Dr. Richard TeLinde
was one of the top cervical cancer doctors in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. At the time, scientists believed that there were two types of cervical cancer- carcinoma in situ and invasive carcinoma; therefore, the treatment for each was quite different. Dr. TeLinde did not believe that they were two different cancers; he believed that carcinoma in situ was just an earlier stage of invasive carcinoma. He chose to treat them the same which led his colleagues to think he was a "mad man". He set out to find a way to prove his theory and save more lives.
Dr. George Papanicolaou
was a Greek researcher who invented the Pap Smear during the 1940s. The pap smear test involves using a tool to scrapecells off a woman's cervix and looking at them under a microscope to see if there are any cancerous/precancerous cells. Papanicolaou thought that he would be able to reduce the cervical cancer death rate for women by 70% with the use of his test. There were two problems standing in his way. First, his test would be most effective at reducing the death rate if used before symptoms developed. Unfortunately, many people during the 1940's and '50s only went to their doctors when they were ill. Second, some doctors did not know what healthy cells looked like and what cancerous /precancerous cells looked like,