I am beyond dubious about this new UK study that links "cervical cancer" to early sex.
Study leader, Dr Silvia Franceschi, said the findings were not restricted to adolescence and the risk of cervical cancer was also higher in women who had their first sexual intercourse at 20 rather than 25 years."In our study, poorer women had become sexually active on average four years earlier.
"So they may have also been infected with HPV earlier, giving the virus more time to produce the long sequence of events that are needed for cancer development."
The thing they don't mention in this article as they bash poor women for giving up the goods too soon is: some parts of U.K. don't offer cervical cancer screenings until age 25. This sounds a little late considering that cervical cancer screenings in the U.S. were recommended for women 3 years after they first became sexually active -- up until this year.
When the cervical cancer screening guidelines were released in the U.S. this past November, screenings were proposed to start at age 21. This may still leave a portion of young sexually active teens in the U.S. vulnerable. But had they gone as far as postponing screenings to age 25, there definitely would have been a riot. This is because even in the face of new guidelines, physicians still insist that the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is responsible for 70 percent or more cervical cancers, is high among sexually active teens.
It is true that experts in the U.K. have some good reasons for not reducing the cervical cancer screening age for the entire population. However, it appears that the U.K.'s Advisory Committee on Cervical Screening might need to consider lowering the age for cervical cancer screenings in populations that may be more vulnerable to cancer. I think this BBC reporter needs to re-frame this issue--instead of finger wagging at these young, poor girls, they should investigate further how policies on cervical cancer screenings in parts of the U.K. leave young, poor women out of the health care fold.
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Rose,
I am staggered. Your comments are wide of the mark.
The article does state (third paragraph) that it was previously thought that the higher rates amongst poorer populations "was the result of low screening uptake in poorer areas".
That's the first point. The second point, about "fingerwagging"? what do you mean?! The article reports scientific findings and makes no comments of a moral nature.
I am appalled by the gist of your omments. You seem to have approached the article with a pre-judgement, namely, that anything that points to sexual activity being, perhaps, maybe, harmful, is, by definition, victim-blaming, judgemental and straigth out of the Dark Ages.
No, no and no again!
If early sex does lead to higher risk, the BBC, and others, are right to report it. To suppress such research would be criminal.
I will stop there. No, actually, I won't: why are you dubious about the study? You do not point out any flaws in the methodology or any unwarranted conclusions. What is wrong with the study?
I'm not surprised at the findings of the study myself - whilst the cervix is still developing it may also be more vulnerable to infections, so early sex - often surrounded by misunderstandings or completel lack of knowledge about contraception and safe sex - could well lead to a worse outcome from HPV.
I think the assumption of moralising came from the highlighting of the divide between richer and poor, with the apparent assumption that poor people all have sex earlier. However, that's not moralising - it was clearly a finding from the study in the areas involved. This, again, may be due to barriers to good sex education and other problems associated with poverty. It's not a moral judgement, it's something that needs to be known if anything's to be done about it. You cannot knock down the walls if you ignore their existence, so to speak. These women would only be thrown under the bus if, having noted these healthcare problems, those able to do something then turned around and said, "Well, it's their own fault, we aren't changing anything." Instead, the suggestion was that they be vaccinated as early as possible to prevent a tragic outcome from contracting a common virus. How, exactly, is that 'moralising'?
England doesn't screen all women under 25 for cervical cancer because there appears to be no benefit from doing so, the false positive rate is awful, and the unnecessary treatments are harmful in themselves.
It might be worth screening women who've had sex at a younger-than-average age if they started having sex while relatively young. No doubt someone will do a study on it soon, if they haven't already. Until then, it's unlikely the age limit will be lowered (unless politicians interfere).
In general, the NHS is a lot less keen on screening schemes of unproven usefulness than the US health industry. For example, men aren't routinely screened for prostate cancer in England at any age, because there's no evidence routine screening is worthwhile.
As for having a lower screening age for populations where sexual activity commences earlier, here in Scotland where we have some high rates of young people contracting STIs and of teen pregnancies - and where the legal age of consent is 16 - the first invitations are usually sent out at the age of 20. Cervical cancer is a rather slower progressing cancer than others, and it's often found that those women here who do contract and die from it did not do so because of a late invitation to attend a cervical smear, but rather because of reluctance to attend such screenings, thus missing the signs until it had progressed too far. In such a case, the best course of action is not to lower the age for screenings (many young women still have a lot of misgivings about the smear and are reluctant to attend, and at younger ages it's a lot harder to identify and rare enough to counteract the benefits that screening offers to older women) but rather to increase the attendance rate by promoting bodily confidence, ensuring that medical staff performing the test are confident and competent (painful smears and intimidating nurses ought to be a thing of the past by now, but aren't) and ensuring that the benefits of regular attendance are well known.
Screening at a lower age for more at-risk (generally poorer) populations happens in England too - a nurse told me that the age of invitation is 21 in my borough because it has very high rates of STDs and the second-highest rate of teen pregnancy in the country, along less-good health generally. My doctor then told me it's 20 for the whole of London, so I'm not sure which is right. It's also 20 in Wales.
My Mum, who's a sexual health nurse, seems convinced by the arguments (including that at a younger age, cervical cells are still developing, which leads to a higher rate of tests having 'unusual' results which end up being harmless after further tests) that younger screening make no difference.
It does seem a bit confusing, though, that some areas are of a different opinion.
If you don't have access to the original paper (http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v101/n5/full/6605224a.html), then at least read a summary of the publication (http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/12December/Pages/Early-sex-cervical-cancer-link.aspx) before writing such an inaccurate post.
i agree with the other commenters on this post, that Rose's analysis was of the mark. if there is something about the study methodology and conclusions then that would've been valid.
the study authors don't make any moral judgments about having sex early. if conservative politicians do that, it's not the researchers' fault. i think it's totally plausible that poorer girls or boys tend to have sex earlier. it could have to do with having to mature earlier socially or looking for relationships outside the home. these are general phenomenons not restricted to the UK. there's no inherent judgment about reporting that fact. it might also lead to better pubic health policies. of course, any finding like this can be twisted by social conservatives to increase control of women, but that doesn't mean that the finding can't be true.
"it might also lead to better pubic health policies."
I've never heard of anyone implementing pubic health policies!
I am also pretty disapointed by the misrepresentation of the research in this article.
It is worth nothing that the NHS UK website that zuri linked to explicitly states that the research was carried out in developing countries and therefore may not apply to the UK.
Also, I want to point out that in the UK a nationwide HPV vaccination programme has been rolled out- in Scotland the vaccine is given to girls at 12- hardly throwing young women under the bus.
Hi, I'm kinda confused. I came across this site doing sociology homework and I don't think I understand why you are outraged. No matter what statistics are, they're giving us jabs to protect us from disease, how can that be a bad thing?
If someone could explain I would be thankful, I am really trying to understand feminist viewpoints but it just looks to me like you're outraged at everything...? *?*
A frightening number of articles written about women, sex, and STIs are misogynistic. So its easy to get in the mind set that ALL articles on the subject are misogynistic. The result is that some people tend to approach these things with a predetermined opinion about the article. Such as its, "...sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, classist, slut-shamming, etc". I think that is what happened here. As you can see from the comments several other people agree with you. There is no reason to be outraged here.