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> I’ve never been given a cancer diagnosis, but I’d imagine it’s much, much worse to be told you have stage 4 cancer versus stage 1. It's bad all the way. > I
by rackjack 5y ago
> I’ve never been given a cancer diagnosis, but I’d imagine it’s much, much worse to be told you have stage 4 cancer versus stage 1.
It's bad all the way.
> If you are one of the people with a false positive, you schedule a follow-up and move on accordingly.
People already do schedule follow-ups and additional tests and second opinions when they get a positive.
> Your position is anti-progress just for the sake of being against accidentally scaring a few people.
No, it is cautiously ethical because:
1. You probably shouldn't tell sub-1.5 million people who don't have cancer that they have cancer
2. There are more false positives than you think, if you are suggesting regular blood tests
- ericd 5y agoMy impression is that yours is the consensus view in the medical community. But I think that what all these people are telling you is that they'd much rather have a much higher chance of a false positive stage 1 diagnosis than even a much lower chance of false negative diagnosis until they're at stage 4. And any positive result from this would obviously be couched in a doctor consult saying "if you have cancer, which this test doesn't definitively show, it's still very early, we're just going to keep an eye on it, we didn't get any confirmation from a chest x-ray or CT", etc And having a memento mori can be a positive thing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]