By Josh Fischman
Evita's Cancer
The silence surrounding cervical cancer a generation ago is giving way to an era of increased communication—and optimism
By Josh Fischman
Things developed more slowly in Argentina. The first medical lecture on the Pap smear wasn’t until 1946 in Buenos Aires. Public health messages about the test didn’t start until 1950, with one small pamphlet. Lerner says there’s doubt whether Perón or her physicians had heard of the value of the test.
She certainly didn’t know about it during her youth. Born poor in 1919 in a small town, she rose to become a well-known actress in radio soap operas and movies. She met her husband, politician Juan Perón, when she was 24. Wildly popular among Argentina’s poor, the “shirtless ones,” Eva Perón once said, “Like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.” Indeed, she organized a mass demonstration that freed her future husband from arrest in 1945 and helped elect him to the presidency the following year. By 1951, her political power had grown so enormous that she was pushed to run for vice president.
But her strength and popularity didn’t protect her from disease. In 1950, she fainted during a public appearance. She had an appendectomy, says Lerner, but she remained weak. The next year she fainted again, and an examination showed vaginal bleeding and cervical cancer. “At that point it was probably stage III, which is rather advanced,” Lerner says. Sadly, this wasn’t unusual for Argentine women at the time. Less than one-third of those with cervical cancer were diagnosed at an early stage; most had late-stage cases.
It wasn’t simply the lack of a medical test that stood in the way of early cancer detection. There were social and cultural factors as well. “Modesty was important to women. Why let your doctor poke around you in an intimate way when you feel perfectly well?” Lerner says. This is something that Karlan still sees, even in the U.S. “Whether it’s because these organs are related to sex, or because they’re tucked away and we don’t see them, people don’t like to talk about them,” she says. “Right now, people are pretty comfortable talking about breasts and breast exams. But cervixes are not cocktail-party conversation.”
Eva Perón had radiation treatment, but it was primarily to stop her bleeding and keep her stable. Meanwhile, her husband searched for a surgeon to save her.
But the basic fact that she needed surgery for cancer was kept secret, hidden from both the public and the patient. The Argentine president arranged for a clandestine visit from George Pack, a surgeon at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City, known today as the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Nicknamed “Pack the Knife,” he was renowned for his success
with difficult surgeries. In Buenos Aires in November 1951, after Eva Perón had gone under anesthesia, the doctor entered the room to operate. He performed a hysterectomy and removed lymph nodes, then left the room before his patient woke up. She thought another doctor had performed the operation.
The pain returned in early 1952, and a biopsy showed that the cancer was back as well. It spread rapidly. Eva Perón died, as her country cried, on July 26.