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Maybe I've misunderstood something, but how can they know the accuracy of the test? It is the best test out there, so if it misses a diagnosis, how do they reliably catch the false negative?
If the patient forgets to follow-up. Badum tss. Thanks for the layup.
“We have no cure. I don’t want to know.” If astronomers announced that a large asteroid might strike Earth in twenty years, and that we currently had no way to deflect it, nobody would respond by saying, “Come back when you already have the rocket.” We would immediately build better telescopes to track it precisely, refine its trajectory models, and begin developing propulsion systems capable of interception. You do…
Imagine you're born and you eventually learn that there's an asteroid on a collision course with earth, from way before you were born. It's going to take many years to get here and you may die before it hits and so far no scientists have been able to come up with a way to deflect it. Do you care?
Adding newness to the situation makes it wildly different.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This again? The test is optional. Feel free to skip it. Tell 50 million people they’re likely to have Alzheimer’s then tell them where to donate towards a cure, or treatments to slow it by a decade.
> Tell 50 million people they’re likely to have Alzheimer’s then tell them where to donate towards a cure, or treatments to slow it by a decade. Pharmaceutical companies have spent something like $50 billion on developing Alzheimer's drugs with, well, the most furtive of straw-grasping to show for it. It's probably the most expensive single disease target (especially as things like cancer are families of diseases)...…
Someone always says “merely throwing money at the problem…”
What time period was the money spent? The last 25 years?
The United States spends $1 trillion a year in debt interest. $50 billion is nothing
“We have no cure. I don’t want to know.” If astronomers announced that a large asteroid might strike Earth in twenty years, and that we currently had no way to deflect it, nobody would respond by saying, “Come back when you already have the rocket.” We would immediately build better telescopes to track it precisely, refine its trajectory models, and begin developing propulsion systems capable of interception. You do…
This is absolutely nothing like the asteroid example, where knowing that anybody is going to fall victim to it would itself be news of astronomical proportions. Previously there was a high chance the event wouldn't happen, and now it seems likely it will, so that entirely change the calculus of your priorities.
This just completely destroys the analogy. (There are other reasons it doesn't fit too, but one is enough.)
“We have no cure. I don’t want to know.” If astronomers announced that a large asteroid might strike Earth in twenty years, and that we currently had no way to deflect it, nobody would respond by saying, “Come back when you already have the rocket.” We would immediately build better telescopes to track it precisely, refine its trajectory models, and begin developing propulsion systems capable of interception. You do…
That's not what would happen. We wouldn't mobilize. We'd fragment. Within days, the prediction would be declared partisan. One bloc would call it settled science; another would call it statistical hysteria. Billionaires would quietly commission private shelters while publicly funding studies questioning whether the asteroid even qualified as "large." News panels would debate whether the projected impact zone was being unfairly politicized. Conspiracy channels would insist the asteroid was fabricated to justify global governance. Others would insist the real asteroid was being hidden. Amateur analysts would flood the internet with homemade trajectory charts proving the professionals wrong. Death threats would arrive in astronomers' inboxes faster than research grants.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to know so that I can make plans. Including end of life plans, in all senses.
Exactly - there are things that I would change now to make sure I make thing easier for myself and - more importantly - easier for the people around me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly - there are things that I would change now to make sure I make thing easier for myself and - more importantly - easier for the people around me.
Those plans should be in place regardless of the results of a blood test
I am absolutely not going to plan on a care facility right now. That sounds absolutely bogus.
“We have no cure. I don’t want to know.” If astronomers announced that a large asteroid might strike Earth in twenty years, and that we currently had no way to deflect it, nobody would respond by saying, “Come back when you already have the rocket.” We would immediately build better telescopes to track it precisely, refine its trajectory models, and begin developing propulsion systems capable of interception. You do…
This analogy has a rather fatal flaw, which is that we already know people who've gotten Alzheimer's , and we also know for a fact people will continue to fall victim to it, at a pretty predictable rate. i.e. the detection has already happened ! Anyone who was waiting for a potential victim to appear before researching the cure already has all the reasons they need to research it. Detecting whom exactly the next vict…
Alarm bells go up. 94.5% in itself is suspicious. It insinuates precision. I highly doubt you can go anywhere near 0.5% correctness.
Basically, almost everybody doesn't have Alzheimers. Sampling from the general population you can get better than 94.5% accuracy just by returning negative on every test. You have to know sensitivity and specificity separately to make any informed judgement ... which they try extremely hard not to tell you.