Tom Coburn: “Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to Congress, I had a full-time practice in obstetrics and family medicine; and it was not…”

“Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to Congress, I had a full-time practice in obstetrics and family medicine; and it was not uncommon that 50 to 200 times a year I would diagnose cervical cancer, and over the 15 years in practice prior to coming here, what I saw was an ever-increasing number of people who were being diagnosed with either cancer or pre-cancer of their cervix. What we have come to know on the science of this is this is all caused by one virus, different strains of the same virus. Squamous carcinoma of the cervix is rarely caused by anything other than human papilloma virus. What we have today is a bill to make awareness of this issue for women in our country. Raising the awareness of the high risk of cervical cancer is important not just to the more mature women in our country, but also to the young women in our country. Along with that comes the very sad fact that our institutions that we should be trusting in this area have failed us.”