Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
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Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#2[deleted]
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#3This is the pertinent quote:
> “Cancer screening was never really designed to increase longevity. Screenings are really designed to decrease premature deaths from cancer.” Explained another way, Dahut said, if a person’s life expectancy at birth was 80, a cancer screening may prevent their premature death at 65, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean they’d live to be 90 instead of the predicted 80.
Personally I think this is just a matter of terminology in public health not necessarily aligning with our intuitive understanding. I presume most people would think that preventing a shortening of lifespan is prolonging your life, but the article makes clear that they are different.
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#4[dead]
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#5This is the pertinent quote: > “Cancer screening was never really designed to increase longevity. Screenings are really designed to decrease premature deaths from cancer.” Explained another way, Dahut said, if a person’s life expectancy at birth was 80, a cancer screening may prevent their premature death at 65, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean they’d live to be 90 instead of the predicted 80. Personally I think this…
So they increase your lifespan probabilistically, but not in any terms you can measure. That said, the article's points about the costs of screening is valid and interesting. False negatives, false positives, time and money, those are absolutely real costs and worth taking into account.
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#6This is the pertinent quote: > “Cancer screening was never really designed to increase longevity. Screenings are really designed to decrease premature deaths from cancer.” Explained another way, Dahut said, if a person’s life expectancy at birth was 80, a cancer screening may prevent their premature death at 65, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean they’d live to be 90 instead of the predicted 80. Personally I think this…
They are conflating cancer survival rates with longevity.
When has someone claimed that treating cancer would increase life expectancy above the average?
This is a dangerous article. People don't need more reasons to avoid cancer screenings.
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#7An excellent episode of EconTalk came out today on this very subject:
Open: https://simplecast.econtalk.org/episodes/vinay-prasad-on-can...
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/econtalk/id135066958?i...
Highly recommend the episode and show. The gist is that cancer is only 4% of deaths, and screening only reduces those 4% by 20% (so it does not help whatsoever 80% of cancers). But there is a lot more to the episode.
The most important thing you need to do to prevent early death is reduce heart attack and stroke, and that requires better diet and exercise. Really the best drug of all is diet and exercise.
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#8This is the pertinent quote: > “Cancer screening was never really designed to increase longevity. Screenings are really designed to decrease premature deaths from cancer.” Explained another way, Dahut said, if a person’s life expectancy at birth was 80, a cancer screening may prevent their premature death at 65, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean they’d live to be 90 instead of the predicted 80. Personally I think this…
They are conflating cancer survival rates with longevity. When has someone claimed that treating cancer would increase life expectancy above the average? This is a dangerous article. People don't need more reasons to avoid cancer screenings.
It looks like they were comparing a group that got screening vs a group that didn’t get screening. If the group that got screening didn’t live longer than the group that didn’t get screening, that seems like a lot of wasted dollars.
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#9This is the pertinent quote: > “Cancer screening was never really designed to increase longevity. Screenings are really designed to decrease premature deaths from cancer.” Explained another way, Dahut said, if a person’s life expectancy at birth was 80, a cancer screening may prevent their premature death at 65, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean they’d live to be 90 instead of the predicted 80. Personally I think this…
If we are avoiding premature deaths for a subset of the population, wouldn't that by definition increase average life expectancy?
Re: Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds
#10I am skeptical of the implied lesson of this analysis—and it is a meta-analysis of other research, not an original study.
Just take as given that the analysis is correct, and screening for rare Disease A on net has no effect on life expectancy. Almost no one actually gets Disease A, but everyone is screened for it, and that has some diffuse cost to life expectancy: Screen enough people enough times and someone will die in a car accident on the way to or from the doctor's office. More likely the screening crowds out other more net-beneficial medical testing or is taken as some false comfort to continue an unhealthy lifestyle.
Modern cancer treatment, especially for the most common types (i.e. the most likely to be screened for) is very good, even if the cancer is caught later due to lack of screening. So even the folks who catch it early due to screening don't incur a benefit in many cases, further pushing down the life-expectancy win on average.
Still: This is like saying home insurance is a bad deal because on average the insurance companies make money. Screening is an insurance policy (not a free one, to be sure) against a catastrophic outcome.
If you're a public health authority in a utilitarian and budget-constrained mindset, sure, don't encourage screenings by the logic and findings of this analysis. But I don't think individuals should consider on-average-LE-negative screenings as something to avoid.