Unpopular opinions or views you hold

I said his thesis was misogynistic.

Bit rich when you started off by calling @Cheasty a misogynist

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide and there are
over half a million cases diagnosed every year. In Ireland in 2015 (the most recent
year for which data is published), there were 241 cases of cervical cancer. This
means the lifetime risk of a woman getting cervical cancer was 1 in 135. In 2007, the
year before the cervical screening programme started, the lifetime risk was
calculated as 1 in 96. This represents a substantial improvement.
Overall, it is generally accepted that cervical screening and breast screening can
prevent some, but not all cancers.
The NHS screening service states:2
It is estimated that cervical screening prevents 75% of invasive cervical
cancers by detecting and treating cervical abnormalities that, if left, would
place patients at high risk of developing invasive cervical cancer.

The idea that cervical screening was ever a bulletproof programme is one I have trouble with. That scoping report starts off and finishes with fulsome apologies to Vicky Phelan et al, seems to be it’s main aim

@cheasty is plenty smart enough to know why.

Yeah my understanding that the main issue is the effort to conceal the problem rather than the actual problem itself. Were there not cases where they knew for up to a year, but that the doctor or screening team left it to others to break the news so as not to have any hassle. And those who died having notes updated but not tell the family. The cover up and deceitful nature of it all stank. Errors in this process are bad enough, trying to hide those errors then cost lives.

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I’d hazard a guess if Tony hoolahan was anti lock down you’d have a very different view here.

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Holohan didn’t cover himself in glory at all.

Keen to brush it under the carpet to ‘protect its integrity’ where there were errors and people had a right to know, in some occasions that their health had been impacted.

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You are largely correct, the fundamental issue is the public’s lack of understanding of a screening test test versus a diagnostic test. Communication from HSE and government was poor.

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But surely no lives were cost because the audit was of the smear tests of women who had already been diagnosed with cancer?

My perception of the public understanding of the story is that the public at large thinks doctors, the HSE, The Government knew that women had cancer and refused to tell them. That’s fiction.

Bearing in mind it is impossible to eliminate false negatives. The problem is built into the system, any system, no matter how good. It is non-eliminable. You can only try and build the system so errors are minimised.

In other countries people are not informed of the results of audits of their tests. Though I don’t know whether that is the correct approach. I can see it causing issues either way.

The audit was there to try and make the system better.

Is it not more about the confusion of mistakes with negligence? Ruth Morrissey did get a judgement of negligence but I think all the other cases were settled?

And I think have trouble with the negligence judgment.

Does any medical professional who makes a mistake deserve to have their career ended?

I believe only 13 countries perform such audits and only 5 of those inform patients of the results. So patient information is not the worldwide standard.

Also Ireland’s Cervical Check programme did better than its Swedish equivalent. And there were no pay outs there.

An audit was carried out to check on tests. That found there were incorrect test results. Instead of informing the women, they left it.

Its speculation to say that lives could have been saved had the audit findings been relayed to the people affected. But the audit found errors, and people werent told. Thats not fiction. I agree on your initial point that sometimes errors happen and in these circumstances its heightened due to the nature of it. But its not the wrong results that would bother me, moreso the cover up nature and not relaying the audit findings in a timely fashion.

Please keep this argument going for the rest of the hurling championship

20% false negatives standard for Pap smear tests, close to foolproof if a HPV test done as well but back then wasn’t routine. The Scully report found none of the labs did anything wrong.

It’s common enough after a cervical cancer diagnosis to find anomolies on look back at prior smear tests when the cancer growth hadn’t started, it can be a frighteningly fast growing cancer.

But for every women who died at least 4 or 5 were saved by early intervention

Packie Bonner was a shite keeper.

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Stuttgart 88 he was world class

Wasnt great for the Russian goal.

Personally I think there should be an online facility where every patient can access their medical records freely. I had to go through the hoop to get mine on paper and then when I got them some of them were illegible because they were photocopies of handwritten notes.

I think overall it’s better that patients are informed. I myself have felt quite in the dark about elements of my treatment, like I wasn’t even informed of what surgery I was having. But I can also see how free access to records could cause issues. In other countries, it is not standard to inform patients of audit results. And I think it’s precisely because things risk being blown up into massive stories on largely false premises.

The story wasn’t blown up on a false premise.

I think it largely was and my other posts explain why. You’re free to disagree.

You’ve fundamentally misunderstood the facts, it’s not that I disagree, you’re just wrong.