Arthur B. Hunt

Infrequency of carcinoma of the uterine cervix among Jewish women

HAT carcinoma of the uterine cervix occurs with striking infrequency in Jewish women has been brought forth previously in several sta,tistical studies and reports.l-j In a recent analysis of 568 consecutive cases of carcinoma of the cervix encountered at the Mayo Clinic in the years 1938 to 1942, inclusive, and in which the diagnosis was proved at biopsy, it was found in. 566 instances that the expressed religious preference of the patient was specifically given as other than Jewish. The religious preference was taken to be equivalent to what sometimes is designated as race. In not a single instance was t.he religious preference stated as being Jewish. There were two instances in which it was impossible to classify the patient definitely as Jewish or non-Jewish since the religious preference was given by the patient as “none, or no preference.” In a small number of the 566 cases, in which it would ‘have been otherwise impossible to be sure, it was by the cooperation of the referring physician that it became definitely possible to classify the patient as non-Jewish; in the two doubtful instances mentioned, t,he referring physician was unable to help in definitely determining whether the patient was Jewish or non-Jewish. However, it can be definitely stated that in neither instance did it appear at all likely from the other available data that either of these two patients was Jewish. The impressive fact stands out that even if the two patients had been proved to have been Jewish, still the low incidence of Jewish women among patients with carcinoma of the uterine cervix would have been strikingly corroborated by this study. The estimated Jewish registration by per cent of total at the Clinic is approximately 7 to 8 per cent; the per cent of Jewish persons in the total population of the United States, as given in the World Almanac for 1945, is about 4 per cent. It is quite possible that one or more Jewish women of Christian religion have been encountered in this series without our knowing that they were Jewish, since it is estimated that about 4 per cent of the Jewish population, or 200,000, are Christians. On the basis of the 7 per cent mentioned in a preceding paragraph, one would have expected to find approximately forty Jewish women in our series; actually, as has been shown, there were no women in the group who were known to be Jewish and only two instances in which the religious and racial status of the patient was in doubt. References