{"id":11106,"date":"2012-03-22T08:40:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T13:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=11106"},"modified":"2012-03-22T08:43:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T13:43:20","slug":"federal-government-again-recommends-fewer-medical-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/22\/federal-government-again-recommends-fewer-medical-tests\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Government Again Recommends Fewer Medical Tests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a stunning turn of events, the Federal Government has decided that women <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/lifestyles\/health-med-fit\/fitness\/pap-smears-can-be-limited\/article_f13b4728-5efa-5f00-a1e0-8e0ec95a4d2e.html\" target=\"_blank\">are getting too darn many pap smears<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Many women will need to get Pap smears only every five years under new national guidelines released this month.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to be able to identify a subset of women that we can put at ease,&#8221; said Dr. Rosanna Gray-Swain, a obstetrician\/gynecologist with BJC HealthCare. &#8220;If they have normal Pap smears and are negative for (human papillomavirus) &#8230; they have essentially zero chance of developing cervical cancer in five years.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Essentially zero <em>is not equal to zero<\/em>.  Following these guidelines, a small number of women will develop cervical cancer that could have been caught by more frequent pap smears.  To the United States government, these are acceptable losses.<\/p>\n<p>This new recommendation to cut testing that would catch cancer earlier mirrors the 2009 guideline that also recommended <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/news2009-rst\/5520.html\" target=\"_blank\">fewer mammograms<\/a> which would mean breast cancer would go undetected longer in some women.  <\/p>\n<p>One wonders why we don&#8217;t hear about the United States Preventive Services Task Force&#8217;s War on Women, since its governmental actions put women at greater risk of advanced cancer and death.  <\/p>\n<p>Contrast this with the Republican &#8220;war on women&#8221; which thinks men and women should pay for their own contraception and abortifacients or insurance plan that covers them. <\/p>\n<p>(Fun fact: Abortifacients in animal breeding are called <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Abortifacent\" target=\"_blank\">mismating shots<\/a><\/em>.  How would it frame the debate if we used that term instead of the scientific and rational sounding &#8220;abortifacient&#8221;?) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a stunning turn of events, the Federal Government has decided that women are getting too darn many pap smears: Many women will need to get Pap smears only every five years under new national guidelines released this month. &#8220;We&#8217;re going to be able to identify a subset of women that we can put at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-federal-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11106"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11109,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11106\/revisions\/11109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}