Cervical Smear Quotes

At that point, more than 15,000 women were dying each year from cervical cancer. The Pap smear had the potential to decrease that death rate by 70 percent or more, but there were two things standing in its way: first, many women - like Henrietta - simply didn't get the test; and, second, even when they did, few doctors knew how to interpret the results accurately, because they didn't know what various stages of cervical cancer looked like under a microscope. Some mistook cervical infections for cancer and removed a woman's entire reproductive tract when all she needed was antibiotics. Others mistook malignant changes for infection, sending women home with antibiotics only to have them return later, dying from metastasized cancer. And even when doctors correctly diagnosed precancerous changes, they often didn't know how those changes should be treated.

Women are supposed to undergo a second, gynecologist annual exam, and this one has been well defined since its inception in the 1950s: breast and external genitalia exams, a Pap smear to detect cervical cancer, a vaginal and perhaps rectal exam. These exams are not always voluntarily undertaken; they may be required as a condition of obtaining or renewing a prescription for a contraceptive: Recall the searing scene in Mad Men where Peggy undergoes a gyn exam in order to get birth control pills and the (male) doctor cautions her that just because the pills are expensive, she shouldn't become "the town pump just to get [her] money's worth." Many women are traumatized by these exams, which in their detailed attention to breasts and genitalia so closely mimic actual sexual encounters. Out-of-place intimacies, like unwelcome touching by a male coworker, are normally regarded as "sexual harassment," but the entire gyn exam consists of intimate touching, however disguised as a professional scientifically justified procedure. And sometimes this can be a pretty thin disguise.

Notably, the average age of diagnosis of women with such preinvasive lesions was about twenty years lower than the average age of women with invasive lesions—once again corroborating the long march of carcinogenesis. The Pap smear had, in effect, pushed the clock of cancer detection forward by nearly two decades, and changed the spectrum of cervical cancer from predominantly incurable to predominantly curable.