Two L.A. doctors are showing that preventing cervical cancer in third world is very inexpensive

Until last September, Dr. Patricia Gordon was a successful radiation oncologist at the Beverly Hills Cancer Center on Wilshire Boulevard.

She now takes no salary working at a nonprofit with an annual budget of $400,000, operating out of a shared office space in Beverly Hills and spending much of her time navigating the bureaucracies of Third World ministries of health. 

Gordon also may hold one of the keys — along with her partner, Dr. Jennifer Lang — to fixing the global scourge of cervical cancer, a disease that kills more than 300,000 women each year worldwide, making it the second-most-deadly cancer among women, and one that overwhelmingly afflicts poor countries that don’t have the funding or trained medical personnel required for widespread use of the Pap smear, a routine test that can identify precancerous vaginal lesions and has rendered cervical cancer preventable in more affluent countries. 

The two doctors’ organization is called