CRITICAL PRESENTATION BY WOMEN OF TWO MEDICAL TECHNIQUES ON THEIR BODIES

1. FACING THE HPV VACCINATION, A FEMINIST POSITION DEFENDED BY THE ASBL « VIE FÉMININE ».

At the beginning of the 2011 school year, the French Community launched a vaccination campaign against the human papillomavirus (HPV) targeting all young girls enrolled in the second year of secondary school, regardless of their age. HPV transmission occurs during sexual contact, through skin-to-skin contact. However, the two vaccines that were put on the market (very quickly!) in Belgium do not cover the countless viruses that could eventually, after many years, be the source of cervical cancer. There is also effective screening for cancerous cells through a Pap smear if it is done every two to three years. Why then such a rush to offer this vaccine to young girls for free? Because the pharmaceutical companies are ready although these vaccines are still under study, because it reassures mothers and young girls, although it is a shifted way of approaching emotional and sexual life, and because it makes politicians active, feeling that they are acting for the good of society and of women. It is forgetting that women whose immunity is preserved are better able to eliminate potentially dangerous viruses on their own, and it is a way of approaching health through illness rather than ensuring that all the conditions favorable to its preservation are created: women’s living conditions, well-being, diet, positive gestures and habits, and access to care are other equally important factors.

2. REFLECTION ON THE MAMMOTEST BREAST CANCER SCREENING CAMPAIGN.

The Mammotest, a systematic breast cancer screening protocol, aims to follow up women between 50 and 69 years old who do not have symptoms, by a regular standardized radiological examination every two years.

The Mammotest is also a European study that aims to demonstrate the positive impact of targeted systematic screening to increase the chances of cure and reduce the mortality rate of breast cancer. Other studies refute the effectiveness of early detection, which inevitably leads to overdiagnosis of cancer and overtreatment, with invasive procedures that are distressing for women. Indeed, since it is currently impossible to know how dangerous an anomaly is in the long term, all are treated as if they were potentially dangerous.

The Mammotest is part of a technological and mechanistic medicine, preventive and reassuring, which would like to be all-powerful and repairing. Its presentation and organization are peremptory, guilt-inducing for women and illusory about protection.

The Mammotest deprives women of their right to informed information, of a particular, global and relational care, it reduces doctors to learned and efficient technicians and deprives society of a wider reflection on health preservation.

Abstracts written by Martine Van Belleghem, Medical Imaging Technologist (breast cancer).

The analysis files are available at: http://www.plateformefemmes.be/ our-files/documents/