It is a fundamental principle of rationality that having better information should not put you in a worse position. The article quotes Dr. Kenneth Offit, the c

It is a fundamental principle of rationality that having better information should not put you in a worse position. The article quotes Dr. Kenneth Offit, the chief of clinical genetics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center saying these tests "because they could be tested, not necessarily because they should be”. I think this is representative of the attitude of the larger medical community; they're used to performing tests in response to something, and if they find something, they follow a protocol dictating the steps to be performed in response. I've heard a similar argument against full-body scans, saying that if a lump is detected, it is likely benign, but it has to be investigated lest the doctor become subject to a malpractice suit in the future. This is the case even if the expected benefit of a biopsy is negative due to the low likelihood of malignancy and the side-effects of a biopsy. Fundamentally, medicine needs to change. In principle, doctors should choose their course of action based on the expected outcome, incorporating all available information. In many cases this action will be to do nothing. As more information is gathered by the medical community as a whole about, for example, the causitive relation between certain genes and diseases, the underlying models dictating the appropriate action can be updated. Unfortunately, until doctors believe they can take no action if they think it best without being threatened by litigation, we're going to be subject to this problem.