This week's news dismayed me not only because of the content, but the fact that it was discovered in my home state of Maryland.It was recently discovered that in 2004 the database of women with cervical cancer had been altered so more were reported than actually had the disease in the state of Maryland.
The Baltimore Sun exposed what had gone on in it's July 29th edition.
It was discovered after 400 women who did not have cervical cancer received letters in 2005 asking for their participation in a study. Some of the women got in touch with Maryland's Family Health Administration. There was also a tip from an employee of the database management company that lead to a criminal investigation.
The database is used by CDC, NAACCR, other states and researchers. The number of cancer cases reported in the database is used to award grants to counties for cancer prevention, education, screening and treatment programs.
I don't know which is worse, the fact that such a lie would be perpetrated or that agencies have to lie about something like the amount of cancer patients to be able to get the funding they need to cure a devastating disease.
Read more about what's going on here.
Learn more about cervical cancer.
And please ladies, get your PAP smears and get your daughter's vaccinated with the new HPV vaccine.
2 comments:
It's sad that even with all the awareness, cervical cancer is still prevalent. Here's to a cure one day.
It is all about money. Special interest groups tend to magnify problems so they can get more funds from the government.
On our part it is a guessing game. Myself, if some group says there are 5000 cases of a problem, I assume that there are really 100.
Post a Comment