Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out • Hacker News Board

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#111

Post by TaupeRanger » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

Zenst wrote: post #12

Whole area of having tests that give definitive answers in the field of health is the one area in which it can't get enough of. Biggest issue health wise many have is time from issue to getting a correct diagnoses, whatever the ailment.

No, not according to the statistics. You are orders of magnitude more likely to be harmed from unnecessary diagnosis/treatment (including cost and psychological damage) than to be undiagnosed and have a worse outcome as a result. We find most things that we are capable of finding.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#112

Post by amluto » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #56

ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have heard your argument on the false positives and unnecessary interventions many times. It is not a good argument. In fact, it makes no sense. If you get a positive with an uncertainty in its accuracy, at the very least, the test is repeated. But even more, you can use the information from the investigation of the reason for the false positive to improve the tests in the first place. If we weren't humans and the un…

Your belief has no representation in medical science, which is mostly evidence based. A lot of data has been collected on this, studies (many) have been conducted and the general consensus is that more testing absent symptoms does not lead to improved patient outcomes. That you want to have some kind of theoretical argument in the face of this evidence might be interesting to you but it isn't to me.

You’re making an unwarranted assumption: that the choice is between early detection with current responses to detected cancers and no early detection at all. Optimizing the response to an early detection will give a result no worse than either of those, since the choices of what to do include doing whatever doctors did in the studies that have poor results as well as doing nothing at all.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#113

Post by plank_time » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #89

plank_time wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absolutely absurd thing to say. “We’ve never had blood tests that detect pancreatic cancer early, therefore we should never use them because when we used other means to try to detect early, it didn’t lead to better outcomes.” If you can detect colon, kidney pancreatic or liver cancer early, you might be able to do surgery or develop treatments at the stage 1 stage. Right now we don’t have anything except M…

But: that surgery is not without risk, and if there are no symptoms there is a fair chance that there never will be symptoms. Depending on your age and your genetic make-up you might be more or less at risk. There is such a thing as spontaneous remission and so on. So no, I'm not 'basically giving up', and no you won't die anyway (well, unless you take that in the most abstract way), in particular likely not from can…

Again, absolutely absurd. Many cancers have no symptoms until it’s too late. Do you even understand this? At that point the choices for treatment are extremely limited.

Even breast cancer needs x-rays to detect lumps, not detect cancer. You need a subsequent biopsy to differentiate. That’s our technology right now. If we had a blood test to detect cancer, not lumps, it’s game changing.

Maybe after a generation of early detection, new outcomes will emerge if we can detect the most deadly cancers early. You’re taking old studies and applying them to new technologies and saying “it won’t work.” It’s ridiculous that you are doing this.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#114

Post by dmichulke » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

cfontes wrote: post #35

londons_explore wrote: post #31

More technologies like this are coming... Is it worth taking blood samples now, keeping them in a freezer, and then waiting for the test tech to come so I can get it tested to see disease progression of whatever disease I get when I get older?

why would it matter desides for informational purposes?

In an extreme case you could prove that you had your "it kills you within the year" cancer already a few years ago.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#115

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

BallyBrain wrote: post #106

jacquesm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But: that surgery is not without risk, and if there are no symptoms there is a fair chance that there never will be symptoms. Depending on your age and your genetic make-up you might be more or less at risk. There is such a thing as spontaneous remission and so on. So no, I'm not 'basically giving up', and no you won't die anyway (well, unless you take that in the most abstract way), in particular likely not from can…

I don't see why early detection means early treatment. What if after detected, the illness is monitored instead. If it then gets to a point where the treatment is no longer considered risky for the stage of the illness, then the treatment can proceed. It would also give the person the opportunity to change lifestyle to perhaps prolong the time that the illness will become a problem, or perhaps halt its progress altog…

This is a tricky bit. There is a lot of interplay here between medical professionals and the general public, and not all of that is either rational or ethical. But absent symptoms non-treatment is better than treatment.

Data about unnecessary procedures is relatively plentiful, which is of course sad, whether that's driven by commercial incentives or the need for 'something to be done' is not something that I have any grip on but it certainly is problematic.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#116

Post by specialist » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #46

reacharavindh wrote: post #3

This is one of those medical revolutions that I am waiting dearly for. Facilities that are not hospitals(to avoid the risk of occupying medical devices that sick people need) built to _regulary_ check up otherwise healthy people for preventive care. Heck, I have so many alerts defined on my monitoring setup for servers to watch for signals of failure before they get too big. But, my own body is not observed until som…

Regularly checking people that are otherwise healthy for cancer will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives or slowly growing ones, will lead to a lot of unnecessary intervention and will in fact lead to a reduction in quality of life and lifespan. This is one of the reasons why exhaustive cancer screening (which was more costly in the past but could have been done) was not promoted, it had nothing to do wit…

> will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives

We will adjust. Examples: breast, cervical, prostate cancer.

Possible scenario: regular assessments every 2 years starting at age 18. Establishes your personal baseline. When something changes, you'll know.

It's better to know than not know.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#117

Post by laputan_machine » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:20 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #99

laputan_machine wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone who has no medical background, you are certainly spouting a lot of nonsense as if it was fact. The WHO, for example, disagree. https://www.who.int/activities/promoting-cancer-early-diagno...

The fact that you link to that and apparently do not understand it combined with a personal attack is enough to disregard your comment for me. But let me stress this in case it wasn't clear to you: screening and early diagnosis are not the same thing. If you screen a large population for cancer you will turn up a lot of cancers that may never become a problem, or that may even end up being re-absorbed without the nee…

You come in and flame other users, but then take deep offense when you get it back. Treat others with respect and in turn you'll receive it.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#118

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #89

plank_time wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absolutely absurd thing to say. “We’ve never had blood tests that detect pancreatic cancer early, therefore we should never use them because when we used other means to try to detect early, it didn’t lead to better outcomes.” If you can detect colon, kidney pancreatic or liver cancer early, you might be able to do surgery or develop treatments at the stage 1 stage. Right now we don’t have anything except M…

But: that surgery is not without risk, and if there are no symptoms there is a fair chance that there never will be symptoms. Depending on your age and your genetic make-up you might be more or less at risk. There is such a thing as spontaneous remission and so on. So no, I'm not 'basically giving up', and no you won't die anyway (well, unless you take that in the most abstract way), in particular likely not from can…

[deleted]

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#119

Post by TaupeRanger » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

hans1729 wrote: post #69

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #65

One of my great fears in life is that employers/insurers will impose this en masse on people, causing immeasurable harm to the mental health of people who can’t handle the anxiety that this type of approach to medicine would cause. I’m definitely a big proponent of evidence-based medicine and using it to help living quality life as long as possible, but this sort of thing would just wreck my day to day existence and…

One of your greatest fears in life is to be regularly checked for diseases that would end your life unless thy are detected in time? ...What? e: you mean the emotional distress caused by the process? But that's just in your head, and it's beyond irrational. Getting checked is inherently a good thing . Even if you are extremely anxious, the people who love you want you to live - this is a psychological problem that yo…

No, you are flat out wrong and anyone with an understanding of good health policy will understand this. Screening can lead to iatrogenics and unnecessary costs. It is not automatically a net gain, it has to PROVE that it makes patients live longer or better, just like any other intervention. And in many cases, screening policies actually make things worse for all kinds of reasons.

Re: Blood test that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

#120

Post by toomuchtodo » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #116

jacquesm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regularly checking people that are otherwise healthy for cancer will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives or slowly growing ones, will lead to a lot of unnecessary intervention and will in fact lead to a reduction in quality of life and lifespan. This is one of the reasons why exhaustive cancer screening (which was more costly in the past but could have been done) was not promoted, it had nothing to do wit…

> will turn up a lot of cancer through false positives We will adjust. Examples: breast, cervical, prostate cancer. Possible scenario: regular assessments every 2 years starting at age 18. Establishes your personal baseline. When something changes, you'll know. It's better to know than not know.

Next steps are mRNA vaccines and gene therapy for the cancers this detects. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.