Our medical system tends to err on the side of too much intervention. The guideline for medicine should be: first, do no harm.
If a procedure is not medically necessary, and it causes stress, worry, anxiety through overdiagnosis, then it is doing harm, because stress and anxiety are well-documented to have negative impacts on health.
It sounds like the people arguing that these young women should be getting pap smears are only using the argument that "it gets them in the door" of the gynecologist's office. It is precisely this mentality that has caused the problems in our medical system (too much intervention, rising healthcare costs, unnecessary treatments).
Sexual Health Education can and does happen in schools and STD testing happens at free clinics and on college campuses. If the goal is quality sex education and free and easy access to anonymous STD testing, then the medical community needs to focus on those things. Advocating to keep an unnecessary procedure in place just because of tangentially-associated benefits is misguided.
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Our medical system tends to err on the side of too much intervention. The guideline for medicine should be: first, do no harm.
If a procedure is not medically necessary, and it causes stress, worry, anxiety through overdiagnosis, then it is doing harm, because stress and anxiety are well-documented to have negative impacts on health.
It sounds like the people arguing that these young women should be getting pap smears are only using the argument that "it gets them in the door" of the gynecologist's office. It is precisely this mentality that has caused the problems in our medical system (too much intervention, rising healthcare costs, unnecessary treatments).
Sexual Health Education can and does happen in schools and STD testing happens at free clinics and on college campuses. If the goal is quality sex education and free and easy access to anonymous STD testing, then the medical community needs to focus on those things. Advocating to keep an unnecessary procedure in place just because of tangentially-associated benefits is misguided.
December 2, 2009 - 3:36pmThis Comment
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