You havenât provided any counter argument, you just decided to call me a misogynist.
Again, false negatives occur in all screening programmes. 100% elimination of error is unachievable. This is not a scandal. Itâs a tragic fact of all screening programmes.
The weather gets hotter the more you move into the summer months.
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The fact of false negatives alone was not the scandal. Youâve either fundamentally misunderstood the facts, youâre purposely ignoring them or youâre purposely ignorant of them.
Heâs done a deep dive on Reddit and Boards.ie and is now the forum expert on smear tests. Fall inâŠ
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Dr Holohan also said: âA very significant harm has been done to people who have had the experience over the course of the last number of years.
âThe harm at the centre of cervical check was that there was no disclosure to women of the findings of a retrospective clinical audit of their care.
âWhere there was a commitment to give that commitment back to individuals the information wasnât in fact given to those individuals."
this coming from the man who wanted to brush it under the carpet instead of having the scally report
His take on it is about as coherent and informed as Glenshane on Ukraine. Both doing their own rEsurtch.
Iâve asked you several times to expand on the problem as you see it and youâve refused to do so.
Thatâs top, top INTERNETTTING, not.
Iâm reluctant to get into a back on forth on something you purposely have arseways for obvious reasons.
Listen to the Emma Mhic Mhathuna interview above and see do I have it arseways. Emma Mhic Mhathuna herself was firmly of the opinion that the scandal was the false negative smear tests.
She also said on the Late Late Show that women shouldnât bother getting checked because the cervical check system was useless.
So youâre selectively picking out the account of one person to the exclusion of all else and extrapolating from there. Need we go on?
Iâm referencing what the second most prominent woman who had cervical cancer in this story said was the scandal.
In fairness, the lady was dying of cancer so itâs difficult to criticise her for not being rational.
Nobody wants to criticise a dying woman. But that doesnât mean that what she said wasnât harmful. Her words likely encouraged other women to not bother being screened. They may well have led to other women needlessly getting cancer.
This reluctance to speak uncomfortable truths in modern society is also the kernel of the story. Just because somebodyâs story is a strong one and they are immediately impressive and sympathetic individual who is impossible not to feel deep empathy with, doesnât mean their narrative is true.
If you were to believe the media and social media narrative, Cervical Check was a massive clusterfuck and scores of women died needlessly. Thereâs a genuine widespread public belief out there that the HSE and the Government knew women had cancer and didnât tell them and this is why these women died. But this is bollocks.
As far as I can make out, Cervical Check was performing better than other similar programmes in other countries. But somehow, in this country, it became âCervical Check is a disasterâ.
Control of a story is everything. The media want ratings, click and sales. So women like Vicky Phelan and Emma Mhic Mhathuna coming forward was manna from heaven for them. This created a situation where multi-million euro settlements were inevitable, because the HSE and the state had completely lost control of the story.
These payouts simply do not happen in other countries despite cervical cancer screening programmes performing worse.
The pay out to Emma was on the basis of a court case where the HSE admitted liability for not telling her about the incorrect readings, along with the suing of the lab where the incorrect read of the two tests was confirmed.
She and her family were awarded âŹ7.5m.
This went through the court system where the cases were heard and the result determined.
It wasnât about anyone losing control of the story - or at least it shouldnât have been.
Emmaâs tests were incorrectly read which meant she didnât have treatment for two years for her cancer. Now such an error can be quite possible given the nature of the illness but ultimately the courts ruled in Emmaâs favour.
again
The harm at the centre of cervical check was that there was no disclosure to women of the findings of a retrospective clinical audit of their care
Thatâs a very cold statement though clearly aimed to diminish liability.
People have died - he could have referenced that at least even if he did caveat it with the difficulties around smear test readings.
I donât recall liability being admitted. There was an out of court settlement.
I think in these cases, publicity and control of the story is everything. Once a story blows up, thatâs essentially the deciding factor. Thatâs why people go public. Because public opinion being behind you is an immensely powerful force.
Again, itâs obviously an absolute tragedy that false negatives happen, but they do happen. Itâs inbuilt into what the system is. If every person who got cancer, especially terminal cancer after a false negative was to receive âŹ7.5 million, and the logical follow on from such a settlement is that every such person, everywhere does get such a settlement, how is the health system supposed to function with all the money that would cost?
The HSE admitted liability.
Fair enough, they did. But why? In my view, publicity. Because they had lost control of the story. Damage limitation. Crisis management.
Should the subject of every false negative in every screening programme receive a lucrative settlement?
Because there are going to be a hell of a lot of them. Itâs just the nature of it.
And should false positives receive a lucrative settlement too? Because that puts people through an emotional wringer in a different way.