The Hidden Problems of Early Cancer Detection
Cancer experts are increasingly arguing that the benefits of early detection are often overstated and its harms underplayed
On October 23, tech investor Andrew Wilkinson tweeted an MRI image of a cross-section of his body, including his lungs, spinal column, and musculature. The picture’s caption name-checked Prenuvo, a Vancouver-based diagnostic clinic offering scans like his at prices ranging between approximately $760 and $1,900.
“Wild numbers,” he wrote. “Out of 1,000 people scanned, 44 will have cancer, often in a treatable stage. Worth doing.”
The fury of public health Twitter was swift and unsparing. “Terrible idea,” “ridiculously unethical,” and “wildly irresponsible,” wrote respondents identifying themselves as doctors. “The ratio of tech bros commenting about how this is brilliant, amazing, or the ‘wave of the future’ versus the actual physicians commenting on how there are serious and concerning potential downstream consequences to such over testing, over diagnosis, and over treatment is wild,” tweeted Dr. Taylor Nichols, who identifies himself as an emergency medicine physician.
Reached by phone a few weeks later, Andrew Lacy, Prenuvo’s CEO, was magnanimous in his assessment of how his company’s…
