If money was no object, should you run every medical test?
Medlife Crisis2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2019–2024
explainer · general · evergreen · 2019–2024 on HN
A doctor from Medlife Crisis explains in under three minutes why even a rich patient should not simply order every medical test, touching on pre-test probability and Bayesian reasoning. False positives make blanket testing counterproductive.
HN people link it as a short, funny and accurate explanation of why over-testing and over-screening can do harm.
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3 comments from Hacker News
An under 3-minute video by a funny and informative doctor explaining this (youtube handle "medlife crisis"): ▶ this video
There's a great (and short) video suggesting why it's not a good idea to run as many medical tests as possible, and it's not because of the cost: ▶ this video
I get your point, however I think there are a few confounding things. For a lot of people, if you get a positive result from a test that a doctor brushes off that's not going to go well. I'm very much in favor of more testing personally, there are almost certainly folks who're on SSRIs who'd benefit more from Vit D/Mg supplementation for example. Another thing I seem to remember in his video was that a tumor is not necessarily dangerous. Out of a hundred (say) tumors in a person's life, only maybe 5 are risky. But I'm paraphrasing this badly. Edit: ▶ this video is one of the videos, however I think he's talked about this more (likely on instagram or another video too).