However, what happened now is that we have a great increase in autism, and it does not have the effect of lowering the source of making children better. We should see a a little happier population, but all we see is worse mental health. We did something good, but there was no evidence that it was active.
The reason it does not work is because when you go to the very light head of a common behavioral or learning problem, you have an act of balancing the benefits of being diagnosed with help you can get, and the limitations of being diagnosed, which tells a child that they have an abnormal brain. What does that do with the belief of a child in himself? How do it discriminate against them? How does it affect their identity formation? We think it will be helpful to tell children this, but the statistics and results show that it is not helpful.
You are also worried about another aspect of diagnosis, which is too much. An example you give in the book related to modern cancer screening programs detects the disease at the stage earlier and lighter. But so far there is very little evidence that these are really beneficial for patients.
Each cancer screening program will lead to some people treated when they do not need treatment. That will always be the case. What we are very wonderful is that we want to make sure we keep the number of people being overdeated and the number of people who need treatment. However, the more you are sensitive to those tests, the more you are diagnosed with your friends. I have read in a cochane's review that if you screen 2,000 women, you will save a life and you treat somewhere between 10 or 20 women. You are always treated too much more than life that you really save. So propose that we should do more of these tests before we complete the tests we don't make sense to me.
I perform many brain scannings a week and many of them show random findings. Although I was a neuroscientist and I saw the brain scan all the time, I didn't know what to do with half of them. We do not know how to explain these scanners correctly. We need to pay more attention to detect symptoms early, instead of trying to detect diseases without symptoms that may never progress.
In some cancers, basic cancer, for example, patients can choose Wait Instead of treatment. Should this be the standard for early detection?
If you will go to the screening and I don't want people not to see the proposed projections, you need to understand what is uncertain and realize that you don't have to panic. Of course, as soon as you hear there are some cancer cells, panic begins and you want it out and you want the maximum number of treatment. But really, in medicine, many decisions can be slowly made. There are programs waiting for vigilance.
I want to propose to everyone that, before you go to the screening, know these uncertainties exist, so you can decide before the test is positive about what you think you may want to do, and then you can take the time to think about it later and you can ask a waiting program.
I think one of the solutions will be calling for these abnormal cells we find when screening something other than cancer. The moment you hear from there, the immediate reaction of everyone is to take it out, because otherwise they think they will die for it. Waiting for caution is just something that people find it difficult to do.
Listen to Suzanne O'Sullivan talking at Wired health On March 18 at Kings Place, London. Get tickets at Health.Wired.com.