Rather than dealing with the issue—hypochondriacs or whatever—you prefer to remove the option for the non-hypochondriacs?

The fact that doctors like your wife think that people who are concerned about their health and want more information is a problem tells me everything I need to know about your (and her) worldview. You've dressed it up as being pragmatic, but the reality is that you're arguing for censorship and against freedom of information.

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Barrin92 7 hours ago | parent [-]

>that people who are concerned about their health and want more information is a problem

It is a problem because there's evidence based standards for when examinations are indicated and prolong or improve a person's life. You being extremely concerned doesn't move that needle and subjecting you to tests simply because you're anxious is blatantly unethical and harmful to your psychological wellbeing.

And nope this isn't censorship, it's being mathematically literate and understanding how data production works. Here's an actual real world example. There are aids tests that are 99% accurate. About 30 in 1000 people in the US have AIDS. 99/1 is great odds, let's test everyone, data doesn't hurt right? Except as it turns out if you test a thousand people randomly you'll have 10 false positives and 3 people with AIDS, Bayes in action.

So if you sent every American through body scanners, which are less reliable than that test btw, you'd have quite literally millions of people in follow up procedures for diseases they do not have with their mental health ruined and the system ground to a halt, because producing information is not always the right thing to do.

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nihonde an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Something doesn't add up. The entire Japanese healthcare system is built around the idea that preventative testing for asymptomatic conditions is effective. You can read all about it, if you want.

Personally, I think you've swallowed some kind of health insurance industry black pill, whether you know it or not.

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davidivadavid 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's definitely an important point to consider, in fact something I think everyone in these conversations should be cognizant of, and also why it makes me believe the actual conversation should move to whether the device improves false positives/negatives rates or not (or at least has a chance to), which then might warrant wider access/use.

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runako 6 hours ago | parent [-]

A better question is if people are going high-res, why not go high-res with tests whose accuracy is known, and for which there are useful, data-driven treatments?

Instead of casting a net of unknown quality every month, comparing against a null dataset (there does not exist a large dataset of these scans with outcomes for given markers).

Why not advocate cheap, easy blood/urine tests with higher frequency? Those tests do have large reference datasets with outcomes. And they have prescriptive value: there is likely more benefit to catching hypertension or diabetes earlier in more people.

	▲	davidivadavid 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		True, though those things don't have to be mutually exclusive.