Molnan t1_iuk8n2i wrote
Reply to comment by Mokebe890 in A blood test that screens for multiple cancers at once promises to boost early detection, but the healthcare system may not be ready for the results by globehater
You are not missing the point. There's a myth going around in health-related media that too much testing can be a bad thing. Assuming the tests themselves are harmless (and they do, that's not the issue), that's total nonsense, of course, because you can always get the "less testing" alleged advantage by simply not reading the results of some tests.
IIRC, the source of this myth is a study in the UK on the effects of a program for mass periodic testing for uterine cancer (or something like that). The tests were done, I think, every 3 years or so, which meant that most detected tumors were benign, because most aggressive tumors gave symptoms before they were detected in routine tests. So many women were having surgeries they didn't need, and few benefited from early detection of aggressive tumors. I'm quoting from memory, so take it with a grain of salt, but I think that's the gist of it.
You see how dumb it is to say this was a problem of "too much testing", right?
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