3 ms·

I think I’ll pass on being a beta tester. Sounds like there’s a lot of risk from unnecessary intervention.

jabits 7y ago
Only if you act on it. Just because you know or suspect something doesn’t mean you have to do something about it.
jcims 7y ago
My wife had multiple softball sized tumors growing in her abdomen for months/years that would have easily been detected by something like this. Instead they burst and metastasized and now we're a million dollars deep into medical treatments and still nothing remotely resembling a guarantee of resolution. You can always choose not to act on what you learn. You can't act on what you don't know.
- catalogia 7y ago
  > You can always choose not to act on what you learn. You can't act on what you don't know. You can also act on what you think you know but in fact don't. False negatives kill people but so can false positives.
  - jcims 7y ago
    What are the numbers though? Having unnecessary procedures done because of false positives from a screening test can absolutely kill people, but so can wearing a seatbelt. People drown and burn up all the time because they couldn't get out of a wrecked vehicle. There is presently some set of screening tests with varying levels of sensitivity and specificity, and they aren't all appropriate for mass screening. However, if millions of people started regularly getting non-ionizing imaging done through MRI or ultrasound or infrared or whatever, we would learn a shitload about predicting maladies and likely save quite a few more people than we kill in the process.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      > What are the numbers though? I couldn't say, but I wage the medical science community / industry is cognizant of the phenomena and, not being an expert in the field myself, I trust them to handle the matter reasonably. In the specific case of breast cancer, I've heard that the cost of false positives is high enough to be a major consideration in recommended breast cancer screening schedules.
- jturpin 7y ago
  Yeah I'm on your side here. This fear of AI medicine creating false positives that overwhelm hospitals and doctors and cause unnecessary and risky surgery is one of those ideas I see floating around comments here and there, and it doesn't seem to be backed in anything tangible. I mean maybe it's a concern, but it also seems like that if it ever happened, we'd adjust for it quickly.

Only if you act on it. Just because you know or suspect something doesn’t mean you have to do something about it.

My wife had multiple softball sized tumors growing in her abdomen for months/years that would have easily been detected by something like this. Instead they burst and metastasized and now we're a million dollars deep into medical treatments and still nothing remotely resembling a guarantee of resolution. You can always choose not to act on what you learn. You can't act on what you don't know.

catalogia 7y ago
> You can always choose not to act on what you learn. You can't act on what you don't know. You can also act on what you think you know but in fact don't. False negatives kill people but so can false positives.
- jcims 7y ago
  What are the numbers though? Having unnecessary procedures done because of false positives from a screening test can absolutely kill people, but so can wearing a seatbelt. People drown and burn up all the time because they couldn't get out of a wrecked vehicle. There is presently some set of screening tests with varying levels of sensitivity and specificity, and they aren't all appropriate for mass screening. However, if millions of people started regularly getting non-ionizing imaging done through MRI or ultrasound or infrared or whatever, we would learn a shitload about predicting maladies and likely save quite a few more people than we kill in the process.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    > What are the numbers though? I couldn't say, but I wage the medical science community / industry is cognizant of the phenomena and, not being an expert in the field myself, I trust them to handle the matter reasonably. In the specific case of breast cancer, I've heard that the cost of false positives is high enough to be a major consideration in recommended breast cancer screening schedules.
jturpin 7y ago
Yeah I'm on your side here. This fear of AI medicine creating false positives that overwhelm hospitals and doctors and cause unnecessary and risky surgery is one of those ideas I see floating around comments here and there, and it doesn't seem to be backed in anything tangible. I mean maybe it's a concern, but it also seems like that if it ever happened, we'd adjust for it quickly.