A recent post on the Dr Chris Confidential newsletter suggests that while smear tests are an excellent way of diagnosing cervical cancer early enough to treat it successfully, because an assumption is made is that taking smears from very young women causes more harm than good, you will not be invited to have a smear test if you are under 25.
Dr Chris believes (a belief that he says is shared by two thirds of practicing GPs) that this is nonsense: that no harm comes from doing an early smear test and since teenage and very young women are at significant risk from cervical cancer, they should be offered a smear test from puberty onwards. What apparently happens now is that, even if GPs take smears from women under 25, when they are processed if the date of birth shows that the donor was under 25, the sample is disposed of without even being looked at.
So incensed is he by this situation and the unnecessary risk it is creating for young women that he has started an on-line campaign ‘Too Young to Die’ – which you can join to help him bludgeon the Department of Health to lower the smear age at least to 20.