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PaperclipPerfector  21hr ago (text post)   687 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 16, 2026

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About halfway through The Age of Diagnosis.

I went into the chapters on "long Covid" and autism pretty much knowing what to expect, and I wasn't disappointed. But I was genuinely surprised to hear that cancer screenings exhibit no net increase on all-cause mortality.

But I was genuinely surprised to hear that cancer screenings exhibit no net increase on all-cause mortality.

Zero chance this is the case.

While it's true you can find some research for some screening that aligns with this, anyone broadly making this claim without excessive qualification of the claim should be assumed to be a crank.

Ex: PMCID: PMC4412262

The claim in the book is heavily qualified, I was hastily summarising.

Link

The overall observed decline in CRC [colorectal cancer] mortality was 26% for 1975–2000. The model predicted that, with only changes in risk factors, CRC mortality would have decreased by 9%, explaining 35% of the observed mortality decline. Screening was estimated to have decreased mortality by another 14%, explaining 53% of the mortality reduction, while treatment added another 3% decline, explaining the final 12% of the observed decline in CRC mortality.

These modeling results strongly suggest that approximately 50% of the decline in CRC incidence and mortality between1975 and 2000 could be due to CRC screening. We have now used a similar analysis for the time period up to 2010 and again estimated that CRC screening likely accounts for about 50% of the reduction in CRC mortality over the more recent period.

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