ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the need, or otherwise, of General Practitioners (GPs) to involve themselves in care of populations rather than individuals. It looks at cervical screening, which forms a large part of the work of the primary healthcare team. The ultimate aim of screening is to reduce risks of illness to individuals and to populations. The chapter reviews the reasons to screen populations from the moral as well as the practical point of view. Whether prevention is actually better than cure is a question that needs to be addressed from the ethical perspective, as well as the practical. Screening is used as a vehicle to try to answer it. Genetic screening of populations, with population manipulation as a consequence, would render people less varied and diverse. A harm is more subtle and is related to the tendency of screening procedures to aim primarily at human longevity.
