The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth. Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Too much screening has misled us about real cancer risk factors
The best-known downside of cancer screening, such as PSA tests for
prostate cancer and mammograms for breast cancer, is that they often
flag cancers that pose no risk, leading to over-diagnosis and
unnecessary, even harmful,
treatment. But widespread screening for "scrutiny-dependent" cancers -
those for which the harder you look the more you find, and the more of
what you find is harmless - causes another problem, two leading cancer
experts argue in a paper published on Monday:
increasing the apparent incidence of some cancers. That in turn is
misleading doctors and the public about what increases people's risk of
developing cancers - or at least the types of cancer that matter.
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