4 ms·
> enough to give regular, monthly scans to a billion people. There is a part of me that thinks it would be cool to get cheap full body scans. I like being able
by Aurornis 5mo ago
> enough to give regular, monthly scans to a billion people.
There is a part of me that thinks it would be cool to get cheap full body scans. I like being able to see inside of myself. I can think of a lot of situations where the low-fidelity images coming out of this (they're not good compared to real medical imaging, if you've ever looking at MRI/CT up close) could be useful for coarse analysis of certain conditions that come and go or need to be monitored over long periods of time.
What I don't like is the idea of getting people to do full body scans every month just to be safe. This might sound like a good idea if you haven't looked at the literature on preventative full body imaging. Looking for bad things inside the body sounds like a great idea on the surface.
The problem is that imaging, especially when it's as rough as these ultrasounds, and possibly worse when augmented by AI guessing at what it's seeing, can lead to a lot of unnecessary procedures. The net effect can even become more harmful than the number of real problems it catches. There's a long history of research on this as many companies have tried to commercialize full-body scanning in the past. It frequently leads to situations where there's an unknown or ambiguous spot on the imaging that the person reading the scan can't rule out, which turns into a lot of anxiety and eventually more imaging, biopsies, or unnecessary surgeries. It's easy to think "better safe than sorry" until you realize how often these benign but ambiguous findings show up on full body imaging.
So my initial thoughts on this are that it would be good to make cheap ultrasonic imaging accessible as an as-needed service to use for specific conditions. I do not think it's a good idea to go down the road of trying to scan the entire population once a month and then run it through AI to see if anything pops up. The number of false positives would be overwhelming and lead to a lot of unnecessary procedures to calm the resulting anxieties.
- Veedrac 5mo agoThis style of argument has always bothered me, because the correction to misdiagnosis or mistreatment is not to stop looking, it's _git gud_. For sure, we have to be realistic about what processes will systematically have error, and if we can't stop a doctor from doing bad things with a piece of data we should shield them from it, but the tools to make scalable, calibrated risk estimates based on large data dumps is getting better every year.
- swyx 5mo agoexactly correct. if a bit of knowledge is dangerous, the correct response is not to choose ignorance, it is to get more knowledge about what dangers arise and problemsolve some more there. run it out a few hundred years and it is then no longer dangerous, and strictly better than ignorance.
- bonsai_spool 5mo ago> it's _git gud_ There are physical limits to detection and technical parameters that make some situations indeterminate even for the best of the 'gud'. It is frustrating that, hearing an argument from many different individuals over a long time, you assume that each speaker is missing the critical insight that you possess. > but the tools to make scalable, calibrated risk estimates based on large data dumps is getting better every year. So your suggestion for indeterminate scans is more scans? There is no 'large data dump' personalized to you except for your own imaging. > if we can't stop a doctor from doing bad things with a piece of data we should shield them from it The doctor isn't the problem, it's the people who would be seeking out monthly imaging without symptoms
- bastawhiz 5mo agoI go to the doctor every year for a checkup without symptoms. Why a year? Why not every six months? Two weeks? Day? If the false positive rate is demonstrably low, I can't see the risk. People who think they need a doctor will go to a doctor with or without a fancy scan. People who want to play armchair physician will play armchair physician with or without a fancy scan.
- bonsai_spool 5mo agoYou can get scans without your normal doctor recommending them. The point is that there is evidence that scans obtained ‘just because’ are harmful as they lead to unnecessary procedures at the population level
- senordevnyc 5mo ago
- mcphage 5mo ago> The number of false positives would be overwhelming and lead to a lot of unnecessary procedures to calm the resulting anxieties. If the scans are cheap and fast enough, the solution is to not do anything until you’ve observed the mass in question grow over time, not just be there.
- Marha01 5mo agoThis. The solution to all these "but what about spurious results" arguments is pretty obvious: Wait for some time, scan again, compare the results. We currently can't do this only because the required frequent scans are not cheap enough to do it en masse, so the scanning demands for masses of spurious results would overwhelm the system. Once cheap scanning (and actually good AI interpretation) becomes ubiquitous, this ceases to be an issue.
- toasty228 5mo agoI love how people wait for some kind of technological God or magic silver bullet to """cure""" them, but when it comes to eating clean, exercising, not sitting 8 hours in front of a fucking screen every single day, getting good sleep, and all the other low hanging fruits you can act on right now, it's radio silence even though it would solves the majority of health issues