A study published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine looked at Stage II cervical cancer as the outcome and found that testing for HPV DNA was about twice as accurate as Pap smears. Pap smears will "soon be of mainly historical interest" says a Professor of Gynecology at Stanford Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/health/07virus.html?partner=rss&emc=rs... Don't tell that to laypeople just yet. There are plenty of stories of fortuitous finds on Pap smears.