[alexey-salmin]

> With my change: 95% of people who are shown scans have cancer and are treated earlier. 5% of people do not have cancer and get CT scans. 0.5% of people get useless biopsies Without my change: many of those 95% die, the 0.5% do not get useless biopsies

You assume that treating cancer automatically improves the outcome. Treating cancer often kills you, so treating a non-fatal tumor can easily be a bad decision. And a lot of the tumors found by agressive scans are like that, but we don't know yet how much exactly and how to tell one from the other. It's a new question that requires decades-long observations to answer.

> This is wrong. If you had a 100% accurate cancer detector, fewer people would die of cancer with no downside

You're saying it as if detection somehow cures cancer, it doesn't.

[mgraczyk]

> You're saying it as if detection somehow cures cancer, it doesn't.

No, I didn't say the detector would cause cancer to be cured. I said fewer people would die with no downsides. If treatment is sometimes harmful then the detector also fixes that, you'd never treat people without cancer

[alexey-salmin]

No, the detector doesn't fix that, that problem is not treating people without cancer. The problem is treating people with cancer that won't kill or harm them during their lifetime. In this case even a low risk treatment becomes harmful, let alone cancer treatments.