The response to Jade Goody’s death has, predictably, been split between the mawkish and the cruel. So on the one hand, you have people who never knew her writing messages about angels in heaven and leaving flowers outside her house  (why? why?); and on the other, you have other people who also didn’t know her lining up to tell you that they don’t care one iota and she was a nasty piece of work, anyway. What kind of person is it who feels such a need to speak ill of the dead that they go onto the Internet to broadcast their feelings to the world? Both responses are two sides of the same coin: an inability to distinguish between reality and soap opera. Goody’s illness and death have been treated as if they belonged to a character in EastEnders, not a real 27-year old woman.

The worst aspect of all this, though, is the way that, as usual, the media has seized on an atypical occurrence to whip up support for a cause of dubious value – in this case, the idea that regular cervical screening should be made available on the NHS to women under 25.

It sounds so good, doesn’t it? We can all tut in outrage at the failure of the NHS to save lives by refusing to screen under-25s. Yet another example of this penny-pinching government’s desire to save money, we moan. In fact, the truth is much more complicated – as it is with virtually every kind of screening you care to name, including screening for breast cancer and prostate cancer.

Cervical cancer is relatively rare: it kills 1000 women a year in the UK. (That compares with 12,000 breast cancer deaths and 35,000 lung cancer deaths annually.) Fewer than 10 of those are women under the age of 25. About 20 of those are women aged between 25 and 30. The group that has most deaths (more than 100) is the over-85s.

Think about how much it would cost to screen all those thousands of young women, and the needless treatment of abnormalities that would never have developed into cancer (young women are much more likely to have “false positive” outcomes than older women from screening) – all in order to save 10 lives. Then think of all the other ways that money could be spent, whether it’s educating people about how to protect themselves against the risk of cancer, or providing better care for people who are genuinely sick. It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?