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I don't know why this comment is downvoted. Let me elaborate a little on what I think they meant. All the risks associated with false positives (other than the
by solveit 4y ago
I don't know why this comment is downvoted. Let me elaborate a little on what I think they meant.
All the risks associated with false positives (other than the side effects of actually drawing blood once a year, which I think is negligible) can be removed by simply not overreacting. Find a cancer? Well, consider not subjecting yourself to chemo just to get rid of it. Some cancers will kill you by winter, some will just stay there until you die of something else. How will we know which is which? By testing lots of people over long periods of time to see what's harmless and what's actually really bad. Or as the previous commenter said: "That's the whole point of establishing a baseline."
- arcticbull 4y agoThe parents premise is wrong. You can't just "establish a better baseline" and "if the test says you might have cancer don't worry about it maybe?" The former is hampered by base rate fallacy [1] (specifically the part about disease in a low-incidence population) and the in the latter, if you're going to disregard the outcome why are you testing? A concrete example is the NHS recommends against the PSA prostate cancer antigen screening test completely for everyone of any age because this test does more harm than good. They have a good write-up on why. [2] Generally I agree this data should be collected, but aggregated and not used for individual treatments. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy [2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prostate-cancer/psa-testing/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prostate-cancer/psa-testing/
- tedunangst 4y agoI guess I should have been more clear that by establishing a baseline I did not mean take one test and then have surgery.