I’m married to someone running various prostate cancer studies in the UK. I hear the arguments against screening a lot and the issue really blew up recently in the news here.
The thing is, when researchers talk about “worse outcomes” they’re often comparing survival (or rather lack of) against terrible side-effects.
What this fails entirely to capture is that doing something to increase your odds of survival, damn the consequences, is an individual choice. It shouldn’t be up to a health economist to make that judgement.
> What this fails entirely to capture is that doing something to increase your odds of survival, damn the consequences, is an individual choice.
What you're failing to capture is that this is a hard problem because it's both an individual choice and a collective one as well. Those "terrible side effects" might actually end up killing someone. You're choosing between a high-chance lottery on a small population or a low chance lottery on a far larger one. It's not that simple.
Every choice carries a ripple. Survival isn’t just personal, it’s strategic. Operatives plan knowing their move can save or cost more than just themselves.
Population level policy optimizes averages. Individuals optimize their own risk tolerance.
The real lesson is this. Never outsource life changing decisions to systems built for efficiency. Think independently. Act intentionally. Build that mindset at foundniche.
The thing is, when researchers talk about “worse outcomes” they’re often comparing survival (or rather lack of) against terrible side-effects.
What this fails entirely to capture is that doing something to increase your odds of survival, damn the consequences, is an individual choice. It shouldn’t be up to a health economist to make that judgement.