A Test May Not Be Best
Early Test for Cancer Isn’t Always Best Course
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/health/12well.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
“Sometimes what you don’t know might end up being better for you.”
“For years patients have been told that early cancer detection saves lives. Find the cancer before the symptoms appear, the thinking goes, and you’ve got a better chance of beating the disease.”
“So it might have seemed surprising last week when a panel of leading medical experts offered exactly the opposite advice.”
…
“‘Screening tests don’t only pick up life-threatening cancers, they pick up tumors that look identical to traditional tumors, but they don’t have the same biologic behavior,’ said Dr. Barry Kramer, associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health. ‘Some are so slow growing they never would have caused medical problems in the person’s natural life span.’”
“By being so aggressive with so many people, did we do the right thing? I don’t know that it’s going to turn out that way.”
Guesswork.
When someone tells you are sick and going to die, you start to think they must be right.
The worry and stress involved in testing is enough to make one sick as well.
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