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Bryan Smith is in Denmark to report on the latest research into the prevention of cervical cancer. The pap smear test is used to pick up early signs of cervical cancer in women. There is a much more accurate means of picking up the signs of early cancer through the proteins that our cells produce.
Curator’s notes
Now, with only a tiny sample of blood, we can be tested for two to three hundred diseases at one time and also alert people to a future risk of diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. Dr Stephen Fey, the cell biologist, puts it best when he says that the pap smear looks at buildings whereas this latest technology allows us to look at the stones that make up that building.
Bryan Smith was a regular on A Big Country (1992), the ABC’s rural-based half-hour documentary series, before he moved over to Beyond and a new career explaining research and developments in new technologies around the world. Many years later, he left Beyond to work for National Geographic Television; first, here in Australia, and then as a senior executive in the United States.
This segment uses excellent graphics to explain a vital breakthrough in science. As we now know, HPV – Human Papillomavirus, the cause of cervical cancer – can be prevented with a vaccine, invented by an Australian but most certainly building on this early research and technology developed in Denmark.
