Word: testing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...denied receiving money from any newspaper for exclusive stories about their work. Indeed, some of the critics may have been taken aback when, soon after Steptoe's award was withdrawn, British newspapers reported, and Edwards confirmed, that Scotswoman Grace Montgomery, 32, is due to give birth to a test-tube baby in mid-February. Its laboratory godfathers: Steptoe and Edwards...
...test is familiar to almost every woman who has visited a gynecologist. To take a Pap smear, the doctor inserts a metal device that enables him or her to see into the vaginal tract. Then he inserts a swab or spatula, scrapes some cells from the cervix and smears them on a glass slide, which is then sent to a laboratory for microscopic examination. A few days later, the doctor receives a report indicating whether the cells are normal, atypical or malignant. The patient gets a bill for about...
American women have been urged since the early 1950s to have an annual Pap (named for its inventor, Dr. George Papanicolaou) smear as a screening test for cervical cancer. That recommendation has now been challenged. Public Health Researcher Anne-Marie Foltz of New York University and Epidemiologist Jennifer Kelsey of Yale University charge that the test became entrenched as a yearly health measure before its merits could be established. At best, they say, institution of the annual Pap test has been "a dubious policy success...
Although cancer specialists point out that the incidence of invasive cervical cancer has fallen by more than 50% since yearly screening became widespread, they have no hard evidence to link the drop to the test. The decrease might be explained by other factors like the increasing number of hysterectomies, in which the cervix is usually removed. The true efficacy of the test is also clouded by the fact that though half the adult women in the U.S. have Pap smears annually, relatively few of the tests are on women who run the highest risk of developing cervical cancer. The disease...
Then too, say the critics, the test is not highly accurate. Primarily because the physician may take an inadequate smear, some 20% to 30% of tested women who may have an atypical or cancerous condition erroneously receive a normal report. One study shows that because the condition of the cells is sometimes misinterpreted by the laboratory, another 7% of tested women who are in good health are told they have suspicious smears, after which a biopsy is often recommended. To Foltz and Kelsey, such statistics at the very least indicate that the Pap test is being overused at considerable expense...