Save lives
We need to sound the alarm about preventing cervical cancer.
Consider the cruel irony: In a modern city that rightfully boasts of having the “largest medical complex in the world,” the incidence of cervical cancer is twice the national average and on a par with most Third-World countries.
One of the primary reasons, as David Pitman of Houston Public Media reported recently, is that 10 percent of women in Harris County have never had a Pap smear or a routine pelvic exam. That’s more than 200,000 women who are at risk because they haven’t availed themselves of this simple, less than twominute procedure.
The late George Papanicolau is the Greek-American cytologist who developed the Pap smear exam in 1947. We can imagine him encountering those abysmal numbers and exclaiming “This is 2015! Why are these women not getting screened?”
According to the researchers at Baylor College of Medicine who conducted a survey over the past 16 months, African-American and Hispanic women are the least likely to get screened and therefore have a higher rate of cervical cancer than other ethnic groups. The survey of 1,000 women also uncovered reasons why they’re not getting an exam, including lack of time and access to a gynecologist. There’s something else: Their partners don’t encourage them to get the exam because they’re jealous of the doctors. The doctor’s job is to collect a tiny sample of cells from the patient’s cervix and test them for abnormalities that may lead to cervical cancer.
Meanwhile, thanks to researchers in Houston’s world-class medical center, the annual Pap test could be history someday. A new in-home test for the human papilloma virus (HPV), the virus that causes most human cervical cancers, is in the developmental stage. Like the new over-the-counter HIV or cholesterol-screening home tests, the genome-based HPV test will someday allow any woman to do the examination in the privacy of her home and send away for the results, thus eliminating the sensitive-partner issue. However, since FDA approval for the new test is not expected for at least five years, most women, ages 21–65 should get their annual Pap exam even if they are not sexually active.
Unlike a great many knotty issues we address on this page, political and otherwise, bringing down the high rate of cervical cancer is relatively simple. It’s a matter of public education and awareness. We need to sound the alarm, so that every Houston-area woman — not to mention every partner — knows the annual Pap exam is critical and available, free of cost under most insurance plans including Medicare Part B. The exam saves lives. competent, terminally ill adult Texan who is lethargic, uninterested in eating, suffering and in pain seek aid in dying from their doctor for medical reasons, the state of Texas forbids it.
The last, best gift Texas can give to its dying citizens is the right of self-determination in their end-of-life care with the right to die with dignity through physicianassisted dying, if they so choose. A death-with-dignity law, available to citizens in other states, should be passed during the next legislative session, so no other terminally ill Texan will have to choose to escape from unendurable pain and suffering using a gun, a noose or Drano.
Cindy Henry Merrill co-founder of Texas Death
with Dignity ,Bellaire