Fighting Cervical Cancer With Vinegar and Ingenuity

[Celebration]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27cancer.html

Nurses using the new procedure, developed by experts at the Johns Hopkins medical school in the 1990s and endorsed last year by the World Health Organization, brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant.

The procedure is one of a wide array of inexpensive but effective medical advances being tested in developing countries. New cheap diagnostic and surgical techniques, insecticides, drug regimens and prostheses are already beginning to save lives.

............................

The procedure, known as VIA/cryo for visualization of the cervix with acetic acid (vinegar) and treatment with cryotherapy, can be done by a nurse, and only one visit is needed to detect and kill an incipient cancer.

[HopeHoops]

1. I gots me some snake oil here, garrunteeed ta cure warts, hair loss, and gall bladder issues.

[DrunkenBoat]

3. it's not snake oil. did you read the article? endorsed by WHO.

[kestrel91316]

6. Not snake oil. Legitimate medical treatment.

[ehrnst]

9. Not at all - vinegar has been used by gyns here to reveal abnormal cells

Please read the article.

[DrunkenBoat]

2. wow. with a speculum?

[prairierose]

4. Yes, it is done with a speculum...I had this procedure..

more than 20 years ago. I do not know if they used vinegar to make the spots visible but they used some sort of dye. At that time a Dr had to do this surgery. I have never had a recurrence of the precancerous cells. I felt a little bloated for a day or so but otherwise had no ill effects. It was simple, cheap and effective. What a concept.

[ehrnst]

10. Yes, it was a form of vinegar - acetic acid. It turns the abnormal cells white. (nt)

[kestrel91316]

5. Doctors in the US probably manage to pad the bill and wind up charging

$25k to do this, right?

[ehrnst]

11. The money comes from the surgery - the vinegar is used in the followup to an abnormal pap smear. (nt

[midnight]

7. K&R

[IggleDoer]

8. Vinegar should be outlawed!

If it helps cure cervical cancer, which is a sexually transmitted, it might induce young women to have more promiscuous sexual activity.

Michele, are you listening?