Up until recently ... ... I'd have said regular health checks were a good for BOTH sexes ... regardless of age.

Now, I'm less sure after reading an article about a 23-yr-old woman who succumbed to advanced cervical cancer and whose relatives were convinced someone so young need not have died
had screening for this disease been accessible to ALL females from puberty onwards ... instead of being mainly confined to those in a more mature age group (i.e., those over 40).

However, based on statistics indicating this particular form of cancer as being more common among older ladies, it would seem many of our leading oncologists believe performing routine cervical smear tests on a younger set to be counter productive ... in the sense that invasive procedures of this nature are likely to do more harm than good in the longer term. But ... why, I wonder?

*Age, therefore, would certainly appear to've some degree of bearing on the matter!

What's your point of view on that *factor, Alan?