Letter to the Editor: Affirming the integrity of cervical screening

The ethical justification for a rule requiring a cytologist, who is examining a slide in the course of screening for cervical cancer, to have full confidence that cells on that slide are neither cancerous nor potentially cancerous before reporting the cells as negative for disease, is the paramount importance of protecting women using the cervical screening service from the disastrous — even fatal — consequences of allowing the presence of such cancerous, or potentially cancerous, cells to go unreported.

It is indeed true that the inevitable result of insisting on such a criterion for screening is that there will be more “false positives” (ie, reports of possible cancer after such screening that are found on further investigation to be unfounded) than a less rigorous criterion of screening would entail.