry that it happened to me, but, at the time, it gets you the result that you want (to get off that ruddy recall list), and you say things that later you think they had a real cheek to ask.

      My phone call was in 2003, and at that time we didn’t have the internet connections that we have now, and it was difficult to get informed about such things. After having been on this website for about a year now, I could confidently tell them why I am not having smears, and could also reel off the statistics and evidence to them. Back in the 1990’s and in 2003 I had to fall back on explaining about my personal life as it was the only information I had to hand at the time. Also, at that time, I had no idea what I had to do to opt out. Opting out just wasn’t talked about, and even now, so many women are amazed that they can opt out when you tell them. The whole programme has been rolled out as mandatory, that the only option women believe they have is to string them along with comments like “maybe next time, can’t get time off work, it’s my period etc.”
      It is great to see so many women posting on websites that this test is not mandatory and that they can choose. Many more women, than actually reply, will read these posts and the seed of doubt will be sown, and hopefully the house of cards will fall down.

      • Ada, this is why it was SO important NOT to give women access to anything that might enable them to fight back. As you’ve mentioned, you could fend off any pap test pressure now because you’ve managed to get to the evidence. The power imbalance is bad enough in the consult room but made worse when you have nothing other than, “I don’t want to have a pap test”…that is so easily challenged, but I’ve found doctors and others back off quickly when they’re faced with an informed woman. You may be asked in a patronizing way, “where are you getting your information?”…I always enjoy replying, “Oh, the BMJ, The Lancet, MJA, NEJM etc…” crickets chirping….and I’ve found many GPs have a poor understanding of the actual evidence, many seem to rely on the one-sided presentation given by the program. (and of course, paps = $)

        The other thing I’ve found, I don’t feel intimidated, embarrassed etc. declining a pap test or mammogram because I found the information I needed to make an informed decision, so the old scare stories etc. roll off my back like water off a duck’s back.
        Many women report feeling uncomfortable, turning red, starting to stammer and apologize when they’re faced with pap test pressure, I think you feel more confident when you know exactly what you’re rejecting. You’re right too, no need to plead your case, and give out personal information, “we were virgins when we got together”…”Yes, I’m sure he’s faithful”…stick to the evidence, it’s powerful enough.

        Some GPs are prepared to lie or simply have no idea what they’re talking about, for example, a colleague used the Screener, knew she was HPV- and couldn’t benefit from pap testing, so firmly declined further pap testing. Her doctor tried to tell her she still needed pap tests, “not all cc is linked to HPV”
        The fact is almost all of it IS linked to HPV and it seems the super rare cases that “may” not be linked to HPV, are usually missed by pap testing anyway, you may even be disadvantaged by pap testing, (false negative) if you’re unlucky enough to get one of these incredibly rare cancers. (about 200 cases a year in the whole of America)
        Some women are told, “you’re biopsy told us you’re HPV+” BUT the biopsy was performed 12 years ago! Most women who were HPV+ a few years ago (or even 2 years ago) WILL not be HPV+ today. This seems to be a common story and also, the one about HPV suddenly springing to life again sometimes in the future. A woman can however, be re-infected with HPV, that’s why women will be offered HPV testing 5 times in total under the new Dutch program. (those no longer sexually active or confidently monogamous might choose to stop all further HPV testing – this information/option will almost certainly be kept from women here)

        So even if women access HPV self-testing, they also, need real information to fight off pressure to stay in the program. Thankfully, as you say, it’s easier to find the information now, I had to take myself off to the Medical Library and chat to some of the academics in that Faculty. An informed woman can also, protect herself from excess, HPV+ women can decline an immediate colposcopy/biopsy and opt for a pap test every 5 years. (until she clears the virus)

        Over the decades I’ve noticed how censorship and intimidation is used to keep the evidence from women. It’s viewed as a huge threat to the program. It was always the intention of this program to convince women they should just screen, don’t even think about it, it’s part of being a responsible woman. The one article that appeared here that was critical of the program and gave women most of the evidence caused an uproar and the program went into damage control. We heard, “we know this testing saves lives (make up a figure) we certainly hope women will not read that article and decide not to have pap testing, we’d hate to see women lose their lives from this preventable cancer”.
        This is why I have nothing but contempt for this program and all who feed off it.

  19. Further to my last rant, this document also says that any Scottish woman who opts out will be sent an ” opt out reminder letter ” every 5 years to remind the woman of her opt out status. No doubt this will be a chance to post more propaganda leaflets to the woman.

    • Another thought: will women have to opt into cervical screening by signing a form for that as well? Answer: no.

    • You know, in thinking about the official opt-out letter…it honestly seems like the sort of thing they’d do here in litigious America. If a woman here declined a pap and came down with cervical cancer as a result (a one in a million chance as we all know), she could find a lawyer who would sue for malpractice, with the claim “the doctor didn’t tell me just how DANGEROUS it was to skip a pap! She owes me millions of dollars in damages!!”

      And I’ve heard of that sort of thing happening for other “dangerous” procedures…I read about an athlete who had a lot of cortisone shots because she needed to keep competing. Before he gave her the last shot, the doctor made her sign a waiver saying that he’d advised against the shot and that she was acknowledging it could have health risks.

      As to why they’d do it in Scotland…as you all have said, it’s another way to try to ambush women. Get them into the doctor’s office. Put them through the wringer in that “consultation,” even if they’re there for another reason. Bully them into staying on the pap registry, or mislead them into doing so.

      But as others have said, what can they possibly do if a woman refuses this “consult” and also refuses to show up at the pap appointments? Refuse to treat her at all, for anything? Report her to the authorities? It’s not a crime to refuse a cancer screening test. I wouldn’t know the laws in the UK/Scotland well enough to know this, but can they kick her off her doctor’s registry if she doesn’t toe the line and sign the opt-out?

  20. I read through the entire Scottish policy PDF and was quite sickened by it. In the “barriers to screening” the excuses given for refusing a Pap are pretty standard nonsense. It’s all “if a woman refuses the pap she clearly doesn’t have enough information about it, she’s ignorant or she’s incompetent.” There isn’t a single entry in this list that says “has weighed the cost/benefits and decided against it” or “has actually read up on this issue and has decided not to be screened for a rare cancer.”

    Personal reasons for non-attendance
    • Embarrassment
    • Fear of the screening test
    • Fear of what might be found
    • Adverse comments about smear testing from other women, the media or other sources
    • Lack of understanding of the purpose of screening and / or the operation of the National Screening programme
    • Dislike of doctors / medical service
    • Previous bad experience within the health service
    • Concerns about having a male smear taker
    • Ethnic differences, for example language barriers

    Practical reasons for non-attendance
    • Screening only available by appointment
    • Appointments available only during working hours
    • Fears about lack of confidentiality
    • Expectation that there is a cost for a smear test

    Factors influencing attitudes and beliefs about screening
    • Availability of adequate and appropriate information

    • Attitudes and beliefs about:
     Health issues in general
     The seriousness of cervical cancer
     The individual’s personal susceptibility to the disease
     The effectiveness of cervical screening
     The screening procedure
    • Uncertainty about the test and / or the outcome of the test
    • The implications of a ‘not normal’ result
    • The importance of cervical screening in a woman’s life

    Factors that may cause dissatisfaction with cervical screening
    • Inadequate information or communication
    • Unclear or ambiguous information
    • Impersonal treatment by smear takers
    • Unanticipated discomfort or pain caused by taking the cervical smear, particularly where this is not well managed by the smear taker
    • Perceived incompetence of providers
    • Unsatisfactory physical environment
    • Lack of privacy
    • Any discrepancy between expectation and experience
    • Uncertainty caused by long waiting times for results
    • Inadequate time allotted to taking the smear

    • It’s sickening, it shows how little respect they have for women, treating women like idiots.
      With this sort of attitude they must have been appalled when Dr McCartney publicly stated she does not have pap testing.

    • “Expectation that there is a cost for the smear test” as a reason not to have one. They really think that’s a concern of people in the UK?

      • Hi Diane,
        As far as I know, all visits to a doctor are free in the UK unless you were choosing to see a physiotherapist (say after your GP says your niggle from running is nothing and refuses to refer you to an NHS physio), cosmetic surgeon, or any other situation that’s entirely your choice (where you’re referring yourself to a specialist). I just can’t see how anyone who’s lived in the UK for a long time or their whole life could think that they’re going to be charged for a test they’ve been “invited” to have (especially when it takes place at your GP surgery, where all your other visits have been free).

  21. Oh, and one more thing about that Scottish program that bothered me a lot: it said that a doctor could NOT accept a parent’s opt out on behalf of their minor child…because the parents might not know if their kid has been sexually active.

    So the way that is phrased, that seems to imply that the doctors will be sitting down with teenage girls – who might not have done the homework and might be a lot more compliant and trusting of doctors by default – to try to convince them to have paps. Yeah, how is THAT going to go? Scare tactics, here they come…

    • I quickly looked up NHS Scotland. The cervical screening programme “invites” women aged 20 to 60. Teenagers are not part of that. They might be coerced into pelvic exams from doctors but not Pap tests. Some teenagers do want access to birth control without their parents knowing about it.

      • Hmmm…I wonder why they referenced minors at all in the policy document then. It’s understandable that minors might want BC or abortion services without their parents knowing it, but if Scotland’s NHS doesn’t recommend Paps for teens, it’s weird that they would be mentioned in the doc.

        In the States it’s pretty much “if you’ve had sex you get a pap” for many doctors, despite whatever the recommendations are. I once read a blog about a mother who forced her mentally disabled 12 year old to go for a pap…

  22. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/14/207

    Australian women on this site, did any of you receive a HPV self-testing kit in the mail?
    Papscreen and others are conducting a trial, to see if sending unscreened and under-screened women a HPV self-testing kit prompts some to use it…and if they’re HPV+, convince them to get into the GPs office for follow-up. Names were taken randomly from the electoral roll.
    Those women who test positive for HPV 16 or 18 would be advised to have an immediate colposcopy and biopsy. Unnecessary, they should be offered a pap test, nothing more. (if they’re aged 30 to 60)
    Sounds like they want a lot of information, you don’t have to give them your doctor’s name, but I wouldn’t trust this mob for a second, this is IMO, a plot to get more women into the official program. They cannot stand the fact some women choose not to test so have to plot and scheme to “reach” these women. Well, I don’t want to be “reached” and I’m sure many other non-screeners feel the same way.
    This group will not accept NO for an answer. IMO, they believe they have the right to pursue, pressure, manipulate, mislead etc. to get women screened. The list of “excuses” never mentions some of us have made an informed decision not to screen, I have, and decades ago now. We don’t need an excuse anyway.
    Note this is not to assess whether women generally would prefer self-testing, no, they already have their claws in these women, it’s the stray members of the herd they’re after, tempt them in with self-testing and then I’ll bet you’ll feel the trap spring shut.
    Sadly, I didn’t receive a kit, I wouldn’t have used it, but certainly would have had a lot to say about their little program.

    • It’s a pity they’re not sending out those kits because they’re switching over to the Dutch system. Recommending a colposcopy and a biopsy for simply having HPV 16 or 18 is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. There’s already been a lot of research done on the benefits of self testing, from what I know, so the whole research angle does seem to be a smokescreen here.

      • Diane, I can tell you Australian women will never see the likes of the new Dutch program, it would see testing, excess biopsy and over-treatment rates plummet, that would never do, vested interests would be out scare mongering and causing trouble in a heart beat.
        I firmly believe the whole review process has been getting all vested interests together and finding something they’ll all agree to, so they can safely funnel women from one excessive program to the next. Any mention of the Dutch program and we get, “we have to do our own research, we have different factors to consider”….we do? What?
        This is rubbish of course, they know they’d never get the Dutch program past vested interests, and it may alert women to the awful excess and avoidable over-treatment that’s been going on for decades. When women have no clue, they can pass off excess as thoroughness, being safe and sound, but when women see the evidence and what’s been happening in the Netherlands and Finland, more will ask questions and go looking for answers. When you lie to and deceive women, harming huge numbers, you have to be very careful about making any changes, cover your tracks is the first priority.

      • There is a simple, sad and criminal reason behind the recommended biopsies.

        The medical establishment is aware that the vast majority of women self-clear HPV without any medical intervention, and the establishment do not like it: there is no money to be made on self-healing women. Therefore, the establishment needs a way of pushing the infected woman into having cervical biopsies. As the cervical tissue is being torn and damaged during the biopsy, the virus gets a perfect chance to get deeper into the cervical tissue, entrench there and potentially turn into high grade lesion or cancer. By biopsying the women with HPV, the medical system eliminates the women’s chances to self-clearing the virus. It is done so that the medical establishment gets a perpetual money-making case: the woman with entrenched HPV will have tests, treatments, more tests, more treatments, she will submit to a life-long cervical screening, which she won’t miss anymore because she will be declared a cancer victim miraculously saved by the medical system. If only the poor waman knew that this very system let the desease to develop in the first place….

        If only the women knew the truth about where they are heading by trusting their health to the system like Australian health care system! This system not only acting dishonestly and unethically, it is outright criminal. The proposed biopsies for all women who test positive for HPV 16 and/or 18 amount to a deliberate bodily harm and possible manslaughter!

    • The authors of the study even admit that the self HPV testing kit is more accurate YET they do not propose to offer it to ALL women. I can understand that some women who live In remote areas might want to participate although do they offer travel and accomodations to these needing to “further investigations”? Some women will not participate in cervical screening ever which they cannot seem to accept. They also do not seem to know that some women would prefer “alternative” or natural therapies if they do have cervical dysplasia.

      What are the current stats on HPV strain 16 and 18 developing into cancer in non HIV infected or immune compromised women?

    • Here we go again: Papscreen is raking through our Electoral roll with its dirty greedy hands again!

      It proves again that Australians shouldn’t trust the Australian government with one bit of their personal information! Why was the Papscreen given access to the Electoral roll data?! The electoral roll should be for elections only. But not in Australia! The Australian government forces people to provide their personal information to the Electoral Commission, to the Australian Beaureu of Statistics, to Medicare… and then give unlimited access to this data to whomever they fancy. How on Earth can anyone agree to register for myGov portal, or eHealth, or MyHR, or PCHER after that and believe any of their security and privacy promises? Any personal information we disclose to the Australia government will immediately be misused against our interests.

      • Do you have the equivalent of HIPAA in Australia? In the USA it’s a law that basically restricts who can have access to your medical records. If you need to give access to someone, or even order a copy of your own test results, you have to sign a form specifically authorizing that release. Usually the only ones who can access your health records are your doctor and the insurance company and again, you sign off on it. Even the pharmacist can’t, when he’s filling your scrips – all he has is your insurance information, the list of medications you take (for cross-checking for interactions) and your doctor’s scrip, He doesn’t even know why you’re taking the med. As far as I know, the only exception to that is in a public health crisis, and then it’s still pretty restricted – like if you have Ebola the doctor is mandated to report it to the CDC immediately. But the CDC isn’t going to get their claws on your whole file; only your Ebola-related symptoms.

        If you do have such a law in Australia, it would seem that this would be a clear violation of it…and if not, maybe it would be time to start advocating for privacy of medical records. As you say. there’s no reason Papscreen should be using voter registration information for medical canvassing and research purposes.,,or for anything, really. If you’re handing over sensitive private information you need to be able to have confidence that it won’t be exploited that way.

      • Diane,
        The privacy laws in Australia work in a way that the only people who are restricted to have full access to the medical records are the patients themselves.

        The government agencies can do with our personal data whatever they like, and anyone hiding behind the label of “medical research” or “public interest” can access all our medical data too (that’s how Papsreen got access to the Pap register and to the Electoral roll).

        But when the patients want to see their own file or have a copy of their test results — they have to jump through obstacles, lodge access requests with privacy officers, make extra appointment with their doctors, pay for the unnecessary, and rely on the mercy of the doctors to actually release the copy, because in Australia the medical records are about the patient and paid for by the patient, yet they are legally the property of the medical institution.

        We have recently had a massive redesign of privacy laws in Australia, but it didn’t help the common people one bit. The reality remained the same: Australians are forced to disclose their personal data to many government agencies, and then have no control over their safety and privacy anymore. If it profits someone who can lobby their interests with the government — the access to the data will be granted.

      • Wow. That’s just all sorts of screwed up. It’s beyond screwed up. I’m sorry it’s like that. I’m very surprised, really…with our screwed up healthcare system in the USA, I always think that other industrialized countries have better systems in every way. But this definitely seems to be engineered to protect doctors, facilitate opportunistic “research” and “outreach” like the new Papscreen initiative, and take away patients’ agency. Not having easy access to your own records and test results is such a major setback. I’d imagine that with all those obstacles, many patients who want their records end up being discouraged enough to give up.

        i guess that’s one thing about USA healthcare that is good – they have passed a lot of legislation (usually at the state level) that mandates your access to your records and test results. The hospital/doctor is allowed to charge you up to 75 cents per page in photocopying, but I’ve actually never seen a doctor do that. Most of them make it very easy to get your results – the big lab company, Quest, actually has an online portal where you can do your HIPPA formalities online and get emailed when your test results are in. There’s sometimes a time lag (in a few states they have to delay your results for a week or 14 days so your doctor can ostensibly discuss them with you first) but they still have to give them to you.

        When I was in France it was similar, actually- they actually mail your original X-ray films to you.

  23. I like reading this man’s comments on the net, he’s informed about women’s cancer screening.
    This is one of his latest posts:

    ” I do not agree that rape is about sex. Yes, I am a male. I was Treasurer, Vice President and President of a large fraternity chapter (130+) and saw a minority of members engage or attempt to engage in what I later came to understand as misogyny. They were indeed legitimized by dehumanizing young women.

    Rape need not involve sexual intercourse (penetration, penetration with a foreign object, etc.). In these cases, it’s more obviously about the power stroke and proving who is really in charge. I don’t think modern Women’s Wellness gets off the launch pad without this impetus. It sure wasn’t about the healthcare threat or the ability of the screening technology to be effective.

    There is a reason we talked about notches in the belt, etc. It was a power stroke to “nail” a female under even situations where informed consent seemed to be improbable. But truth be told sexual gratification wasn’t a prerequisite to a successful foray. Truth be told, there is a desire to subjugate and often humiliate our female partner (before we learn to love them and maybe…sometimes after).

    The good news? That raw and perhaps even evil impulse can be tapped to make us dynamic and redeemed. We can wow the women we love in part because of the not necessarily benevolent beast inside.

    Poorly articulated but yes… rape is about power more so than gratification and sometimes “normal” sex (even to your partner of decades) is too.”

    Interesting, he’s made some very critical comments about women’s “wellness”…here is an informed man.

  24. It’s an interesting area, IMO, medical predators are motivated by both sexual gratification and power. I notice one other man made the comment, rape is partly about sex, I don’t pull out my penis when I rob a bank.
    I always felt pap testing was an open invitation to predators, the system encouraged opportunistic pap testing, approved of linking the Pill with pap testing (and HRT, pre-natal care etc.) didn’t care about informed consent or even consent. I even noticed the Medical Board might make the comment that having a pap test or not was up to the woman, but they’d conveniently make no comment about a doctor refusing to prescribe the Pill without a pap test. I consider medical coercion = an assault. The system dances around the lack of informed consent and consent in women’s cancer screening, but it’s a very serious matter. No one has clean hands when it comes to the appalling treatment of women, which goes far beyond unethical conduct.

    • You know what’s interesting: If someone said “Let me do (the exact things that go on) or you’re fired from this job/you can’t live in this apartment,” that is a coercive attack if accomplished. If not, it actually still is an attack- just like how pulling the trigger is the act of killing, it’s just sometimes not effective.

      I wonder a lot about that. What kind of woman worries about equal pay or sexual harrassment in the workplace, but yet thinks that “what the doctor says goes” in a medical office or a hospital? For crying out loud, if you so much as make a dismissive joke about women cooking dinner or moping a floor, it’s like everyone’s ready to break out the hedge clippers (this whole situation is probably a bit male-specific). Yet if the doctor goes about self-electively probing probing people, that’s okay with them. If this includes various dangers that someone is being put at risk of, so be it. If it costs them money hand over fist, fine.

      I know this is extremely cynical, but I figure that last one would be the only thing on that list that would actually give someone a bit of a “clang.” Actually makes my stomach go a bit cold to think of raising a daughter with a woman like that. I know it’s not ALL of the American women that are like that, but if a bunch are & then another bunch act like them that’s a lot of landmines to step on. I don’t know if that comes off like victim-blaming & I don’t mean it that way, but I definitely don’t want these traits in a wife (or whatever she is)- a massive part of that is distrust of how she’ll be with our daughter.

      Not to ramble on about myself, but I just thought of how a woman like that might not find me a good prospect in the first place. Maybe I’m worrying for nothing, especially since I’m not anywhere close to rich. It’s not like someone is going to try to lie & seduce their way into fame & fortune with me! A benefit I didn’t even think of, haha!

  25. Yknow it’s funny how almost every forum about this sort of thing I look at I always see “Elizabeth” usually with an (Aust) attached to it who talks exactly like you do 😉 damn girl you really get around lol! Good for you imo….i only wish there were more out there like you and the other awesome gals (and alex too :))on this site who I have had the good fortune to gain such valuable knowledge from.

    • Precisely, Emily. 🙂 If we ever see the health care systems evolve to respect women, to treat them like humans, and to actually CARE about HEALTH rather than power and money, it will be because of people like our Elizabeth!

    • Exactly Emily, it is hard to find a site that Elizabeth’s name doesn’t appear on, and I am hugely motivated and cheered by all the hard work she has put in over the years, and instilled to trawl online myself and alert more people to the truth about this test.
      Reading the Scottish brochure about reasons women opt out of screening, I kept thinking that any minute now they will list:
      “Having an online encounter with Elizabeth from Australia” as one of the reasons!

      However, the closest it got was:
      “Adverse comments about smear testing from other women, the media or other sources”

      Now, who could they possibly be referring to, I wonder!

    • Thank you, Emily! That means a lot to me & it’s my pleasure to share insights & information that I have. I do so love to shot holes in bullshit (so to speak), and I very much like to sharpen people against things like this.

  26. Hello Everyone!

    I posted WEEKS ago and many of you gave me such kind and thoughtful responses. Elizabeth – you posted such a great reply…I felt like a celebrity was responding to my post!

    Well, things in my life – healthcarewise – have come to a point that I long suspected they would. It looks like I may have to stand my ground at the doctors office and I need to start getting my thoughts in order.

    Here is the situation. I have two medications I called in to get refilled. One is a sleep medication – it’s an anti-depressant and the side effect makes you drowsy. It’s one I’d actually like to wean myself off of (I’ve started to cut them in half) The other is a migraine medication. Neither of these medications are narcotics.

    I had the pharmacy fax the doctors office for refills the other day. The medications were successfully refilled – but with only ONE refill. My doctors office called and said “You can have one refill, but the doctor wants to see you for an annual”

    I was VERY firm with the girl on the phone. I told her “No, I will not be doing that, I’ve made an informed decision not to” She said “Ok, well I’ll talk to the doctor and let her know” I replied with “Although, there is a medication that I would like that I would rather not discuss over the phone (there is) so I would like to make an appointment to discuss that. But if my prescriptions are going to be held hostage until I have an annual, I will find another practice to go to” She said “No, I don’t think that is the case”

    SO – I have an appointment tomorrow (that I may not even keep, because I have to see if I can afford the copay) for this other medication. I am sure that my refusal to get an annual will come up.

    I am actually not even sure what an “annual” would entail – but I have a feeling I will have to battle the “Well Woman’s Exam” nonsense.

    I am also wondering if I am being a bit harsh. No, I do not want any of the bikini medicine, but I am wondering how far I should compromise, if at all. I am fairly new to this doctors practice, so it’s probably not unreasonable that they would want to see me for something more in depth than my other visits (or is it?)

    To be honest,I am ok with a blood panel (as long as I know everything they are testing for and I approve it all) and I wouldn’t mind having my skin looked at.

    I am planning to battle the well woman exam with “A pelvic exam is not useful and is no longer recommended,” “a pap smear is an inaccurate test for a cancer I have a very small risk of ever catching and it can often lead to follow up procedures that are psychologically and physiologically harmful. Further, in my experience, the pap smear not only tests for cervical abnormalities, but my bill is run up with a litany of tests for yeasts that I don’t care about and STD’s I am certain that I don’t have – never-mind the fact that those are panels that I did not approve.” BUT I am having trouble finding solid evidence against the clinical breast exam- even though I know it’s useless.

    My next step is to cite each of my statements with a source so I can say “According to _____ this test is not recommended” – that will be a project I am going to work on today.

    If anyone has any ideas or input on my discussion with the doctor, please let me know. Thanks for all of your stories, wisdom and support! I look at this site several times a day!

    Take Care.

    • You do not need to present evidence to say no. Just say you do not consent to the specific test or exam.

    • “Annual exams” for women definitely usually seem to always include that “well woman” pap/pelvic/breast exam BS, yes. However, if you think your doctor will listen to you, maybe you can tell her you don’t want that and agree to come in for an exam that includes a blood panel or whatever you think you need for your medicine. You could ask her to put a note in your file that you are NOT to be asked about gynecological exams during your visit.

      As Moon said, you don’t need to give a long, drawn out explanation as to why you don’t want something – you just have to say no – but if the doctor tries to debate it with you, it can definitely be helpful. I’ve had very good luck with doctors over the past few years (excepting one resident/intern who was very angry I wouldn’t discuss paps with him) but my general spiel is something along the lines of, “As per the NiH I have less than a one percent chance of ever getting cervical cancer, and I know it’s not even one of the top ten cancers in my state. I’ve made an informed decision not to have this optional screening test.” In the one case where this didn’t work (Planned Parenthood, whom I’d called to see about getting the Pill without a pap/pelvic), I countered with “there’s nothing in a pap that would have any influence on your decision to prescribe that medication.” It didn’t work with Planned Parenthood and I basically ended up shrugging and hanging up the phone, but it might work with a regular doctor. If you’re telling her flat out “but there’s nothing about cervical screening that has any relevance to this medication,” if she’s stubborn she might budge.

      And if not, yes, it might be time to see a new doctor.

      I do have to say that while I strongly disagree with paps, pelvics, mandatory physicals and such, I do think it’s reasonable for a doctor to want to touch base with you from time to time if you’re taking longterm medication or you have a chronic condition. I have a few chronic illnesses, and my current doctor wants to see me every six months or so to check in. My meds include something that can influence blood pressure and something else that can influence potassium levels, so those actually do need to be checked periodically. With my current doctor it’s usually “everything cool? Anything you want to discuss? How is (my chronic illness) doing? Let’s do the bloodwork, get your blood pressure and get you out of here.” She did ask about paps on my first visit but when I said I wouldn’t be doing them, she said “okay, I’ll just put that in your file so I won’t ask you again.” And I don’t have a problem with the specific checks she wants to do (blood pressure and basic bloodwork) because I know there’s an actual valid reason that I agree with. Bit of an anomaly in the medical profession, because most doctors seem to have terrible God Complexes, but you never know.

    • By annual do you mean gyn and pap smear? or just a follow up on those meadications. if its about the whole you cant get unrelated meadins untill u have a pap that is not legal.

    • pap smears and gyn exams are not related to those meads, that probly gets most of her other femail patents in for paps but its a try on. she cant legaly force you.

    • Hi IMBS, the compliments I receive on this website could lull me into a false sense of security, I might have to head over to the Planned Parenthood of Arizona website for a reality check, to see that women still face the same old problems. The moderator over there considers my comments, “spam”.
      It’s comforting to know there are many more informed women out there now, at times I felt like the eccentric shouting some sort of nonsense in a public park.
      “Mammograms are harmful, (rising inflection) what’s that crazy woman talking about?”

      Anyway, I can’t recall your age, but the annual medical exam is not evidence based, it was never introduced in the UK or Australia, they did a 10 year randomized controlled trial that showed no benefit, but the Americans had already introduced the annual physical. (and it exposes you to the risk of extra and unnecessary tests too)
      The NHS (UK) has introduced a general wellness check fairly recently, and it’s been criticized as a waste of money, of no proven benefit, and it exposes well people to risk.

      I know many people here see a doctor every couple of years, especially after age 40, to have a blood pressure check, perhaps, a blood test to check various things, some need scripts refilled etc.
      More and more these routine checks are being challenged, even in those 40+.
      Doctors here are being told not to routinely test for Vitamin D, we seem to have an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency here with lots of people taking supplements. There’s some controversy now about cholesterol, I’ll have to take a closer look at that. I’d be cautious about statins, they tend to be overused. As you’ve mentioned, we should monitor what is being ordered, the CA-125 blood test is not evidence based and can lead to unnecessary surgery, that was tacked onto one of my blood tests a few years ago, needless to say that won’t be happening again!
      So we have to be careful just agreeing to “stuff” or sitting back and letting it happen.

      As far as a routine breast exam is concerned, there is no evidence of benefit, now if that’s the case, why bother? What are you doing if you agree to something that is of no proven benefit, putting yourself through an unnecessary exam, some might find it embarrassing or uncomfortable, and also, you’re possibly exposing yourself to risk?

      A routine breast exam can trigger a cascade of extra tests and procedures, you have the CBE, your doctor feels “something”, you’re referred for a mammogram, your breasts are exposed to compression and radiation, you might have a biopsy, you might end up over-diagnosed, have unnecessary surgery, chemo or radiation, you might get cancer or have a heart attack as a result of this over-treatment…add the expense and stress of it all.

      This is the reason we need to stop and think before we accept the casual medical reach, “while you’re here, I’ll just…”

      As far as I’m concerned the best things we can do for our health are basic and of proven benefit – manage stress, stay active, eat well, manage your weight, get enough sleep, don’t smoke, alcohol in moderation, laugh, enjoy life, try to be positive, develop and foster close relationships, stay mentally active and connected to the world etc.

      There’s an old UK article called, “Hands off my chest, doctor” and a few medical journal articles I can post for you. Also, you might mention this exam is not recommended in the UK and Australia at any age.

      The one important screening test IMO, is your blood pressure, one fairly small RCT established the value of keeping an eye on your blood pressure. The rest is up to us and it should be an informed decision, know what we’re agreeing to, what this test/exam can and can’t do and where it can lead. This includes pap testing, mammograms, routine health checks, routine blood tests and bowel screening (FOBT, colonoscopy etc.)
      The next layer should be presented with scary music – CA-125 blood test, routine brain and lung scans, thyroid checks, routine body scans (gulp…) etc. (Actually, I’d add mammograms and pap testing for HPV- women, and pap or HPV testing in those under 30 to this list)

      Skin checks – I check myself every few months, my husband checks my back, if something new appeared that worried me, I’d see my doctor. My dermatologist got a huge tick though, I asked her about a full body skin check a couple of years ago, it seemed to be the new craze. Now instead of simply recommending it, she considered the Q and said, “you have very few moles or anything else, just keep an eye on things and see me if you’re concerned about something” .
      Why doesn’t that happen more often these days? (some say legal liability, excess breeds excess, profits, the old feeling of better safe than sorry etc.)

      Any of the other well woman nonsense is not recommended, it’s of no proven benefit or poor clinical value and exposes you to risk. Routine pelvic, rectal, recto-vaginal, visual inspections of the genitals, TVU etc….RUN at the very suggestion.

      • The other possible harm from a routine breast exam is a false negative, some women may ignore a change or delay seeing a doctor if they’ve only recently had a satisfactory/normal routine breast exam. So add that possible harm to the list. Delay can mean a later diagnosis and poorer prognosis.

    • IMustBeSurrounded, you have a very good attitude to blood tests: “I am ok with a blood panel — as long as I know everything they are testing for and I approve it all”.

      This is how every patient should behave: get a comprehensive lest of what exactly they are tested for, don’t be satisfied with some vague doctor’s remark “we are going to do a few tests”. And demand a copy of each single result to be given back to the patient — not to another doctor, not to some pesky register, to to the government database, not to the insurance company, but to the patients first and foremost! And only then to the others, if the patient agrees.

      We should kick the medical system with his bold point, and kick hard: it is our body, our health, our time and our money, and so every bit of medical information must be ours too. The doctors are there to serve the patients, not the patients are to be pushed around for the convenience of the system.

    • Here’s a few things”

      First: No, you’re not being too harsh. Why make any concessions? Especially considering that they are there for YOUR benefit, not the other way around. I know that sounds arrogant, but they are not equal partners with you about your body- they aren’t co-people with you.

      As for the tact you are thinking of using, I’d go with things that are less easy to argue with. I know I’ve said this a whole bunch of times, but it states things aptly: Properties don’t change by designation- just like if a doctor poisoned someone with a needle, it’s still murder. This is true with other assualtive things, as well. Any interface with sexual areas as a product of someone else’s decision-making is an attack (I know that’s kind of thin of a way of phraing it, but I did the best I could with that & there’s no way to say something so someone else can’t lie or twist your words on their own, anyway).

      Reality doesn’t take a coffee break for doctors. What happens is what occurs & if it’s an attack done with a medical methodology, it would just be termed an “iatrogenic assault.” By-the-way: I’d bet if you said these things to them, they’d come up with “I thought you said that properties don’t change by designation,” as an argument. The counter to that could be “Uh huh, that doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as an apt designation.”

      Ultimately, just making the point that you are unconvinced of its safety & utility and that you find the dynamics of the situation unsuitable for you might do it. I’ve heard of asking them to put their claims in writing helps, too.

      If they keep arguing (as if something ceases to exist, despite its existANCE), you could always blatantly point out that this is what they’re trying, point out that you weren’t outsourcing your decisions to them, make the point that you weren’t putting anything forth for them to ratify, threaten to file complaints (I forget if it’s with the medical board or the AMA), or just walk out. If you say “If this continues, I’m going to walk out” & they continue, walk out right then.

  28. Just read a bit about something: Apparently, there’s some sort of deal that the U.K. is looking to do that would basically outsource the NHS to America. Don’t really get it too much, but it might be something to look into. It DOES seem that the U.K. does things better than America, at least- that deal might be a problem.

    Does it mean that they’d start importing doctors? Doing medical things America’s way? That all the pay goes to American groups?

    • This wouldn’t surprise me in the least, as the pap test was an American import which became the basis of our own screening programme. Paps were done on only about a quarter of married women in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and a British politician went to the US to inspect the cancer clinics in the early 60’s but came back saying that such a system wouldn’t work in Britain, because Britain had a socialist style healthcare system and the US model was privately market driven. However, in 1965 the US healthcare system donated $50,000 to Britain to set up a pap smear programme, the equivalent of about $400,000 in today’s money, but we didn’t get our call and recall system set up properly until 1988, as many people were divided over the reliability of the pap test and whether such a programme could be affordable in a post war bombed out Britain.
      Unfortunately, pap smears became a political and emotional issue for the public, and, as Archie Cochrane said, the medical evidence of inconclusive tests was ignored, and all women were railroaded into the programme. No information, no choice. Every woman was told she had to have it.
      Well woman clinics were also a US import that we didn’t have before either, but they became briefly fashionable during the 1990’s, then died out completely in the public sector when women believed they could be struck off their GP’s list if they went to the well woman clinics for paps and not at their local surgery. They now only survive in the private sector and where their clientele is usually rich, celebrities like Sharon Osbourne or porn stars wanting plastic surgery. There has been a lot in the news that the present government is trying to privatise as much as possible of the NHS and I have also read that the screening programmes would be an ideal part of our healthcare to make private. I have mixed feelings about this: on the one hand making pap screening private might mean women would have more choice whether to attend or not, but from what I have read here in these posts, the US private companies are doing a very good job of brainwashing women as our state run system here.

      • Well, if it’s privatized, does that mean that they start pulling all the “sneaky salesman” type of shit or that it’s easier to cut it off & let it die?

        It seems that when things are integrated into government “terrain” they may not be of as good quality (“good enough for government work”), but typically have more stability. They get their funds from taxes & such, so they don’t get starved as easily.

      • Yes I think it will come to that. I really think the NHS is a good thing, and it is great that when you are ill you don’t have to pay for anything, but I think it should have left screening programmes well alone. These types of programmes are more of a lottery than essential medical need, and IMO they should always have been an optional extra that women could pay for if they wanted to, and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives. It suits the private healthcare system better. In the NHS system they worked out a cost per head if 80% of women screened, but as the numbers have dropped to about 75% it now costs more per head to run, as they say the treatment gets more expensive for women presenting later with more advanced symptoms. I don’t believe this argument as I think this cancer is so rare, that the less women screen I don’t think it will follow that the cancer rate will shoot up. We can only wait and see.
        In the UK we have both private and state controlled healthcare. I think a lot of Americans might think that we only have the NHS and no choice, but that’s not true. You can pay to join a private company, and go to private hospitals, but the same surgeons will be working at both. The only difference is that the private hospital will be like a hotel, own room, privacy, and the state one will be like the unemployment office.
        If screening did go private I’d really dread schemes which stipulated women had to have paps or even if employers could demand it of their staff. Both ways seem to rob people of their free choices in the end.

      • “in 1965 the US healthcare system donated $50,000 to Britain to set up a pap smear programme” This is really interesting, I wonder what the motive behind could have been?

      • Yes I find it very curious that the US health service made such a donation, but on further reading through this very long-winded speech in the Hansard from April 1965, it is not clear that the money was used exclusively for cervical screening or for the prevention of cancer in general. Sorry, I may have jumped the gun a bit there. The speaker talks a lot about setting up a cervical screening programme in the speech, and this donation went to the Royal Cancer Hospital (now named the Marsden) so, on further reading, it is difficult to say for sure what it was spent on. It would be interesting to find out, and what the advantage to the US was for donating this money. The speech is very long so here’s just the paragraph.

        CANCER (RESEARCH AND PUBLIC EDUCATION)
        HC Deb 02 April 1965 vol 709 cc2069-922069
        2.30 p.m. Mr. Alan Beaney (Hemsworth)
        “Then there is the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Cancer Hospital, the largest single cancer research centre in the country. It has a total current expenditure—for 1963–64—of £657,640. It received grants from the Medical Research Council of £340,670 and from the British Empire Cancer Campaign it received £172,418. It is rather remarkable to note that among other grants there is one of over £50,000 from the United States of America”s public health service. The hospital has expressed its grateful thanks for such a donation, and I am sure it is grateful, but, nevertheless, I believe it to be a shameful national disgrace that our nation should be dependent upon the charity of America in this most important field of research work.”

  30. Ada,
    I doubt the incidence of cc will shoot up either, anything rare is not really capable of shooting up. We know about 5% of women can be helped by pap testing so if we adopted HPV primary and self testing from age 30+ we could take 95% of women out of pap testing anyway, and if we then told those HPV- and no longer sexually active to go away and get on with their lives, well, the health system would have a lot more money. Also, factor in fewer women have colposcopies, biopsies, “treatments” and fewer left with damage to the cervix. The flow on continues…fewer c-sections, premature babies (very expensive healthcare) infertility, miscarriages, high risk pregnancies etc.
    I think one of the problems with screening is the influence of politicians and vested interests. One of our independent politicians, who often makes a lot of sense, came out with a clanger recently, he’d spoken to the Head of the AMA and accepted that more time and money should be spent on screening, and getting people to have the tests. I’ve sent him an email.

    I agree with you, we waste an absolute fortune on screening and the more I read, the more I’m convinced it does little more than harm and worry people. (the exception is blood pressure screening)
    I’ve decided not to have a colonoscopy, the evidence is far from persuasive, screening does not change all cause mortality. I know quite a few people who’ve decided against a colonoscopy, but do a FOBT every year. Of course, this test can send you down the funnel to the colonoscopy screening room anyway. False positives are also, a consideration, they cause such fear and anxiety, which can have a lasting impact. I spoke to someone recently who got a positive result on her FOBT, she was terrified and had a colonoscopy in the private sector, nothing was found so she’s left wondering whether they missed something. We know this test often misses cancers in the ascending colon. Now she has the nightmare of re-testing (FOBT) in 12 months time, and she’s worried sick about it. This is what I want to avoid, something looks like an easier option, you can tell yourself you’re doing “something” about bowel cancer….and you end up in a mess.
    Her GP has now suggested she have an endoscope to see if she has bleeding in the stomach, to ease her nerves…and so the fishing expedition continues.

    • Here’s a bit of news from the US Left Coast. Dr Abrams was finally arrested. HIs med license was suspended. He first appearance was a week ago from Monday. That morning, KUSI-51 San Diego ran an “important story about women’s health” enough so to run promos on and on. The story was about “available screening to prevent cancer.” It went on with stats & numbers, and a live interview with Dr Mona Hacker (I couldn’t invent this any better). You can imagine the BS spewed. This is liberal US tv. Not reporting the news, but creating it for a public it believes is too stupid to think.

      As for the hubbub about blood testing etc. I’m not afraid of blood tests. Yeah, last time I wrote this others replied about the inaccuracies etc. Yes, and the windows of normal ranges were set long ago and probably need to be reset too. However, a test such as the Chem-20 or metabolic panel is a quick check of one’s important organs & functions. Especially thyroid. If you were exposed to mono or epstein-barr virus you should have this test. You are likely to have hypo thyroid or develop an immune type attack on the thyroid. If you become tired, gain weight, can’t metabolize fats…might be the cause. Also, if it runs in the family. Once when hospitalized I had the CA-125. This is hated here. If it comes up positive, then make up your mind in advance how you’re gonna handle it. For me, it was negative and that was good. Eliminated the need for diagnostic procedures.

      Avoid the FOBT. This is notoriously inaccurate. Any anal scratch from a big turd or TP will automatically make this come up positive. As for colonoscopy? We did that. Simply b/c it runs in the family. Genetics plays a bigger role in our health than almost everything else. What’s discussed here about the pap is dead on fact. I pulled my file, and lo & behold a picture of my dysplasia was in the exact area where the spatula is dredged. Hmmm. My thought is that painful scratch gave me the problem. HPV wasn’t tested back then, so if I was fighting an infection then the pap simply dug it in deeper mandating treatment. My faceoff with current gyn is coming. I’ve postponed it long as possible.

      The person who said to know what is being ordered in blood tests, and demand a copy of results for your own records has the right idea. And the simplest cancer preventative? Aspirin. Yes, take one per day. For your heart too.

      • C&M, My mother had surgery for bowel cancer a few years ago, she was about 77 when she was diagnosed, she’d fine now. (and 82) I don’t consider myself high risk because my mother was older when she was diagnosed, her specialist tried to sign us up for colonoscopies, but I wanted to do some research first.
        I’ve decided not to have one, I figure something has to get you in the end. Also, you’re only considered high risk if a first degree relative gets the disease before age 60. (I think it’s 60)
        Also, a diagnosis at close to 80 carries a fair bit of doubt, would the cancer have taken my mother’s life? Or, would something else have happened first? The cancer might have ticked along never threatening her life? (if a colonoscopy hadn’t picked it up)

        I’ve read and spoken to a few people who developed diverticulitis or IBS after a colonoscopy, perhaps, just a coincidence or was it caused by trauma during the scoping process?

        My mother was having a few screening tests, but had a serious issue after a screening colonoscopy last year, she won’t be having any more. Each time they take her off her meds for a GA, it takes months to sort her out again. Also, GA in older people can lead to confusion and memory loss, my mother was a very confused woman for many weeks following her last GA, and she’s never entirely made up that ground. My sister found several articles on the risks of GA in the elderly, and you got it, memory loss and confusion were mentioned.(sometimes it’s weeks, months or on-going, the latter usually/often with some improvement)
        Also, as you get older these screening tests are far more likely to find “something” and then it all starts….I wonder how many older people actually die as a result of screening tests.
        Aspirin, I was doing that, but then a gastro specialist at the evidence live conference told me it was a bad idea. I intend to do some more research into the area. His concern was bleeding and irritation in the stomach.

      • Elizabeth, I doubt you get many colds. You’re very intelligent, no virus is gonna get past you. You’re right on all accords. My husband’s uncle died from colon cancer. It ate him inside out. An awful way to go. Anyway, we both had colonoscopies around age 50. I have bowel issues due to my meds & thought I’d have problems. I was normal. He on the other hand, had a small polyp removed near the area where his uncle’s cancer began. He’s the household dietary health guru, so I chock it to genetics. I totally agree on no screening in the aged. Besides the GA, what’s the use? Time is ticking anyway. For us, another thing, if we feel it’s warranted.

        And aspirin, right again you are. We use enteric coated aspirin or buffered aspirin. Both will protect your stomach. There’s also the low dose but I’m not sure of the protection level. While doctors are careful about aspirin, they don’t care about NSAIDS. These attack the liver, kidneys, and stomach. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

        While I’m here, there’s an article on http://www.prophecynewswatch,com 11/18/14 regarding vaccines being used to impose sterility. This was done in Mexico & Nicaragua, now the WHO & UN is doing it in Kenya where the population is growing too fast. They are using tetanus vaccines, as was done in the other countries. These vaccines are being given only to 15-45yr old women, not men or boys, and in a series of 5 injections vs 1 for normal tetanus. The vaccines contain HCG which is human chorionic gonadotrophin which causes the female’s immune system to attack the fetus causing an miscarriage. The War On Women goes on.

      • One more thing to add about colonoscopies that nobody ever talks about: they apparently can lead to spleen rupture. They claim this is a “rare” complication, but I wonder if there are cases that fly under the radar or aren’t correlated to the colonoscopy procedure.

        And that gets me to thinking…usually the spleen only ruptures if you have blunt trauma, like a very hard blow to the abdomen or a car accident; or if you have very advanced stages of some infections and diseases, like leukemia or mononucleosis. So what in God’s name are they doing to people in colonoscopies that is the equivalent of blunt trauma and is severe enough to rupture internal organs that aren’t even anywhere near the colon?! That is a real red flag.

      • With colonoscopies and cervical cancer, there is an amazing fact: there is a much higher chance to get a serious injury or even die as a result of colonoscopy than there is a chance to get cervical cancer. And yet colonoscopies are recommended as a “safe and effective” means of screening, while cervical cancer is declared to be a “very common” disease and needs to fought on all fronts. Is there any consistency in the medical world (besides paternalism and greed)???

      • Way back, when I was brainwashed into my cryosurgery, I was told my dysplasia was stage iV and that it would take at least four years to progress to cancer. However it was necessary to move quickly into cryo to “save my life.” I think I already said the disease drawing of my cervix showed exactly disease invasion of tissue where that spatula would trace, moving left to right in circular motion. Like a 180′ smear from 9-3 if looking at a clock. Interesting no disease on the bottom side. If the disease had attacked on its own, why would it choose the top portion of my cervix only and not move outwardly in equal directions?

        RE injuries during colonoscopies. These “tubes” are meant to turn in one direction following the reverse curves in one’s colon. Movements must be slow and intelligently thought through. We both were told at one point to turn our bodies making it easier to maneuver the scope. Given what we know about colposcopies, it’s easy to imagine damages inflicted by an ignorant impatient doctor.

        If I had lubular carcinoma or “pre-cancer” in my breasts, I’d be cautious whether deciding to do nothing or take action. Genetics, repeated blood tests, and how my relatives did would play into my decision. Cancerous cells secrete hormones to hijack existing capillaries & further build nutritious & oxygen carrying blood vessels. This is how they spread, with the mother tumor secreting hormones preventing the metastatic tumors from growing, until the mother is killed off or removed. My mother in law had breast cancer. She also had old school HRT too. Her tumor contained two types of cancer, with the center of it being aggressive. She’s 7yrs out. I pray we never have to confront these issues…

      • Cat&Mouse, I always thought that there is some alarming yet hidden fact about Pap smears: if a woman has a superficial HPV infection on her cervix (those are very common and nearly always clear on their own if doctors don’t interfere) and gets a Pap smear, the damage caused by the smear to her cervix tissue lets the virus to get deeper into the tussue and increases its chances of developing into abnormalities rather than clearing. This is precisely why the countries who do not pap young women have the lowest rates of cervical cancer, because young women are most likely to have an HPV infection at some stage. And that’s why women who naively trust the screening programme, have 77% chance of being diagnosed with some kind of cervical abnormalities during their lives.

        Regarding colonoscopies, in addition to physical damage like bleeding wounds, diverticulosis and ruptures caused by the doctor, and biolological damage to intestinal flora caused by the preparations, there is a high risk or serious infections like hepatitis and HIV because colonoscopes are impossible to sterilise 100%.

    • About this “increase in cervical cancer” if women choose not to screen – I’ve been studying the UK national statistics charts and all go on about the increase in cancers diagnosed as a result of the “Jade Goody effect”. (God, I hate that phrase). There is a spike in cases diagnosed around 2009 when she died and more women went for screening tests, but then it goes down again. So where have all the increased cases of cancer gone since 2009? It’s not like cc is the bubonic plague and if one person gets it, there is a sudden load of cases. So yes, after all the fuss has died down, the cases of cc go back to normal reporting and have been flatlining ever since. Surely the spike in incidence was a rise in finding cases of CIN3 which were treated as cancer? These would have reverted to normal in non-attenders had Jade Goody never had the disease. I eagerly await further statistics for the most recent years, but I feel they will show that less screening attendance doesn’t affect the death rate of cancer at all, and this is proof that the more people attend screening the more cases of “pseudo-cancers” they find.

      Also agree on your other point. I’ve seen so many women post that smear tests are a painless, doddle and they don’t know what all the fuss is about and see no harm in going. Clearly they have not been informed about the other procedures which await them, should they get an abnormal result, and it is obvious that they have not made an informed choice to attend.

      We also await our letters for the new NHS Health Check for the over 40’s, but nothing has appeared so far. I read a report that this is so badly attended by people that at best only 25% bothered to attend pilot trials, and these were people, who really went because they wanted the endorsement about how fit and healthy they were. I’m sure some financial incentives to the health police, oh sorry, I meant GP’s, will sort that out…

      • Cat & Mouse, that’s very interesting about your dysplasia. If that’s the case, it would make the pap test an even better business model.
        If we had the option of being awake during the colonoscopy, we could let the doctor know if they were hurting us, pain, stop!
        I’ve never heard of an Australian having a colonoscopy while they’re awake, it’s always under a GA. My mother had a few issues after her last colonoscopy, more to do with the GA than the procedure (although she does have diverticulitis that suddenly appeared after her 3rd colonoscopy – call me suspicious) Her surgeon would like her to have one last check, but said he doesn’t do colonoscopies without a GA, some patients would find the procedure disturbing or painful, also, he can work better with a relaxed patient. (does he mean faster?)
        I wonder whether it’s easier to just knock us out, then they can do as they please, they don’t have to worry about our bodily privacy, our concerns etc.
        My cousin is a midwife and she said it often takes longer doing a c-section these days with a conscious patient, (most women have an epidural) previously women were knocked out and they could work without worrying about the patient’s privacy or consent, you could invite in medical students etc. Now there is also, usually a husband/partner in the room as well, although they’re kept out until the woman has been prepped, even though others may be allowed to wander in during that process. I suppose they don’t want a partner challenging them or supporting the woman in a way that makes things more difficult for them.

  31. Oh, Diane, the stuff of nightmares.
    One thing is for sure, if people choose to have a colonoscopy, go to someone with the right qualifications, has some experience, who does them all the time, someone with a decent reputation; a ruptured bowel (or spleen) is life-threatening.
    If the doctor meets resistance and can’t work through it without getting rough, s/he should abandon the procedure, some people have scar disease as a result of surgery, infections etc. I’ve heard some doctors apply pressure to or massage the abdomen to help move the scope.
    At the local private hospital there is a female gastroenterologist (aged about 40) with a solid reputation, that’s all she does 3 days a week, colonoscopies and endoscopies.

    • Being “prepped.” If there were a time when I want my husband, and he me, present it’s during that time. If BS is to happen, or be a prelude to worse BS, it’s then. You’ll see how you (and your spouse) are to be really treated once past this Point Of No Return. Hospitals don’t want husbands around to question, offer to do it themselves (who would you rather have do this or that to you?), and patients are easy to manipulate with that promise that the quicker we finish the quicker he’s here again. Husbands are especially kept away from shaving, enemas, and epidural. The last I can understand; however so many others watch what’s really the difference? An opposing witness in a lawsuit. Is there anything else you can think of husbands being excluded from?

  32. Just read two things that I have mixed feelings about: One was about woman that are trying to become police officers (or, I think, any job in law enforcement) being forced to have virginity tests. The other was about the same sorts of things being done to males in Lebanon over suspicion of homosexuality. Both of these were in Russia Today (on the site) & the second one you can find if you Google “Test Of Shame.” The first one I guess you’d just type the general description in.

    Here’s where my mixed feelings come into play: With the first one, as much as I tend to disagree with that practice & other things of that nature, I figure these cops are maybe pulling the same thing or putting someone in a situation where this would happen to them. I don’t imagine the security & hygiene measures differ very much over there than they do over here (and this is probably, like here, prior to any ascertaining of guilt- much less proportionate guilt). So I’m wondering if this is something that they have coming because it’s what they do, but also if maybe they’ll be more likely to throw these kinds of things at people (because of this situation)? Or maybe not (again, because of this situation)?

    On the second one, I liked how they outright said that this is rape. A lot of times people angle around that, but it is an unconventional variation of raping someone. We’ve, of course, discussed that point at length & I hope my feelings on the matter are obvious. I’m just wondering if them pulling this kind of thing on women has just expanded in kind of a karmic backback sort of way. Of course it would expand, why wouldn’t it? This is the kind of shit they pull, why wouldn’t they add to it? If nothing else, they might be gay themselves & have figured out a way to be aggressive about it.

    One thing was for shit-sure: When it started getting aimed at dudes, a spade was called a spade. As an interesting side-note, it seems the doctors have been ordered not to do this & will get charges if they do. Wouldn’t it be great if they did the same things here with the stuff that gets imposed on people? (and in the other countries, too- it just seems most of the people on here are from the U.S.)

    Other things on general medical subjects (all of which spooked the shit out of me): Apparently, they’re trying to read people’s thoughts (reading the “innver voice” like when you read quitely), are trying 3-D printed organs & there’s some type of algae with a virus in it (or that can carry a virus) that makes people mentally slower. Don’t know how many of these things are true or how plausible they are as situations, but I just thought I’d mention them.

  33. FOBT is not a good test. It can give false positive from eating certain foods such as red meat, certain fruits and vegetables and other conditions such as hemhroids, nose bleeds, gum bleeding, stomach bleeding from aspirin. It can give false negatives from vitamin C.

    The FIT test only gives a positive for human hemoglobin. It is more accurate then than FOBT but still can give false positives.

  34. Post from the Australian Doctor site:

    “Clearly all clients should be properly informed if risks and benefits, so that they can give informed consent. Whilst mass studies may suggest there’s no benefit to screening, there can be benefits to individuals. At 25 I was diagnosed with early cancer of the cervix as part of a regular checkup, but treatment had to wait until my daughter was born, as I would not terminate her life. Breastfed and lactose intolerant, delays continued until I could find a milk she could tolerate. By then (1 year later) the cancer had spread requiring more extensive surgery than was originally expected. After the surgery, pathology results dictated further surgery within a few weeks so at 26 I had a hysterectomy. I had not had been aware of a problem before the pap test. I was very glad I had that test as the cancer might otherwise have been inoperable. 35 years cancer free is a pretty good outcome from my perspective. I’m so glad I had the test and that I had my children young. The issue that really matters here is about informed consent. Our bodies, so our decisions, with the job of the doctor to advise and inform about the science, not to push their personal view”

    Personal accounts often scare women into non-evidence based screening. I’ll act on the evidence, not fear or anything else.
    I also, wonder how many of these women were over-treated, they were told they had carcinoma in situ (CIN 3) and put 2 and 2 together and got 8. I know some women decades ago had hysterectomies for “persistent abnormal cells” etc. (It probably still happens in the States with women on the pap/biopsy/treatment merry-go-round for decades)

    Do you recall the older woman who posted on the BlogCritics site about her early hysterectomy for “cervical cancer”, she worked out decades later it was probably unnecessary, she had never been sexually active when she was forced into a pap test, not even a kiss. It was quite tragic, the experience was so traumatic she avoided any sort of intimacy and chose to remain single and celibate. I think she was in her 60s or early 70s but was relieved to have finally worked out the mystery surrounding her diagnosis.

    Even if a woman is “saved” by an early pap test, women still need to know about the evidence and have a choice, we know early screening causes a lot of harm and usually misses these rare cases anyway. Note the Finns have never tested women under the age of 30. (I think that’s the case with the Dutch as well) These countries don’t appear to have more cc in young women.
    We also, know that young women with a real issue are likely to get a false negative pap test, which may falsely reassure and lead to a delay in diagnosis.

    • Elizabeth, I also wonder how many women have been over treated. This article might already have been linked on here, but if so it’s such a good one I’m linking it again: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-08-18/what-if-what-you-survived-wasn-t-cancer-

      from the article:
      “There are plenty of scientific unknowns. Take the commonly diagnosed breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ, which accounts for about a third of new U.S. diagnoses, 60,000 a year. In these cases, the cells lining the walls of milk ducts look like cancer, but they haven’t invaded the surrounding breast tissue. DCIS was a rare diagnosis before the introduction of mammograms, which are highly sensitive to milk-duct calcifications, and the JAMA article labels it a “premalignant condition” that shouldn’t even be called cancer. Arguably, a lot of women who think of themselves as “breast cancer survivors” have survived treatment, not cancer.”

      It looks as if they are picking up milk duct calcification in mammograms and labeling it as cancer. Other types of ‘cancers’ as well are actually harmless and are not going to kill you. The screening process is not an exact science – it’s subjective and full of human error. But the biopsies and so called treatments can be harmful.

      Recently there has been a push to screen for lung cancer, but screening and lung biopsies can be very damaging:

      http://consumer.healthday.com/health-technology-information-18/cat-scan-news-88/for-many-risks-of-lung-biopsy-may-outweigh-benefits-study-655360.html?related=true&utm_expid=38353063-2.r5ETjFV6SrG5_xobVbsyDw.1&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.ca%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D3%26ved%3D0CDEQFjAC%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fconsumer.healthday.com%252Fhealth-technology-information-18%252Fcat-scan-news-88%252Ffor-many-risks-of-lung-biopsy-may-outweigh-benefits-study-655360.html%26ei%3DBj1wVPzDFYP0oASku4DQCw%26usg%3DAFQjCNEHbd9a42CbSCK58euEpf7lAWxrow%26bvm%3Dbv.80185997%2Cd.cGU

      And it was good to see this article titled Overstating the Evidence for Lung Cancer Screening: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=413567 and wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the same for cervical cancer screening.

      This was an interesting article about lack of disclosure related to biopsy risks: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/08/us-cancer-trials-idUSBRE8A714Z20121108

      • Thanks Sue, I’ll take a look at those links.
        There’s been some talk about changing the name of some of these things, removing the word “carcinoma” from carcinoma in situ, which is CIN 3, a “precancerous lesion”, not actual cervical cancer.
        You can understand the confusion, why some women walk away with the label, “cancer survivor”.
        Lobular carcinoma (LC) is also, confusing, and is not cancer, some breast cancer survivors had LC.
        The term pre-cancer is confusing as well, some argue there is no such thing as pre-cancer, you either have cancer or not. CIN 3 can progress to cc, but in the majority of cases does not become invasive cc. Pre-cancerous bowels polyps will progress to cancer in about 3% of cases, but many believe a polyp removed is a life saved from bowel cancer.
        When we didn’t search for these things, we were blissfully unaware, we’d probably all be “pre-cancerous” if they looked hard enough.

      • I remember the talk of changing the names to something other than ‘cancer’ when it’s only CIN3, LC, and other acronyms that sound scary and confusing. So far nothing has changed. After all, why would they want to change something that encourages followups, that would lose them business and take some of the fear and confusion away. When people are confused and afraid they are more likely to listen to their doctor’s advice, and less likely to do their own research and make their own choices. People are also more likely to respect their doctor’s knowledge when they themselves cannot make sense of what they are being told. Hence many good reasons to label ‘conditions’ with confusing, scientific sounding names. I have heard the different levels of CIN described as ‘inflammation’, ‘moderate inflammation’ and ‘severe inflammation’ respectively, which could all be occurring for various reasons – perfumed bath wash, tampons, sex, mild infection, etc. To slot all these conditions under the broader umbrella of ‘cancer’ is just wrong.
        I agree that we’d probably all be ‘pre-cancerous’ if they looked hard enough. Their job is to find things, and they have come up with many inventive ways to do just that.

      • If there’s one bite of good advice I can offer it’s this. We’ve talked about it re gyn offices & related procedures. Sterility. Reusing equipment. Although a few years ago, it was widely publicized in Southern California US that a hospital or surgery center was not properly sterilizing equipment used in colonoscopies. People were exposed to hepatitis and cancer. While some of the equipment is disposable, some must be scrubbed in chemical sterilizer. Some pathogens & especially that brain-wasting disease are very hard to kill, even with autoclaving. Usually the employee assigned to that task is lower paid, and lesser educated.

        This also happens with bone banks that supply used cadaver bone for medical procedures. My husband insisted that my own bone be used in my spinal fusion, against the doctor’s wishes. Few months later the bone bank was closed due to importing contaminated bone. Although they “guarantee” the used bone is sterilized, chemically soaked & radiation treated, it still can transmit cancer & other problems. If it’s bad, contaminated, your body cannot integrate healthy tissue onto it. It terrifies me. In NY about five yrs ago this happened again. Greedy mortuary directors harvested like horrible tissue, lying in their paperwork. Processing centers never bothered to independently certify “product” safety, and it happened again. Lives ruined over a quick buck.

      • Thank you so much for linking the Bloomberg article. Myself, and I’m sure many other women new to this website haven’t seen it before. It was a great read. I’ve also just started reading the Violet to Blue blog too. There is so much to read on this site, it is a real treasure trove.

        Because I’d sucessfully opted out of screening in 2003, I hadn’t engaged with any of these issues before. I’m very grateful for all the hard work that has been going on over the years to free women from this medical dictatorship.

    • I remember a male school friend told me years ago that his older sister who was about 20 had an abnormal pap smear and that her gyn told her she had cc and needed to go ahead and get pregnant bc she might have to have a histerectomy. All i have to say is wow. there are doctors that are telling young girls and teens to go out and get pregnant bc they have a abnormal pap and scare them about there fertility. its awfull hear. How can doctors legaly tell woman they have CC bc of an abnormal pap? And how can these woman be so misinformed about what a pap screens for? It just blows my mind.

  35. There was alos some article I was reading about a pregnant woman in Ferguson (that town in Missouri where there’s all kinds of protests) that apparently got raped by a cop that had be sexually harrassing her for a while before that. They kept calling it sex & intercourse, though.

    The whole story of what transpired goes as a threatening, taunting situation of sexual abuse- yet they keep calling it sex & intercourse.

  36. Hello Everyone!

    Last weekend I posted about preparing for a doctors visit where I was concerned that they may be withholding medication from me until I had the “Well Woman’s Exam.” First, I wanted to thank you ALL for responding to my questions and concerns – I was so honored that you took the time.

    I also wanted to let you know about the results of the appointment. Some of what I am going to say is what you all have said before, but I am going to repeat it – because you are right on these points, and it’s worth repeating.

    – I created a short sheet of bullet points to have on hand in case I was questioned about my decision to not have screening. Though, you are right a simple “no” should be good enough. For the most part it was. My Nurse Practitioner did ask why I didn’t want to have paps or breast exams – I cited their inaccuracy’s as one of the reasons (and some other reasons too that I fail to remember!) She said I would not need these exams to get my migraine and sleep meds filled, but simply needed to come into the office at least once a year for “something.” So – as Kleigh said “It’s a try on” to try to get you to come in for a Yearly Physical or Well Woman Exam to get your meds. I think if I hadn’t started questioning this process and researching as I have these past two years, I would have agreed to the exam – not knowing any better.

    – I actually encountered very little resistance when I told the NP I did not want the Well Woman Exam. It was almost as if she knew that it was BS anyway (but maybe she didn’t) This goes to show – as many of you have said – when you stand firm, and question certain processes, they seem to back down very easily. Just the same, it’s important to find a doctor, nurse practitioner or any other medical professional that listens to you and is on the same page.

    – Which reminds me. When I was a teenager in the 90’s, I briefly went to an NP in another town. I thought I needed a pap to refill my pills with her – but she looked at me and said “paps are a wonderful way for gynecologists to line their pockets.” As the conversation went – she had no intention of giving me one. If I remember correctly, I got my refills and went on my way.

    – Back to the Well Woman Exam. So my NP goes “Well, it’s not just the breast exams and paps. We also talk about life and how work is going and about your home life.” I am sorry. SERIOUSLY?! This sounds very noble, but my doctor or NP (neither of whom I know very well at ALL) expect me to have a discussion about work or my home life? These are conversations I reserve for only those very close to me – and even then, I am pretty selective with what I present about either topic. I am not interested in having details of my home or work life recorded into somebody’s digital records of me. Nor do I believe that these people who are complete strangers – and whom are NOT experts in medical health – could be of assistance. This is not to say that others have not been helped by answering these questions. But in my case, I have no interest in sharing the details of my personal or work life with health professionals unless it pertains to an issue I am having.

    – I actually was so worked up over having to fight for my medications, that I was getting angry and nervous waiting for the appointment. This caused my heart rate to shoot up when they checked it with that pulse-ox thing. If this happens to you in any setting and they start freaking out that something is wrong with you – relax for about 10 minutes (if you can) and have them test it again. In my case, nobody freaked out…and I let them think their pulse ox meter was acting funny.

    Overall, it was a good appointment. I got clarification on how to get my prescriptions refilled. I received the new prescription I knew I needed (without any hassle or testing) and I have an order in hand for a blood test. I know and approve what the tests are for. I told my NP at the end that I was pleased to be working with her.

    This goes to show everything many of you have said. It proves many points. Again, I thank you ALL so much for replying to my post. I took notes from your posts and it was very helpful.

    I keep my eye on this site several times a day – and I hope those of you that are celebrating holidays over the next several weeks have a wonderful time.

    Many thanks and Take Care!

    IMBS

    PS – wouldn’t it be nice if articles on the internet and doctors stopped referring to visiting the gynecologist as a “natural part of being a woman?” GAH!

    • OH! And ANOTHER THING. My NP said she had had a pap smear recently (I guess she doesn’t view all of this as BS – but that’s up to her) she said that the doctor that did her pap said that HPV Testing was going to replace Paps because it’s more accurate. This brought two points to mind – that she just made an admission that paps are inaccurate (ok, fine – many medical professionals do realize this test is kind of a mess) But ALSO – with HPV testing…ok, so you find out you are HPV positive…then what? The question is – what do you DO with those results? This has been discussed before on this board, I know and I think it’s an interesting point. So you are HPV+…do you then consent to some possibly unnecessary follow up procedure or test that is most likely damaging? It sounds like we are about to get off of one merry go round and jump on to another.

      • IMBS,
        Women can self-test for HPV, there’s no need for a speculum exam, but most won’t be offered HPV self-testing, they’ll have to demand it or source it online.
        Women here have already been told the new HPV test is just like the pap test, so they don’t plan to promote HPV self-testing, in fact, it will only be offered if a woman refuses the invasive HPV test for 6 years. Of course, you can order the HPV self-testing device on line and our GPs can supply it, but women will have to stand firm, this option is being kept quiet and is clearly only on offer to informed women.
        About 5% of women aged 30 to 60 will be HPV+, they should be offered a 5 yearly pap test. (until they clear the virus)
        It should be as simple as that…but some countries will use this test inappropriately and excessively to continue to generate business for vested interests. (as they’ve done with pap testing)

        I think the changes to our program will only get through if they keep a little something there for vested interests. I assume over-using the HPV primary test (and using it inappropriately) and shooting HPV+ women off for immediate colposcopy and biopsy were the sweeteners used to get vested interests to quietly accept the changes.
        With most women in the dark, the powers-that-be know vested interests could easily spook women and cause trouble.
        Vested interests have enjoyed huge profits with our excessive pap testing program for decades, from over-screening and high excess biopsy and over-treatment rates, they wouldn’t be happy to take their claws out of the healthy cervix market.

        Our program is likely to be HPV primary testing, the invasive version of the test, 5 yearly from 25 to an absurd 74. (so about 10 or 11 tests when 5 is enough, many women (if they had access to the evidence) might choose to test for HPV once or twice, those HPV- and no longer sexually active or confidently monogamous)
        We know 40% of those aged under 30 WILL be HPV+, almost all are transient and harmless infections that will clear naturally in a year or so, but as usual, we’ll continue to worry and harm our young women. So we’ve included women from age 25 in the program.
        It means roughly 45% of women will be HPV+ and probably sent off for immediate colposcopy/biopsy, that’s 40% of those aged under 30 and 5% aged 30+

        So HPV primary testing, following the evidence, means only about 5% will test HPV+ and these women should just be offered a 5 yearly pap test. (until they clear the virus)
        So apparent improvements in the program can be compromised by excess and ignoring the evidence. If you don’t test women under age 30, the 45% HPV+ comes down to about 5%…not enough $$$ in that for vested interests so we’ll toss in those aged 25 to 29 to boost the numbers coming their way.
        I view it as a turf war on the healthy cervix, vested interests vying for their share of the action.

      • At least in Australia they have been open about when they are going to bring in HPV primary testing. In the UK I have found it very difficult to find a firm date for HPV testing being brought in, except that it will be by about 2017. That’s the only bit of info I have been able to find on this topic. I think they are still undecided what kind of HPV test it will be. They clearly don’t want women to hold off getting paps in the meantime. This article appeared recently in the Independent newspaper:

        http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/new-urine-test-could-replace-invasive-smear-tests-9736609.html

        If they do bring this urine test in, will it only be available to women who have made an appointment to see the quack, or how will it be issued?

    • IMBS, pleased it went well, amazing how things change when women have access to real information, that’s why they’ve kept the evidence well away from women. The screening “stories” fall away when a woman is informed.
      The reasons put forward to keep women coming through the door smack of desperation, as if any of us need to see a doctor ever year for a chat about our lives. It’s just ridiculous.

  37. I’ve got a question for all of you: Do you notice an increase in compositional thinking (that a situation is what it consists of) or is less “calling a spade a spade” & instead making up bullshit?

    I ask because of that article about Ferguson & how there was an article about this very thing (“When you call a rape anything other than rape, you are just making excuses for rapists” in the Guardian). I just wonder if maybe it’s more of an American thing (which I’m getting closer & closer to believing- not as a complete & total thing, but it seems to be frequently endorsed here).

    I think it was the same article that mentioned that judge that basically wouldn’t let that woman say anything that denoted an attack on her- which was EXACTLY what the trial was about! How the fuck is she supposed to get her charges across without getting them across? She can’t- and then she can get locked-up for false accusations & filing a false police report & shit like that.

    And people wonder why I’m not a big fan of taking things to court!

  38. That whole talk about home life sounds like she wanted to screen for domestic violance. Theres been a push latly for all doctors to do this to woman at every consult. I think its a bit intrusive and I dont want them prying in my life. I think if a woman wants to tell them and . L p help thin that should be up to them. I dnt aogree with it . t

    • What talk about home life? Well, about the subject- that’s the way they are, isn’t it? They really have a mindset that has a very “managerial” aspect to it. There’s all kinds of excuses, but there’s still the concept of them running other people’s lives & making their own decisions to do this or that.

      There’s really no reason for them to presume that this IS what’s going on just because it COULD be going on. Seeing as THEY are the ones being abusive in plenty of instances, I’d be wondering if this is trying to generate a face-image to build credibility. Not for nothing, but there’s been a lot more dictatorial conduct across the board & it doesn’t strike me as implausible for them to try to force things on people- penetrative stuff included.

  39. Vested interests and the program are clearly frantic they’re losing control of the herd, more misinformation and scare-mongering.
    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/northern-beaches/regular-pap-smear-testing-vital-for-detecting-cervical-cancer-in-australian-women/story-fngr8hax-1227103767710?nk=f951f6f61d89675ff74c1a277484ab9b

    Another woman who had treatment for “cervical cancer” in her doctor’s rooms, yeah, sure…interesting they assume women are stupid enough to believe this “story”.

    • Dead right this doesn’t add up. This “healthy, symptomless” 26 year old is later described in the article as:

      “She was working as a waitress, but was forced to give up work when she fell ill”.
      If she was so ill, why didn’t she get treatment then? She must have had her first child at 18 and the other at 22, so she must have been in a lot of contact with medical care then. Did she not raise any symptoms then? Her case has absolutely nothing to do with the cervical screening programme.

      • These “stories” are so common it says a lot about the information they give women about this cancer and testing, if someone who has some “abnormal” cells removed in the doctor’s rooms is left thinking they had or would have developed cc, well, that’s just cruel.
        This sort of “misunderstanding” would serve to scare others into testing and “treatments” though and you notice, no one ever corrects these women or challenges their “stories”…I guess they have a bit of a laugh at her expense. Yet when a man talked about his “treatment” for prostate cancer, he was instantly challenged/corrected by a urologist.
        It says to me that most in medicine think it’s fine to mislead women in this way, the old double standard is alive and well.
        No informed consent, often no consent at all, no real information…and no common decency.

  42. Something I’ve being wondering: Do you think that the fawning (for lack of a better word) that people do over doctors makes their pushy-ness worse? I get that it could feed their ego, sure- but what about it fanning a fire? Like when someone doesn’t do anything back when someone tries the wrestling & fighting method of imposed penetration (they seem make the suggestion to not fight back to women in college). Doesn’t it just reinforce the idea that they are the “swayer” of the situation?

    I’m remembering that movie Law Abiding Citizen where the guy that broke into the house kept saying “You can’t fight fate”- that’s what I’m thinking about. It’s like affirming their bullshit if you don’t go against them.

  43. Something I came across: on Reason.com there’s an article (Lying to a Lover Could Become ‘Rape’ in New Jersey). Don’t know if anything was based & I have a bit of an issue with this SPECIFIC situation- but it could very easily apply iatrogenically, whether the law passes or not. It’s interesting how this general concept is mentioned.

  44. The comments on that Daily Mail article (apart from Elizabeth’s) prove that we won’t ever see a drastic change to cervical screening programmes because there would be outrage and politicians couldn’t risk it. The general public is so badly misinformed that they just couldn’t comprehend a scaling down of the screening programme – in fact they’re all calling to start screening as early as possible. One commenter says: “I was 22 when my test came back “abnormal”. The doctor told me if they had not caught it then, I would have died of cervical cancer by age 25.” WHAAAAT?! If she’s correct and the cells were abnormal, it’s more like 10-15 years to become cancerous, let alone die from that disease!

    I still didn’t agree with the reasoning here: “unnecessary and harmful investigations and treatments which could have an adverse effect on their future childbearing.” No mention of the harmful effects on the woman herself – it must be all about preserving fertility. There’s the implication that if the overtreatment didn’t effect childbearing, then it wouldn’t matter.

    • The Daily Mail newspaper in the UK started a campaign earlier this year to get the screening age lowered to 20 and forced a debate in the UK government about it. Despite the government standing it’s ground and explaining the reasons why the screening age was raised to 25 in 2003, most of the Daily Mail readership is too thick to understand this. Having lost such a misinformed high profile crusade in the public eye, the newspaper is keen to prove it’s righteousness to it’s readers by promoting every “I missed my smear test, and have only weeks to live” story it can lay it’s hands on. Here’s another:

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2847198/Mother-two-diagnosed-terminal-cancer-faces-Christmas-doctors-mistook-bleeding-cramping-signs-pregnancy.html

      • Hi Victoria,
        The Daily Mail is churning out these stories at the rate of 1 a month. It must be clearly worried about a drop in readership after having its campaign to get the screening age lowered, rejected by the government on the advice of the medical profession. I noticed that a number of pro-screening posters are asking why so many people have voted them down when they’ve posted a tirade on getting the age lowered. They are obviously starting to doubt the righteousness of their campaign. I try to vote down any time I see this kind of thing. If we all try to add our down votes whenever we see this, it will silence these foghorns, and really show governments, that screening is not a vote winner after all, and a load of red thumbs down on the Daily Mail website is not good business for them either.

      • I noticed these very poorly researched “stories” about screening keep appearing in the Daily Mail. Articles that are designed to scare, but most don’t add up if you know anything about screening, I suppose they succeed in scaring quite a few women though.
        It’s a bit like the women who have their “cervical cancer” sorted out in a doctor’s rooms, I keep seeing these “stories” in our papers.
        I agree, vote them all down.

        A retired politician Lynne Kosky passed away from breast cancer yesterday, she was my age, 56. Her cancer was picked up by mammogram. (so I understand)
        I don’t think Breast Screen will use her case to sell screening, as this case suggests, screening does not change anything for some women, they might know they have cancer for a bit longer, but that’s about all. The screening zealots prefer the accounts of unscreened women getting breast cancer or of those “saved” by a mammogram. (often over-treated).
        I also, wonder whether a lump compressed during a mammogram might result in spreading the cancer. This was mentioned in, “The Promise”, it’s something I’ve wondered about for some time. It was also, suggested that biopsies can do the same thing, cause spread.
        It’s plain wrong to just sell screening, there is so much uncertainty.

      • My Russian-trained physician SIL about had a cow when she heard about mammograms and what they entail. She *insisted* that compressing breast tissue – ESPECIALLY if it contains even a small cancer, can damage the cell (part of what causes bruising), and then SPREAD the cancer. When she told me this, I was still a believer in what I’d been told about mammograms saving lives. So, I got some peer-reviewed evidence on the matter. She’s right! According to research mostly done in eastern Europe, and some which was done in the US in the 19th and early 20th century, any sort of pressing, compressing, or injury resulting in bruising can lead to the spread of cancer. The more recent research explains how the cell damage leads to their contents being spread throughout the region, causing some of the nearby and even distant cells to also become cancerous.

        The more of these medical things I look at, the more it seems that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Most of it seems to be to promote some other agenda for someone – either the doctors themselves, the healthcare industry, pharmaceutical or device companies, or on and on. There is a lot of money to be made in convincing well people they are sick, MAKING them sick without their suspicion, or convincing sick people that they are EXTREMELY sick, and need all manner of things which have been shown not to increase either their quality or quantity of life…. and likely decrease both. Some medical treatments though can help to keep or make people healthier and live longer. The wisdom of discerning which things are which is a challenge!

    • That’s suprising. Good news, though. Plus, it’s in all these main news outlets (actually, the BBC & the Guardian are fairly well-known in America, the Independant is seemingly less so- but it’s one I remember from the sight of the address).

      Don’t see America doing the same thing, but I’ve been looking to move for a long time. Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about getting set up in a new country? I remember hearing things about something called “Immigrant Services” that would help with learning the language & getting a place to live squared away. It’s suprisingly hard to find straight talk on that subject, at least in any length. I figure I can probably do a lot of things, but I don’t know hwere to LEARN to do all the paperwork-involved stuff & don’t want to get scammed out of what limited funds I can get together.

  46. Actually I just found an article about Lynne Kosky
    http://www.news.com.au/national/my-tears-are-over-and-im-getting-on-with-life/story-e6frfkp9-1226262750876

    She was having regular mammograms, but then noticed a sore spot and a bit of a lump, she had a mammogram and a biopsy and an aggressive form of breast cancer was diagnosed.

    So the mammogram did not “pick up” the lump, it was either missed (false negative) or fast growing, an interval cancer. This point is made very clearly by Professor Baum and others, that screening tends to pick up the slow moving cancers (that might never go anywhere) and miss the aggressive life-threatening ones.
    I’d be concerned to have a mammogram and biopsy if I found a lump, I’d probably ask for an ultrasound initially, and then get some advice about the biopsy.
    My starting point though, no mammograms, stay away from my breasts!

    • May I add… Know your genetics. How your relatives passed away since so much of this is passed through the genes. An ultrasound is very smart in that it measures blood circulation and possibly temperature veriations. If there’s establishing blood flow patters, like new changes, I’d get scared. Cancers do not metastasize until they outgrow the initial encapsulation our bodies place around them. Early detection is key, sure, but biopsy on an aggressive tumor opens a door. Sometimes one may have a slow growing tumor with an aggressive center. I’ve seen this, and it took the larger biopsy to find it. In that case, clearing the margins via surgery following with “something” to kill any remaining cells is all the difference. And biopsies? There’s small needle punch. The core biopsy is larger and involves an incision. If the tumor is aggressive, you’ve just poked the monster. The margins must be cleared. If cancer runs in my family, I’d be more open to screening including blood work, not meaning I’m there removing my bra for mammograms like clockwork. It’s the whole picture, and knowing our bodies. Ultrasound is cheap and non-invasive. Which makes me wonder why it isn’t more widely used in earliest diagnostic studies. It also measures water content. Very helpful in determining lymph node involvement. Tumors have different water content than do normal cells. Very intelligent Elizabeth. I say that often about you.

      • > Ultrasound is cheap and non-invasive. Which makes me wonder why it isn’t more widely used in earliest diagnostic studies.<

        Money. There's a lot of it to be made on invasive "screening".

        Prestige: There's a lot of that which goes with "saving" someone from the brink of death – even if YOU or your colleagues were the reason the patient was at the brink of death in the first place. Easily ignored or covered-up.

      • I have to confirm the obvious. Like “saving” women from cc via painful colpo biopsies, doctors bypass the easy ultrasound & rush to breast biopsy. Performed by radiologist with breast precisely positioned in its “hanger” etc, this procedure is costly, time consuming, spouse made to wait outside, and painful. So, prestige, yes, and money, double yes. The person I saw with the complicated tumor was not ultrasounded until the lymph nodes were examined. I just hope the “YOU” as written doesn’t mean “me” personally. Until we discovered this site and learned what “informed consent” was all about, I too walked among the clueless sheeple doing as I was told. No wonder my husband is so distrusting of doctors.

      • I learned YEARS AGO, when my first adult attempt at obtaining medical care lead to iatrogenic disaster, as well as sexual abuse which I discovered MUCH later, then when I was hospitalized with the assigned physician working to a fraud she was later convicted of perpetrating on MANY of her patients/victims, including medical identity theft – which took 25 years to get to stop appearing on my credit reports! Sure, they fall off after 7 years, but new ones kept appearing! Then, with some bad or odd things which happened with another quack using psych meds to cover up a physical problem, and all of the problems THAT caused, plus another scammer doc (in a less intrusive scam than the other one) tried to put me on a set of medications which did not make sense given lab results, and the whole thing (evidently) being a sales pitch to buy very expensive food through his office, I lost faith in the medical industry COMPLETELY. I found that whenever I investigated the facts behind many medical claims, I found that they were outright falsehoods. I broke down to see a doctor, and am accepting and very compliant with bonefide treatment for the condition, but I’m strongly resisting other medications which do not have sound scientific evidence behind them. I am capable of reading a scientific research paper – including bio-science and medical science, and evaluating the conflict of interests.

      • Thank you C&M, I now wonder how many women lost their lives because they saw a doctor with a lump and were sent off for a mammogram and biopsy, the usual chain of events. In the DVD, “The Promise” Dr Sarah Myhill says that we’re not really thinking when we do these things. (not an exact quote) It’s possible these things help spread the cancer. Some women report a recurrence of the cancer at the site of the biopsy, that procedure may seed the cancer along the biopsy line.
        It makes sense to me.

        I think it’s true of most women’s screening and “healthcare”, there’s a resistance to doing things differently, everyone seems content to do things the way they’ve always been done, even when common sense and the evidence tells us it’s the wrong thing to do. So many fight to defend mammograms or pap tests for HPV- women, sometimes it’s a vested interest fighting to protect their business model, sometimes it’s ignorance, a closed mind/ incompetence or scientific ego.
        Medical eyes are often closed…they go through the motions without actually THINKING about it…lump, mammogram, biopsy or doing multiple “treatments” on the cervix of a very young woman and then finding she has an incompetent cervix or cervical stenosis.

        I know Prof Baum talks about the very radical mastectomies they did not so long ago, despite more and more evidence it was unnecessary and that less aggressive measures were better, it took a LONG time to change the practice.
        That’s why WE have to keep up to date and protect ourselves from a medical profession that often operates on automatic pilot…we have to keep our eyes and ears open.

      • Absolutely important, valid and alarming pont!

        The main drawback of conventional medicine is that it has no idea how to tell an agressive tumor from a non-threatening lump. Most of the time, doctors are clueless, useless and even harmful. But it is legally safer for them to screen, biopsy and “treat” everything abnormal. It is also more money! And so they do.

        That’s why they prefer to resort to the old mantra “screening saves life” and “all women must screen”, despite a mount of evidence that mammograms do more harm than good, and the fact that pap-scraping an HPV infected cervix increases the chance of cervical cancer.

        All the “statistics” the medical industry is waving in front of our eyes when talking about lives saved by screening is compiled of people who would have never died of cancer in the first place and were harmed by the treatment they would have never needed had they not attended the screening. All truly aggressive, dangerous fast-groving cancers keep killing people despite all the screening.

        It is a perfect business model: make money on the screening, find a harmless lump, make money on the unnecessary treatment, harm the person, and then scream a life been saved. A self-perpetuating government-sanctioned fraud.

    • I feel really sorry for this lady and her family. I’ve also seen a number of cases in the news here, where women have told of it starting like having a “pins and needles” sensation in the breast, before a lump is found. All found outside of screening, of course. I declined my first mammogram “invitation with pre-booked appointment” and am probably due another in 2015, which will be even more forcefully declined now that I’m so informed from this website.

      • I have been having that for many years, but only in my left breast, and it seems to be heart-related, as sometimes I feel it in my hands and it often comes with this funny light headed feeling and headache. Cutting caffeine helps it, and stress is definitely a trigger. From what information I managed to gather many other women have this too, mild tingling, coming and going, always the left breast, caffeine and stress related.

  47. There are newer ultrasound 3D breast scans available.
    http://vipbreastimaging.wordpress.com/
    The lies are similar to not having the HPV alone tests. They will only approve the 3D ultrasound to be used along with the xray mammogram even though the new ultrasound is more accurate, does not compress the breast as much. Too many doctors are profiting from traditional mammogram screening programmes to have an unbiased approval?

  48. Keep in mind that the “OCD/OCPD Crowd” tends to clash with any deviation from patterns. Especially ones that they like. It makes sense that money would be a major factor in all that, but the “incongruency” of it would also be one. What I mean is that the situation doesn’t match the description & they like that. Getting a rush from getting away with a lie could be something along those lines (on it’s own or as an “I’m so smart & these people are so stupid” kind of thing), but also the aspect of things being “ironic” in some way. Medicine that works as poison, for instance.

    Ultimately, I think (and the frequency of this DOES seem to depend a bit on the country) that the kinds of people that go into the medical professions are of a “mangling alignment.” They want to maul/deform/hurt/mangle the human being. This doesn’t strictly have to be limited to nerve damage or some kind of poisoning. I’ve noticed that pretty much anything allopathic is attacking the body in some way or another & supposedly trying to derive a benefit from doing so. Doesn’t this seem like something that would attract people that had a taste for this sort of thing?

    I can’t believe that people so frequently overlook that someone’s psychological alignment could have some sway over what they do at work.

  49. Just learned a term: “anankastic conditional.” It’s the pattern of “If you want X, you have to do Y.” Don’t know if it’s a description of the type of situation or just the words themselves, but it might be useful for argumentive fanciness. Of course, what’s the difference between a coercive situation & a situation of a coercive statement being made? Either way, it’s a coercive iatrogenic assualt.

  50. I don’t know if this has already come up on this site before, but I’ve been reading up at this website:
    http://grassrootsgp.org/tag/breast-cancer/

    It is written by human doctors and not the droids who think general practice is about ticking boxes and meeting targets. It has some good names amongst their contributors: Margaret McCartney, Iona Heath, and a good article by Martin Brunet criticising the crying boy poster. The link takes you to the excellent article by McCartney called Are we educating women to be afraid.
    It is good to see this group of doctors speaking out.

    • There’s still an issue about overstatement of the effectiveness of screening and catching cancers early.

      If there are 100 – 50 year old women who have tiny breast cancers which will kill them all at age 60 without any screening. Now, you screen 50 of those women and leave the other 50 unscreened. You diagnose breast cancer in those who were screened and treat them. The treatment has the effect of exposing them to additional radiation, chemicals, and surgical procedures. In 5 years, all of those women are still alive – none have died of breast cancer, so the 5 year survival rate is 100%. In another 5 years, cancers spring (back) up, reactions to the increased radiation and chemicals, and they all die at age 60. They have had a poorer quality of life for those last 10 years, possibly unable to work, probably less able to engage in the parts of life that they liked. Still, their 5 year survival rate from breast cancer is 100%.

      The second group of 50 have the same condition which is not detected by the woman herself, and does not get screening. They go on with life as it has been – working, spending time with their families, recreation. They do not spend much time at the doctors or receiving treatment, and do not spend much, if any time in the hospital. Near the end, they find they have an aggressive breast cancer. Any treatment they have fails over that last 6 months or year. They tragically die at age 60… same as the other ones. Their 5-year survival rate is 0%.

      Hence, there is no difference in survivability between the two groups.

      The opinion of others on women in the two groups is vastly different. People will look at the first group, think of how “brave” they were to have so valiantly battled cancer for a decade. They will look at those in the second group and think of how “tragic” and “preventable” their deaths were – if only they had been tested and treated earlier. They will blame those in the last group for not being “responsible” for their health, for not taking care of themselves.

      The only differences between the two groups are that the second group had a much higher quality of life for the last decade, and the family members and friends of those in the first group got used to thinking of the person as a cancer patient, who had a relatively good chance of dying. And, the healthcare cost difference between the two groups is astronomical! So is the profitability..

  51. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11284114/NHS-breast-cancer-screening-misses-more-than-2000-cases-a-year.html

    A study shows mammograms often miss cancers in dense breast tissue…sure, they also, pick up lots of “cancers” that would never bother us AND the procedure itself can cause cancer or spread a real cancer, all in all, it’s going to get harder and harder to sell this harmful procedure.
    Incredible they continue with this flawed and harmful testing.

    Why do they so often use young women in the photos that accompany articles on breast screening? Is it make breast screening look sexy? To draw attention to the article or program.
    I don’t know about the UK, but here Breast Screen only uses female staff at their clinics, they might have a male surgeon to speak to women (who’ve had a call back) about their results, but women also, have the option of waiting and seeing a female surgeon.
    I know some women wouldn’t mind, but I hope women are given a choice and don’t just find themselves with a male technician, some women may feel very uncomfortable with a male touching/manipulating their breasts.

    • I hate these stock photos used in the press, especially the medical ones. In the graphic design business companies have whole books of such photos, which are loaned for a fee. The medical ones always feature men like this as doctors, and 22 year women as model patients even if the disease is only something people over 80 get.

      In the UK women are guaranteed female radiographers at breast screening, if they can get them that is: I’ve read that the screening programme runs behind schedule in some locations due to a lack of radiographers. The pay is poor, there is no career progression and the work is repetitive, so ideal job for women! This reminds me about reading about getting the UK pap testing programme off the ground during the 1970’s. The programme was promoted as a good means of offering flexible family-friendly jobs, repetitive and boring work housewives would be grateful for, and of course low paid. A politician at the time, said it would be most suitable for female doctors unable to commit to full-time work.
      These programmes would never be viable if the true cost of them became apparent, hence they can only operate in countries with a “high resource setting”. The paradox is that in the developing world, where cc is much more common, these programmes just can’t run.
      These screening programmes are scams and cash cows.

      • Something I’ve noticed: People see themselves AS their job. So if their job were to go away or they were to get fired, that might subconsciously register as dying.

        Sometimes I think the general concept of dying applies with other things, as well. Keeping the programs going, keeping traditions in place, “keeping the lie alive.” We’ve already mentioned things about how if the situation doesn’t happen, it doesn’t occur- maybe that takes on the aspect of “sustaining” something?

        I’ve been wondering about salary caps for doctors? Are there such things?

      • I was speaking to a woman at drinks last night, she’s new to the office, but heard I went to a conference in the UK last year, she assumed it had something to do with our work. No, I explained it was about evidence based medicine.
        Well, she’s NOW aware of the risks with breast screening, but only after a bad experience with screening prompted her to do some reading.
        She’s now very worried she may get breast cancer thanks to this “life-saving” program.

        She was advised by her GP to start screening at 45, (initially it was discussed when she was 40) the first mammogram was a false positive, which is more likely with the first mammogram. It meant more mammograms at the assessment centre, she lost count but thinks she must have had 3 mammograms (including the initial one) and a 4th on her left breast. She then went on to have another 3 mammograms at 47, 49 and 51, the last one sent her back to the assessment centre. The first false positive went through to biopsies of her left breast, this time it was sorted out faster, but the stress of these call backs prompted her to do some reading. On a website she saw someone refer women to the NCI summary (probably one of us!) and was appalled…how could they get away with whitewashing this testing?

        She’s now terrified of the damage they may have done to her, whether she’ll get breast cancer as a result of the radiation. She’ll blame the program if she gets breast cancer.
        She would never have agreed to this testing had she been provided with the NCI summary…and that’s why women will never be handed that summary, too many would decline screening. They also, know that even though women are appalled and distressed at the deception/lies etc. most won’t take it further.

        Her GP thinks she’s over-reacting, “there are always differences of opinion with these things, but she knows mammograms save lives otherwise they wouldn’t be offered to women”. (the thing is…her GP might actually believe that line) Will she regret not having mammograms if she’s diagnosed with breast cancer in the future?

        She’s been looking for a more informed GP, but finds most just promote the program and fob off her concerns. The best we can probably hope for is a GP who’ll respect our right to decline screening. (although more doctors are becoming aware there are serious concerns about these programs) Of course, some GPs feel they must recommend screening simply because we have a program and it’s recommended by the AMA, and also, legal liability, women may sue if you don’t recommend it and they get cancer.

        These things are only an issue because the profession chose to side with the program and ignore informed consent. (and even consent itself is questionable with pre-arranged appointments to screen, misleading/biased/incorrect information etc.)

        This is about protecting the program, not women. Women are being harmed by this testing, end of story.

    • Elizabeth, this is the second time I’ve posted this link, it’s an informative booklet on the risks and benefits of breast screening, it’s an easy read to give to people who are starting to question the program!

      Click to access Should-I-Have-A-Mammogram-booklet-FINAL.pdf

      It’s good to see other organised groups actively criticising the obsession with pink campaigns and the push to screen, BCAction appears to be quite influential and seems to be using evidence based research to not only educate but influence legislation, and also push for funding to go where it’s needed most; research and helping people with breast cancer…

      • Si,
        Thank you for re-posting the link, how did I miss something so helpful and RARE?
        Wonderful to see another balanced presentation of the risks and actual benefit of breast screening. It’s an American group too, that’s encouraging because the worst excess is still occurring in the States, even with the push back we’re seen in the last few years. Sadly, some of your doctors are still pushing excess, or coercing women into excess.

        Prof Baum mentions in the DVD, “The Promise” that he starts to really worry when young women have regular mammograms, that this practice may actually cause breast cancer. Some American “zealots” push early (from age 30 or 35) and frequent mammograms, (annual or 2 yearly) after 20 years that’s a lot of radiation.
        Isn’t it convenient though? Any woman having annual mammograms from age 30 or 35 who gets breast cancer will probably advise others to start even earlier and have them 6 monthly!

        When we’re deceived and misled we make bad decisions, we’re acting on fear and misinformation, not the evidence.

  52. Something else I’ve noticed: the “contradictiveness” of these people (and others, of course). Looking at “thinking by adjucation” (that “reality is what I say it is” type of thinking). It’s obviously inaccurate, because if reality were formed by recognition nobody’d get hit by a car they didn’t see coming or trip over anything in the dark (nobody’d even get born, since something had to happen before they got here for them to get here).

    But then, someone can’t very well think that reality is what they say it is & notice when things don’t go the way they want, then figure out what changes they’d prefer, then deduce how to make those changes, then try to implement those changes (possibly camouflaging those actions while they attempt them and/or lying about those actions afterward). So it seems that they might just be contradictive, not delusional. Like lying BECAUSE it’s not true, not that they think the situation is this way because they say so.

    Same thing happens with justice & injustice: someone can’t aim against what they don’t know about.

  53. Have you seen this? http://freethepill.org/
    By Ibis Reproductive Health. Not very terribly radical, still pays lip service to pelvic exams and pap smears, just read the questions, BUT still glad to see such a campaign taking up.

  54. Sue: I’ve still noticed when I click “Like” it goes up & then right back down. Do I have to go on this with Google Chrome or something? Also noticed that some of the posts were right over each other. Not trying to nit-pick, most of it’s fine, just thought I’d mention it.

    • Hi Alex. I really appreciate you letting me know about glitches. I can’t do anything about the “like” buttons unfortunately because they are independent from WP. As for the posts being right over each other I’m not sure what you mean. Do you mean the comments under the posts, or the posts themselves? And I’m not clear on what right over each means? Right now there are some massive changes taking place on WP, but they mostly affect the blog dashboards and other functions. The changes shouldn’t be affecting the site front pages, but it sounds as if they are.

      • I had meant that they were more or less on top of each other (like a transparancey over a regular page with text on it). Now it’s got other things going on. I can still read the text & all, but the display is different in a way that’s harder to navigate.

      • Hi Alex. Thanks for the details. WP is working on updates that are meant to support mobile users, but they are still working on sorting out the kinks. I suspect the glitches you are experiencing will be temporary and hopefully have already been resolved. Thanks again for letting me know.

  55. Just read an article (well, most of it)on RT.com: CIA medical professionals accused of committing war crimes. It was interesting because it outright called these actions sexual assault. Not bullshit about it “not being a sexual environment” or something that amounts to reality taking a coffee break for doctors.

  57. Ada,
    Interesting, so pathologists think it’s best to have a pap AND HPV test.
    No mention of course, that this is happening in the States and what’s happening…it leads to the MOST over-investigation. It also, causes confusion and has women going around in circles, there are charts on some US sites –
    I’m HPV- but my pap test is abnormal – go to colposcopy/biopsy
    I’m HPV+ but my pap is normal etc.

    They conveniently focus on the super rare cases that “might” not be HPV related, but my reading suggests these very rare cancers are usually missed by pap testing anyway. (false negatives are a concern as well, they can falsely reassure)
    Vested interests will always look for an angle to keep a population of women coming in for more and more testing, having excess biopsies and being over-treated, it’s been a goldmine for them and they see an opportunity for even more profit.
    Some are madly working on the pap test as a screening test for uterine and ovarian cancer, they’re desperate to keep the cash cow in place.

    • Many or most women (men too) have been misled about what, precisely, a pap test can or cannot detect. MANY people believe that it will detect ovarian cancer and uterine cancer as well as infections.

      While a pelvic exam can collect a sample to diagnose a vaginal infection, the PAP test will not.

      I know a woman in her 70s who has been diagnosed with stage 2 ovarian cancer. She was very much against seeing doctors, and her (now deceased) husband forbid her to see doctors even when it would have been helpful. Now, with the diagnosis of ovarian cancer, people are blaming her as well as her late husband for “not going to the doctor to get proper checkups, or well-woman exams”. Nonsense. These would not have helped her, and in fact, might have hurt if she’d have waited longer after she became symptomatic because she’d just gotten an “all clear” on a pap test.

      I tell them no, pap testing does not have the ability to check for ovarian cancers, nor does the bimanual exam. Most do not believe me. The few that I’ve convinced I’ve sent to actual medical sites with the description of the pap test and what it does.

      Nonetheless, doctors seem quite happy to have a misled population, who will keep coming in or encouraging others to go in to check to be sure that they do not have ovarian or uterine cancer.

      Testing normal, healthy organs over and over for the possible development of a rare disease or condition is in any other context viewed as abnormal and pathological. For instance, someone who wanted to go in annually and be tested for spleen cancer or kidney cancer (both rare, but more prevalent than cervical cancer) would be or should be referred for psychological evaluation. In the case of a cervix, one who does not have her normal, healthy, asymptomatic cervix checked annually is considered “irresponsible”. What’s the difference?

      You said it right. It’s a huge cash-cow, combined with the opportunity for sexual access to a woman.

    • Checking through all the risk factors for uterine cancer, I tick only 1 box on that list, and that is that I started my periods at an early age at age 10. So what are they going to do about this? Go around telling 10 year olds they are going to get cancer when they hit middle age? Hysterectomise these women as soon as they have decided they have finished their families? Force them to live for years on the pill or have a coil inserted, when they may want to have children? I tried the pill twice, and quickly developed debilitating allergy type symptoms, when I started the progesterone part of this triphasic pill. I remain convinced that this “intolerance” to progesterone was also a factor in me getting uterine cancer, although the consultant denied it. Would I have liked to be told in my 20’s I was heading for cancer at 52?
      I would like to see better treatments, better diagnoses and better information for patients. Spreading the idea that all cancer can be prevented and is down to naughty, deserving patients not attending screening is deeply upsetting, and keeps the vested interests piled up with cash.

      • I can’t imagine having periods at the tender age of 10.
        I agree the focus is irrational, I couldn’t believe the publicity about ovarian cancer and nuns, the reasoning, “nuns don’t take the Pill or get pregnant so they should take the Pill to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer”. What?
        I’d fall into that category, should I have been taking the Pill for decades too? Of course, getting the Pill was a MAJOR hurdle when I was in my 20s, you had to agree to an assault to get the Pill. That might be a harsh word, but that’s how it would have felt to me, I knew these invasive exams and screening test had nothing to do with the Pill and were not clinical requirements for the Pill.
        I still cannot see how that differs from asking a man to have his testicles examined and a colonoscopy before he can have Viagra.
        Also, some nuns have been married and have children.
        Here we go again, lumping all women together, making assumptions, focusing on the rare/uncommon cancer rather than the vast majority of women and the individual.

        Also, being on the Pill for decades might not be a walk in the park for some women, some suffer from side effects. Also, ovarian cancer is a nasty cancer, but it’s on the rare/uncommon side.

        Your comments are spot-on, Margaret McCartney wrote an interesting article, “Are we educating women to be afraid?”…Answer IMO, YES.
        http://www.cancerworld.org/Articles/Issues/32/September-October-2009/best-cancer-reporter-award/24/Are-we-educating-women-to-be-afraidUK-health-reporter-questions-the-value-of-simplistic-screening-messages-.html

        People also, fail to see that screening carries risk and that’s why it should be an informed decision and yes, it’s reasonable to decline screening. No, that doesn’t mean we’re at fault if we later get cancer.
        My SIL will often say, “if only Mum had had a colonoscopy, she’d be alive today”….we can’t be sure about that, colonoscopies carry risk, serious risk (perforation of the bowel) and often miss cancers in the ascending colon. You can’t say that screening “would” have saved her life.
        Screening is so often viewed as a no-brainer because that’s the way it’s been presented to us for decades, when the reality is…very few can benefit from cervical screening and the risks of breast screening exceed any benefit. Bowel cancer screening does not reduce all cause mortality. Yet if you read the screening stories you’d be left with a completely different impression.
        Making women feel guilty for not screening has always been part of their strategy, yet when we hear about a screened woman getting cancer….nothing. The dishonesty is breathtaking and disgraceful.

    • Thank you Elizabeth. The tug of war going between my gyn & us highlights this. We considered writing him a long letter using his own words, but instead we came up with a list of all readily available alternatives for him to choose from. As you know, I need a knee replacement. This is a great reason to enforce my refusal to pap, as last time it locked, and if it did again I’d end up in the ER waiting for emergency surgery. Not good. Here’s what we found.

      The “UDO Test” out of South Africa. $140US. http://www.udotest.com/test/udo-hpv-test or info@udotest.com Free shipping to US, anybody can order, no Rx necessary! They can test for HPV or STD. They have not explained how the test works or what it’s based on. You insert a provided Q-Tip type swab into your vagina as you would a tampon, twirling around and against the sides to gather cells & mucus. You insert the now mucus soaked swab end into a small, narrow specimen bottle, snap the neck off, seal the bottle, and send in a prepaid mailer. This test is tried, true, and far more accurate than pap. The company can test 140 women every 3 hours. Every woman using it has been very pleased.

      We all know about the Delphi Screener. The company has not returned my inquiry. I’ll try again.

      Trovagene. http://www.trovagene.com or info@trovagene.com $149US; billing code 87621, with Rx they’ll bill insurance directly. I didn’t ask if they can process kits directly from cash paying patients w/o an Rx. If HPV+ Trovagene specifies which virus. Since 1999; 95% accuracy vs 53% for pap (sooo, WHY haven’t we been told?). 888-952-7570, 11055 Flintkote Ave, San Diego CA 92121 Trovagene will (if you request like I did) send your doc patient-ready “kits.” Patient p/u kit from doctor’s office. Next morning, the first urination is self-collected. A portion of this is poured into smaller specimen container with a preservative. Patient seals it, places into the provided FedEx pack. Results come within two weeks.

      I advised the doctor’s staff to watch for the kits, saving one for me. Since then I’ve called 2x more wanting to send my husband for p/u. I’ve been placed on hold over 10 min each time. I’ll let you all know what happens when this is resolved next week. I’m looking forward to seeing how this “alternative” that my doctor denied existed works. For once, I feel empowered re my vagina.

      • Good for you C&M, I think the medical profession struggles with informed and assertive women, I think they just expect us to fall in line, or most of us anyway. No doubt we’re labelled troublemakers or difficult patients.
        I think their greatest fear is the spread of information and trust in self-testing and more women finding out they can’t benefit from pap testing and that routine pelvic and breast exams, TVU, CA125 etc. are not backed by evidence and carry risk.
        Keeping women in the dark, misled and compliant (or under control) is vitally important to their business model.
        I’ll be very interested to hear their response, if the fob off doesn’t work…perhaps, they’ll try the scare-the-woman approach, “self testing is not as reliable”…but then, they’ve probably worked out you’re an informed woman, and that puts them in a quandary.
        Incredible that pap testing could come up when you’re looking at a knee replacement, but then, I shouldn’t be surprised, I’ve heard it all over the years.
        Earache or sprained ankle, you “need” a pap test etc.
        Thanks for the additional info on self-testing options too.
        How did you damage your knee? Is it wear and tear, arthritis or did it start with an injury? Hope it all goes well, a locked knee sounds very painful.

      • If anybody wants to reach Client Services at Trovagene, that person is Brittany Gream Also, Trovagene will process specimens directly for $120US cash, no Rx/no doctor needed! My knee was part of my work injury. The job I did was extremely physical, and unfortunately one thing led to another, and again to another. Thankfully, I refused to sign the job description until it was modified to reflect what I actually did. One page became four and that documentation has proved my case.

        Three yrs ago at my last pap, my knee locked while getting off the table. Thank God my husband was there, so we waited carefully and slowly until it decided to cooperate. Right then I decided having another pap was out of the question. Last year, while researching “informed consent” we found this site. Suffice to say, discovering world-wide that we weren’t alone, and countless women shared our concerns & anger, was elucidating. Which of course led us to researching available pap/pelvic alternatives.

        Having a pap isn’t necessary for my knee replacement; it’s just that it came up due again after three years and that I get Estro-Test from this same doctor (I’m still angry that I had to go elsewhere to get testosterone cream while he only gave me topical Estrace). It REALLY pisses us off thinking back that this doctor didn’t care that my high dose narcotic pain meds, and secondarily menopause, killed my desire & ability to climax while causing my vulva to atrophy. Normal he said? BS normal!! Viagra wasn’t invented b/c doctors considered male impotence normal… This doctor admitted three years ago every fact we’ve read here, that paps aren’t accurate, that the bimanual is virtually useless except in skinny young attractive women (trained young to yearly submit as I was), ETC…. My husband spoke to him twice after we notified the office I was pursuing the “alternative.” He whined about having no way to collect specimens. But he can collect pap & normal urine? Thankfully we kept going, and now I’ll do Trovagene. His office is not too happy, but they are cooperating.

        I told Brittany at Trovagene how Finland and The Netherlands eliminated paps in favor of self-screening. She said Trovagene has been concentrating on oncology testing, but that “it’s in the works,” for Trovagene to ramp up capacity and offer a public relations campaign, including news coverage of their HPV tests. Makes me ponder, hopefully, that in the near future US women will have an educated choice in their vaginal healthcare, including full informed consent. It’s a well known fact here, as elsewhere, that women boycott the doctor’s office b/c of forced or coerced vaginal exams. What bugs me, is that so many women prefer being ignorant and marching in naked lockstep to the stirrups every year, whining the whole time in victim chorus, to once more be abused and lied to. “I’ll just trust my doctor,” is what many say, shrugging, when I share this good news. Why? Don’t tell me they get something out of it. I never have.

  58. It’s been a while since I’ve commented, but I saw something interesting (to say the least) the other day. I turned the tv on as I was going to watch a film. The tv ended up being on one of the news channels and the news anchor along with a medical specialist were talking about vaccines. So of course I decided to listen before starting the film. They were talking about an outbreak of mumps in Canada. The medical specialist said that it was due to people not being vaccinated because vaccines only work when everyone is vaccinated, and people who have had vaccinations for specific diseases/infections can still get those when exposed to them. So basically, vaccines don’t protect us from diseases. If that’s true, then everyone being vaccinated wouldn’t necessarily stop the spread of diseases/infections either. Either way, what she said seemed like a load of hog wash and was very confusing. If anyone could better explain what she was getting at, I would appreciate it.

    Second thing, I’ve heard people cracking jokes about women’s health recently. You’d never hear people crack jokes at migraines or sinus infections, so why is women’s health any different? It’s disgusting and I can’t believe that so-called feminists go as far as to participate in cracking jokes about women’s health. Health is not something to joke about and it’s truly sad.

    Anyway, those were just a few things I wanted to briefly comment about. I hope that all of you have been doing well lately and happy holidays!

    • If the vaccines aren’t protecting people that do get them, then a group of individuals getting them won’t be protected either. What’s any number times zero?

      There was a documentary called “The Silent Epidemic” (at least that’s what it was called on Youtube) that was interesting. It’s long, but suprisingly wasn’t tedious.

      • Sue – The hockey story was the one being referenced in the segment I saw! I’m curious to know more about the actual effectiveness of vaccines. I know that some seem to have actually helped, such as the vaccine for polio, but other than that I can’t think of any that have been proven to be very effective. Perhaps the tetanus, in some instances, but I definitely plan on doing some more research.

      • I seem to have a minority opinion here.

        Many vaccines are effective on most – or nearly all of the people who receive them. The people in the society they are in who cannot take the vaccines (too young, allergy to ingredients, sick with other things) end up being (mostly) protected too if a large portion of the population has been vaccinated.

        The smallpox vaccine has been THE MOST successful vaccine. Smallpox is now extinct in the wild, but is being saved in some labs – or so it is believed. Polio vaccinations have all but eradicated polio, but note that it is in the wild and spreading in areas such as west Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan where people believe that polio vaccines are a western plot to sterilize their women, according to Muslim clerics. Doctors in India claim that “Enterovirus-68” that went around on the west coast, primarily, last year really was polio. Maybe. Maybe not. If not, it should probably be included in polio vaccines.

        Some vaccines seem rather silly – vaccinating people unlikely to be exposed to the virus (HPV vaccines for 10 year olds), where the vaccine poses a significant risk in test subjects or in the population for a very rare or not-usually-serious condition. It’s a simple risk/benefit analysis. Tetanus is a rare condition at this point. Some look silly in retrospect. For instance, when I was a child, we were given a “lifetime” chicken pox vaccine. It was very good at keeping it out of the school. However, it was not “lifetime”. Many women, including myself, got it in our 20s or 30s. Women that age are more likely to be pregnant than children are, or older women, and thus many got chicken pox as adults – which is generally more serious than in children, and is devastating if one is pregnant. We should have been offered boosters, but the thinking for a long time was that it was “lifetime”.

        Mumps went around my community 2 years ago. My MMR vaccine from years ago evidently saved me. My husband already having had the mumps got them again (it’s possible). Trust me: Mumps is unpleasant for an adult male.

        For myself, I intend to look into getting booster shots for most of these “common childhood diseases” which I never got (other than chicken pox when I was 29). Many children are not vaccinated, and can spread these diseases. Through me, indirectly, such a disease could come into contact with a frail, elderly person who is susceptible, and could kill them. Risk/benefit analysis fits in here too: I’ve had bad reactions to Rubella, or “3-day measles”. The ongoing reactions from them are far worse than the disease sounds, although before the vaccine was developed, 11,000 people per year died of it in the US. Since 1992, very few have. It is known to cause birth defects especially if the woman gets rubella during her first trimester.

        Notions that vaccines cause autism have been debunked. Dr. Wakefield was working for a law firm planning to file suit, and looking for “expert testimony”. He was published in “The Lancet” – a UK medical journal. The Lancet rescinded the article, in their only instance ever – in their more than 100 years of publication. It was proven to be fraudulent – not just wrong, but outright FRAUD. Thimerisol was removed from most vaccines many years ago. The few that have it contain less mercury than a tuna salad sandwich.

  59. The chicken pox I suspect were different strains. I never got a vaccine in childhood but I did get chicken pox at age 6. When I was 23 I got chicken pox again. Not shingles, chicken pox.

    I would never 100% believe in a vaccine being effective because I am reading about all the really shoddy research that is out there. Also the research results vary with who provides the funding.

    The immune response for a natural infection should be much better than an immune response from a vaccine. Sorry I cannot quote any study. I have done enough reading to believe it though. Having a healthy immune system is better than any drug out there even for cancer.

  60. Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas.
    We’ve achieved a lot in 2014, let’s keep up the good work in 2015 and reach many more women.
    See you back here in the New Year.

    • Happy Holidays to you too Elizabeth. I agree a lot has been achieved in 2014. The tipping point keeps tipping our way, and it seems the current state of women’s so called healthcare will eventually be nothing more than a horror story from the past.

      Happy Holidays everyone!

      • A very happy Christmas and best wishes for a healthy 2015 to everyone on forwomenseyesonly.
        2015 will be the first year in the UK that the HPV vaccinated cohort of women will be getting their first call-up for the pap programme. With 80% vaccination coverage, it will be interesting to see if these women challenge the system and ask what they have been vaccinated for.
        Thank you for everyone’s help on this site.

      • It will be even more interesting to see the results of all of these new pap smears for these vaccinated young women.

        Besides aking when they are “invited” for their pap, “Hey! I thought that’s why I had a vaccine 10 years ago to prevent!”, the population statistic on how many of those Paps come back positive or uncertain, requiring more investigation or treatment for cancer will be very interesting. Even given that young women have a huge rate of false-positives, what are the rates of cancer or false positives? If they’re not significantly decreased, then I too, would ask why the vaccine. If it’s higher, I’d want to know immediately.

      • You are right Beth, it will be very interesting how this pans out, and there is sure to be a lot in the news about it next year. I forgot to mention too, that next year Scotland will raise its pap smear screening age to 25, more than 10 years later than when England did this, to much outrage from the vested interests. I wonder if this is to free up cytology labs to cope with higher HPV reporting rates in vaccinated cohorts?

  61. I guess it wouldn’t be as effective if they said “Hey, here’s some bullshit for you to listen to.” Not too common for a liar to announce that they are one, especially if it’s not in a dry humor sort of way. I’ve noticed that if someone flatly admits something & they don’t act scared or arrogant or anything other than object-like, it seems to have the same effect on people as staying still did against that T-Rex in the Jurassic Park movie.

  62. I’m not sure if I’m posting to the correct place, but just wanted an outlet to tell my story. To say I am grateful to have found this forum, is an understatement. (sorry if this post is long)

    Just to give you a little background on me – I just turned 30 – I live in a very affluent region of New York (only saying that to give perspective that this misuse of information clearly has no socioeconomic bounds).

    I started going to OBGYN at age 17 to obtain birth control. Before this forum (and Dr. Sherman’s blog), I had NO IDEA it wasn’t medically necessary to do a pelvic exam for a rx for birth control. It’s just what we all did (my friends included). So like clockwork I had to go back every year to get the rx renewed – no exceptions. I remember thinking in my head “this doesn’t make sense”, but figured it was my own anxiety just getting the best of me – I had no idea this shouldn’t be standard practice. My paps were always normal. So normal in fact, that after leaving the office with my rx, I never even thought twice about the results.

    At 23, I broke up with my long-term boyfriend and figured there was no use for birth control and went off it. Therefore, I decided to forgo all OBGYN exams. I did have sex while I was single with multiple partners, almost always with a condom (I’m living in a fantasy world if I lie and say there wasn’t a slip up here and there).

    At 26, I met my now husband. I wanted to get on birth control in a hurry before my insurance ran out. My regular OBGYN office refused to fit me in and said I had to make an appointment 6 months to a year in advance for an annual!!!!!!! I even explained my situation and they did not care. They referred to another office to see if I could try to get an appt there. I called and they said on short notice, I could see the midwife.

    Let me just say, that I know they are so many wonderful midwives and nurse practitioners out there. In fact, I have read a lot of posts in which women prefer these providers as opposed to actual MDs. However, this was not my experience – I had bad experiences with both.

    Anyway, I go in for my annual with the midwife and she’s very nice, but the exam was the most awkward one I had had. I usually require a smaller speculum, but of course the midwife of a different practice wouldn’t know that, and I didn’t speak up. The speculum had a hard time going in and caused some pain, to which she kept apologizing profusely. It was so incredibly awkward. At the time, I found it kind of funny.

    I leave with my rx which I had come there for and didn’t even a second thought about my results. Until she called me a few days later. This is exactly what she said…

    “Hi, your pap came back….very slightly abormal. In fact, I’m almost sure it’s nothing. Uhh…..but can you come back for a colposcopy and possible biopsy?”

    Her tone instantly raised a red flag for me – in fact, she was wavering on the phone, as if she was deciding on the other line what the next course of action would be. I think it is also important to note at this point (at age 26), I have both a Bachelors and Masters degree and consider myself quite educated and intelligent. AND I worked (and still do) in healthcare. AND at the time, I was working for 2 holistic providers. (I now work for 2 outstanding pediatricians).

    I was very confused. This all sounded so strange. I responded me, “well…I…uh….I don’t have insurance anymore.” Her response? “Well maybe you can borrow the money from someone.”

    Now I was pissed. I told her I’d think about it and call her back. I immediately told my mother what happened and we hopped on the internet. We read all about how HPV could cause abnormal paps, but that it almost clears on its own (although she never mentioned HPV to me, I don’t think I was tested for it. I just assumed I had it). I also consulted my sister’s best friend whom is a physician to which she said, “why didn’t they offer you a repeat pap?”.

    I made a decision to forgo the colposcopy. The office then called me again to which I said I would follow up with my REGULAR OBGYN office as soon as my new insurance kicked in.

    I wasn’t delusional, I knew I had probably contracted HPV, which I didn’t find to be a big deal since they say 80% of sexually active women will have it their lifetime. My original plan was to go to another “annual” in 2 years time in hopes that the HPV would be gone.

    Of course, life got in the way, I got engaged, planned a wedding, got married, went on my Honeymoon. It wasn’t until 2 months ago, I had a need to go back to the OBGYN because my period was about 3 weeks late. Of course, my regular obgyn’s office refused to fit me in. So I decided to call up an OBGYN that works for the healthcare group that I work for. They were very accommodating and fit me in within the hour.

    I met with her and explained about my period – she said right off the bat she didn’t even want to the examine me, but wanted to do blood work instead to test the function of my ovaries. WHAT??? NO EXAM??? I could not believe it. She did ask when my last pap was and I said “a few years”, to which she replied, “okay, you’re overdue” and then kept moving with the conversation. She didn’t bring it up again – even when I left the office. When she called me the next day with the results, she said all blood work was normal, and to give it time. She said she didn’t even want to give me meds to induce my period – she wanted my body to regulate on its own. She said, “don’t worry, you will get it.” and the next day, I did.

    My positive experience with my new doctor made me want to go back for my annual. So I made an appt for next Friday. Then I started to freak out. I mean freak out, rock back and forth, walk around like a zombie. I read all these things on the internet saying, “I had a very abnormal pap, I went back overdue a few years later and had full blown cancer.” I was losing my mind. Until I found your forum.

    I feel like I have a wealth of information. And yes while I am anxious to receive the results of that test (the exam itself never bothers me and only takes a minute), I know no one can do to me what I do not allow. Unless they tell me I have full blown cancer and i need to be rushed into surgery, I won’t be having any procedures done (esp since I do not have children yet). Logically, if I contracted HPV some 3+ years ago, and they say it clears on its own, esp in women under 30, I should be fine, but you never know. I am also happy that it SEEMS as though I have a new doctor that isn’t pushy (of course, I’ll find out for sure in due time).

    Again, sorry for the long post – but just wanted to say thank you. I never would’ve had this information otherwise.

  63. NYGirl- I’ve got a question (and I hope this doesn’t come off as stereotypical or insulting): But does this read as a problem in affluent societies? I know that there can be a bit of a situation where problems are disqualified instead of dissolved in general, but is it seen as “low-class” or “defective” to have a problem with something a doctor does? What I mean is that (in this part of the world) women seem to have a lot of things pushed on them through coercion or deception & they catch all kinds of shit from people when they bring up that they have a problem with any of it- is it this way in the richer circles, too?

    I’ve noticed that there’s typically an argument made that basically amounts to “reality takes a coffee break for doctors.” Obviously, this isn’t true- but it’s often presented that way. It’s bizrre, because even IF something was a means to an end, there could still be a problematic methodology. If it’s a product of someone else’s decision-making, this is an iatrogenic attack. Yet, neither is presented as true. Properties don’t change by designation- just like if a doctor poisoned someone with a needle, it’s still murder. It’s like there’s some issue with compositional thinking- or maybe it’s just acting like that. You know how someone plays stupid so they don’t look cruel?

    Anyway, I’m just wondering if the “alignment” is different on all that in more affluent society. I’d definitely say that it’s hit-or-miss in middle class society.

    • Hi Alex! I believe in affluent societies, it can definitely go either way. For me personally, I was never pressured into an obgyn exam by my parents, school, or anyone else. I went on my own to obtain birth control. When I go to the doctor for any sort of sickness (i.e. Sinus infection), they never ever ask about last pap or anything. I see a lot of women have different experiences with that where their problem is not addressed – I’ve never been in that situation.

      Something else I remembered after I posted was when I went to this new obgyn’s office for the first time, there were postcards on the front desk. The receptionist said “if you’d like to be reminded of an exam, fill one out and we will send it you.” So they give you the option whether you want to receive something. I then thought about it and I never received notices from my last obgyn’s office either reminding me to schedule an annual. Truthfully, the only time I felt pressured was this one call from that weird midwife. I was so floored by it because how can you call me, tell me I’m fine, and then say “but we may want to give you a biopsy anyway”?? What friggin sense does that make? Now, had she called me and said “you need to come in and have this procedure” and was a little more definitive about things, I probably stupidly would’ve done it. I’m so glad I didnt.

      As I said, I work for 2 pediatricians and we have parents that refuse to vaccinate. The doctors I work for definitely do not agree with it, but respect the parents’ decision and do not pressure them. They also do not do any sort of genital or breast exams on the adolescent girls unless they present with an issue. With the boys, I think they may just do a hernia check.

      When I scheduled the exam, I completely beat myself up about how could I be so stupid and not have scheduled on time etc etc…but the truth is, if this were Finland, I wouldn’t have even been tested yet as I just turned 30 a few weeks ago!!!! Then it dawned on me – oh duh, this is exactly why they have those guidelines in place!

      • If you decide to paps in the future or just HPV tests…. Insist of getting copies of all test results and keeping them yourself.

        Some women are fooled Into thinking they have cancer when they have CIN III which is sometimes called Cancer in situ or precancer. It is just a more severe case (or depending on the technician reading the slides) of HPV infection. Most of the worse HPV cases heal and never progress to Cancer. Sorry I do not have the statistics handy but likely they are somewhere on this forum. However doctors and midwives are always wary that someone might sue them so they push further exams and treatments just in case of that small percent.

  64. Well, it’s good that you were never pressured by anything (and suprising, since I remember things like this getting harped-on a bit at school). Just to mention: it’s actually illegal for them to back you into getting these tests for birth control. You can just get them if you push a bit (someone had mentioned an idea of telling them that you want it in writing that you are not being prescribed these pills because you wouldn’t let them do an internal exam on you- sounds good, but recording the conversation on a cell phone or something might be good insurance). I believe that it would be called “coercive iatrogenic attack & reproductive endangerment.”

    I never got the idea of that hernia check with boys. If their organs are in their scrotum, they’ll notice. It’s not like it’s not an area that guys don’t pay attention to & encountering an issue when exerting oneself (even casually) would also be noticed.

    That’s actually mentioned on Medical Patient Modesty (it’s a site, but also someone that posts on here- same person). Not for nothing, but someone could always say something like a bone marrow biopsy or some kind of exploratory surgery might be useful in determining if playing sports would be injurous to someone. Of course, doctors typically deride people for having an issue with anything they do, particularly if it’s antagonstic to the person’s alignment (“against the grain”) on a sexual level. It’s a common thing that other people will act like their cheer team, too.
    Honestly, it’s like someone’s ribcage would be considered a disorder if the doctor wants to wrap their hand around that person’s heart.

  65. Alex, I never quite understood the hernia logic either! And I just remembered something. While I never rec’d pressure to have an exam, I *do* remember there always being articles in the teeny magazines I was reading. “What to Expect at the Gyn” – I remember reading that article in MIDDLE SCHOOL. So yeah, the pressure was out there – I just never had it from anyone personally.

    Moo, you’re so right! I never got my “official dx” the first time, but they sent me a letter and I’m 99.9999% sure it said ASCUS. One of my best friends is a clinician and I asked her why this woman would call me, say she’s sure nothing wrong, but wants these tests for virtually no reason. She said, “Easy. To cover her ass.”

    I feel as though I am “low-risk” for HPV now – in a monogamous relationship, I quit smoking years ago, I lost 25 pounds (I’m pretty petite now), I eat better, etc. This exam, as I see it, is more of an interview of a potential OBGYN to deliver my baby if I do ever decide to get pregnant.

    I read all these posts from women – “I was saved from cancer” – and it’s so depressing. What;s worse is the women that are still on the merry go around.

    I read something else which I thought was interesting. If you test + for HPV, you AUTOMATICALLY have “high risk HPV” if it’s not an HPV in which you get warts – is that true? That seems to another scare tactic. I see these girls posting and it says, “my doctor says I have high risk HPV” – but isn’t all HPV high risk? I’d like to get your thoughts on that.

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