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I agree with your first paragraph. > On top of that, doesn't anyone else think this is a bad idea to try to test everyone for low incidence diseases? [..] You'
by cjbprime 12y ago
I agree with your first paragraph.
> On top of that, doesn't anyone else think this is a bad idea to try to test everyone for low incidence diseases? [..] You're guaranteeing that most of your positives are false positives.
Hm, it depends on the incidence, and the effect size of the disease you're screening for. Standard healthcare does tests for really low incidence diseases all the time -- for example, amniocentesis is commonly performed to test for a disease (Down's Syndrome) affecting <0.1% of babies, even though the test itself causes increased risk of miscarriage. Is looking for low-probability genetic disease and having to deal with false positives really much different/worse?
- aroch 12y agoThe Down's test is definitive, testing for low incidence issues isn't a problem when you can be 99.999....98% confident in your test. Or, more importantly, tests for low incidence occurrences are fine as long as your rate of incidence is substantially higher than your rate of false positive.