Dr. Peter McKenna:

The false negatives will come out when we look at the 209 cases to see which laboratories were responsible. This is complex to do because it depends on when the laboratory concerned came on board and when it left. Not all laboratories started and left at the same time. If a laboratory started early and reported a smear as negative, the patient will have had a longer time to develop a cancer. It is complicated to work out. It is not just a matter of seeing if all of the laboratories are represented proportionately in the number of smear tests they did but when they started doing them. That will be looked at. I could eyeball it - I have - but it will need more complex analysis than I could give it. It is not simple to do.