Irish women, have you seen this?

[SecondRow]

The HSE removed the word "woman" from their CERVICAL screening pages
I stumbled across this tweet
twitter.com/Salwicklow/status/1305967737563422720?s=20

politely asking them to put woman back in, alongside trans men and trans women, who both get their own special mentions, but they have brushed off the woman who made the original request and are no longer replying.

Here's the HSE pages
www2.hse.ie/screening-and-vaccinations/cervical-screening/when-you-should-have-cervical-screening/who-should-have-cervical-screening.html

And here's Aoife Martin - no cervix skin in the game inviting followers to mock women for wanting the 99.9% of people who need cervical screening to be named as such by a health service that already has some serious catching up to do before women can believe it has their best interests at heart.

twitter.com/aoifemrtn/status/1306339571790159872?s=20

@purplepizzabunny

Someone on twitter, who is a highly intelligent woman, but is a complete acolyte to TRA idealogy, post how she got a lovely DM from Jedward and is so moved by it. Lovely. Getting nice messages from idiots who advocate book burning? Can't say that would make my day.

I must have missed the moment in time when Jedward moved from being a source of ridicule to something much more sinister and bizarrely considered to have opinions of note. I look forward to that coming full-circle.

@LizzieAnt

But, this is a service that has in the past put womens lives at risk when they failed to notify them that test results may have been false. Several women died as a consequence Oh God, I hate pointing this out (and I know I'm going to be jumped on and it's off the point) but the above quote seems to point to a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually happened during the cervical check debacle. A lot of the reporting at the time was highly irresponsible - we certainly need higher standards there. And the HSE has many faults, as discussed upthread, but the above statement simply isn't true, although many still seem to believe it.

www.irishtimes.com/news/health/cervicalcheck-scandal-what-is-it-all-about-1.3480699?mode=amp Not at all Lizze Ant. Nobody will jump on you. I attached a link from the Irish Times which appears to confirm that this is what happened and I definitely would have been of that view myself. What is inaccurate?

@Cupoftea1234
The implication (from the quote) is that women died because of a delay in communicating their test results. In fact, the false negative results were only discovered when auditing the screening results of women who had already been diagnosed. There was no delay in treatment by the HSE in this regard. The original false negatives were tragic, but are, very unfortunately, inherent in screening. Ireland was performing at an international level in these tests. It is tragic that screening can't pick up all cases and save everyone, but not the HSE's fault. Their mismanagement was to do with a lack of communication and respect, but wouldn't have impacted on whether women lived or died.

[quote LizzieAnt]@Cupoftea1234
The implication (from the quote) is that women died because of a delay in communicating their test results. In fact, the false negative results were only discovered when auditing the screening results of women who had already been diagnosed. There was no delay in treatment by the HSE in this regard. The original false negatives were tragic, but are, very unfortunately, inherent in screening. Ireland was performing at an international level in these tests. It is tragic that screening can't pick up all cases and save everyone, but not the HSE's fault. Their mismanagement was to do with a lack of communication and respect, but wouldn't have impacted on whether women lived or died.[/quote]
Thanks LizzieAnt
My understanding is that the HSE were aware that women may have been given false negatives and reqiuired retesting. But they delayed in contacting these women. By the time they did, some women were terminally ill. I seem to be missing something but can't pinpoint it.

Well, Lizzie, you're not off-topic because use of the word woman is an issue of communication and respect on the part of the HSE for the people it serves!

www.gopetition.com/petitions/include-the-word-women-in-hse-cervical-screening-information.html

I'm losing track now, has the petition been posted here already? Here it is anyway!

Saw it on the other thread @SecondRow, and signed it and shared.

Teni have released a statement.

"Our lives are not to be used to further a political agenda, or for Twitter tantrums."

.... However it is important to note at this stage, the debate is not about the erasure of women at all, but seems to be questioning why transgender people are being included.....
.. twitter.com/TENI_Tweets/status/1308149467305082880?s=19

The cervix is only found in women (just fixed that as, when discussing men's health concerns, the hse.ie prostate blurb states similar for men).

Who says women didn't die due to the false negatives of the cervical screening scandal? If those women were diagnosed earlier they may have received treatment earlier and survival rates increase with early diagnosis. Is that really being disputed? Emma Mhic Mhathúna received her diagnosis three years after her false negative test. Let's not try and white wash that. It was a scandal.

Furthermore, The judge approved the settlement, which includes the HSE admitting liability for failing to disclose the findings of the audit carried out.

Health screening services for problems particular to male biology already exists. They're not effing around with that.

Thanks very much @SecondRow. I'll have a look at the petition now.

@Cupoftea1234 The audit was done on women who were already diagnosed. That's why it was done - it's a check on methodology, are our screening methods up to international standards? In the audit, it was found that some women who had received a 'clear' result on their screen a few years eatlier (but now had cervical cancer) should have been picked up at the earlier screen. Their earlier result was a 'false negative'. Nobody knew about this until the audit. The women involved had already been diagnosed and were being treated.
The HSE delay was a delay in telling (already diagnosed) women that they had a false negative at their earlier screen.
Rightly or wrongly, many countries who audit don't disclose this however. It can lead to huge regret and of course also to litigation (if there's a question whether the lab was negligent). Imo people have a right to know, but some may choose not to find out.
In my opinion, the HSE also made a mistake in not communicating to women having smears that the false negative rate was so high. I certainly didn't know that a false negative rate of 1/4 or 1/5 was normal at the time.
Auditing of smear tests was suspended as far as I know, not sure if it's resumed. This is not a good thing from a scientific point of view at least.

@Cailleach1
Women certainly died because of false negatives, but not because they weren't disclosed by the HSE.
Though obviously the non disclosure caused huge upset, and the HSE admitted responsibility for this, the women were already being treated.
False negatives are, very unfortunately, part of the screening process.

@LizzieAnt

Thanks very much *@SecondRow*. I'll have a look at the petition now.

@Cupoftea1234 The audit was done on women who were already diagnosed. That's why it was done - it's a check on methodology, are our screening methods up to international standards? In the audit, it was found that some women who had received a 'clear' result on their screen a few years eatlier (but now had cervical cancer) should have been picked up at the earlier screen. Their earlier result was a 'false negative'. Nobody knew about this until the audit. The women involved had already been diagnosed and were being treated.
The HSE delay was a delay in telling (already diagnosed) women that they had a false negative at their earlier screen.
Rightly or wrongly, many countries who audit don't disclose this however. It can lead to huge regret and of course also to litigation (if there's a question whether the lab was negligent). Imo people have a right to know, but some may choose not to find out.
In my opinion, the HSE also made a mistake in not communicating to women having smears that the false negative rate was so high. I certainly didn't know that a false negative rate of 1/4 or 1/5 was normal at the time.
Auditing of smear tests was suspended as far as I know, not sure if it's resumed. This is not a good thing from a scientific point of view at least.

Thanks for the clarification. I get it now. Its more complicated than was reported in the media.

Why was this admitted by the HSE, then? The judge approved the settlement, which includes the HSE admitting liability for failing to disclose the findings of the audit carried out.

False negatives which uncovered in an audit and then not relayed to the women involved could mean that the possible earliest diagnosis was not received for those women. It does not absolve the HSE if the women involved had belatedly been diagnosed elsewhere.

Rather than suspend auditing, does this not make a case for more regular auditing in the interests of women's survival rates? It seems to be more a case of knowing that there may be a certain number of false negatives and then choosing to knowingly let a number of women to remain undiagnosed. Of course with cervical cancer this may lead to women dying.

Why the dilution of the service in concentrating any resources, time and energy into addressing men's health? All the while blurring the message in relation to cervical screening for women. The cervix is only found in women.

There are already resources which cater to biological males.

Re the cervical smear scandal, the reason it happened in the first place was because the service got outsourced to a US company, and I remember at the time a concern was raised because there was some scandal with this company in the US. It does look like the error happened because of the difference in US and Irish screening practices. So the issue would not have arisen in the first place without the outsourcing.

I remember under the previous Irish system they used normal healthy samples as controls to calibrate the system as I was asked if my sample could be used for this purpose.

@Cailleach1
But the original audit was carried out on diagnosed women identified by the HSE. Checking the rigour of the screening method was the purpose of the audit. The HSE delay in communication caused huge upset/regret at what might have been, and the delay showed a clear disrespect for women, but it did not cause deaths. Women were already being treated for cervical cancer by the time the HSE learnt of the false negative results. It was precisely because of their diagnosis that their previous screening results were checked.
And yes, audits are a good thing, though I don't know if the HSE would agree at this stage.
Some of the reporting at the time (often that written by doctors) was good - see articles by Dr David Robert Grimes or Dr Ciara Kelly, for example.
A lot of the reporting was confusing or could be misinterpreted, and some was very irresponsible.

[quote StephanieRang]Teni have released a statement.

"Our lives are not to be used to further a political agenda, or for Twitter tantrums."

.... However it is important to note at this stage, the debate is not about the erasure of women at all, but seems to be questioning why transgender people are being included.....
.. twitter.com/TENI_Tweets/status/1308149467305082880?s=19[/quote]
Except TENI I think you'll find it is actually about why women were omitted, when they account for 99.9 % of service users.
If its important to name your service users accurately, why did the HSE only do that for 0.1%?

That's so annoying. I didn't see anyone object to the inclusion of trans men. The issue has always been about the fact that women were om

@Cupoftea1234

That's so annoying. I didn't see anyone object to the inclusion of trans men. The issue has always been about the fact that women were om

Sorry pressed post in error. The objection was always about the exclusion of women. That TENI have come out wit such a self pitying statement is of no surprise.

I think they should take the part about Twitter tantrums up with - checks notes - TENI board member AM.

How is mentioning women on a cervical screening page excluding transwomen, transwomen have no need to access that information, their biology/body excludes them this service, not the language used, it's just ludicrous.

Women are expected to support and defer to trans people all the time - and they so often do - but there's so little reciprocity there (and none institutionally). That TENI statement is appalling. GCN seem to be going the way of Penis News.

@SecondRow

Hi Shetoshe, glad you found us

I posted this thread here (and in Craicnet) because I know that a fair few Irish GC women tend to gravitate here. I had a look on boards.ie the other night as well, there's a long-running JK Rowling thread where the current HSE cervix issue was brought up as well, from a quick scan I think the consensus was in favour of women. But the fact remains it seems to be hard to get traction in the mainstream, ie, real names, well-known Irish people to stand up.

I am anonymous on twitter myself so I am not criticising anyone by the way. I know there are a lot of women working individually and also networking behind the scenes and I'm trying to support and amplify in any small way I can. Was delighted that the people I finally asked to help in real life - Mum, sister and friend - responded positively so please all do this too!

I had a look at that boards.ie thread on JKR. The last time I looked I left as it seemed overrun with TRA posters. I was pleasently surprised to see the pendulum seems to have swung the other direction as most recent posters appear GC.

The petition is online, can't link it here but search for HSE add women petition
You can tick a box to keep your name private and it won't show on the petition page.

Late to the thread on this. Shared the petition with a few of my WhatsApp groups today - all in agreement with the petition and shared it themselves.
I've been so angry all day, but heartened that nearly everyone I know IRL supports the GC stance

According to this article below and mention of the Scally Report;

Phelan also blew the whistle on a medical scandal: dozens of women with cervical cancer were not told that smear test results had wrongly given them a clean bill of health. Authorities withheld the revised test results for years.

the Health Service Executive (HSE), a state agency, outsourced screening to unapproved laboratories in the UK and US.

There is no evidence the labs were sub-standard but Irish officials failed to keep track of them and had an “inadequate” system for responding to screening errors, the report said. An earlier report by the inquiry excoriated “whole-system failure” and “paternalism” in Irish healthcare.

The findings have cast a shadow on the country’s progressive sheen. Behind a humming economy and social liberalisation endure old habits of dysfunction, unaccountability and misogyny, according to Scally.

Progressiveness for all except women. Who now cannot be named on a service that women exclusively rely on to diagnose a cancer particular to them.

I am curious about your comment that the HSE mightn't agree that auditing is a good thing. So, the HSE know that the auditing picked on false negatives. No auditing equals not picking up on women with false negatives, who will possibly die from cervical cancer. Surely auditing should be happening more frequently. What has changed for women wrt cervical screening provided by the HSE? Other than the HSE spending time and resources targeting their information about cervical screening service away from women.

www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/24/i-can-change-it-for-others-the-woman-who-exposed-irish-smear-tests-scandal