Hpv normally clears itself if left, so do cell abnormalities- 95% of moderate changes will never progress to cancer- yet thousands of women are subjected to unnecessary procedures such as lletz, cone biopsy etc and the worry of being told they are "precancerous". I find a lot of women don't fully understand what it actually means. They say they had their lives saved by the smear, when in fact in most cases this isn't true.
Yep.
Whenever this discussion comes up on here, there are always posters sharing their stories of they or women they knew who had a test, found an abnormality and needed treatment. They are generally presented as a reason to go for screening, thank heavens they caught it early, this could be you don't delay etc.
But the odds are that whenever a number of examples are given, some of the treatments were entirely unnecessary. And no, of course I'm not talking about full blown cervical cancer here. But there's an absence, too often, of any awareness at all that some of the women undergoing procedures would have been better off had they never gone for the smear in the first place. And without this awareness, a person cannot give informed consent to their smear.
I agree with missymoo that we need more transparency and less emotional blackmail.