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Comment by Randypea | Hacker News Reader

Opinions like this are dangerous for intelligent people. I was falsely diagnosed by my doctors for 10 years who were gun-ho on not "over testing". They told me my symptoms were just IBS and there was no need for additional testing. I had to find a doctor who would do more tests and immediately they found cancer in my intestines, a softball-sized tumor in my liver, and multiple other tumors. Denying intelligent people knowledge is a mistake; we just also need the information need to process the data provided. But I do agree there is a section of patients who will have trouble using the information they might receive.

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Your case is very different from the OP and the post you're responding to though. They are discussing the benefits and drawbacks of screening for a lot of stuff on an otherwise healthy person with no symptoms or complaints. In your case you unfortunately have had something very wrong with you and your symptoms were misdiagnosed.

> Opinions like this are dangerous for intelligent people.

I also want to add this was quite rude and conceited.

> I also want to add this was quite rude and conceited.

Personally, I didn't interpret the poster's opinion as rude or conceited. This is hacker news. It attracts a demographic of intelligent people who are used to seeing the world without blinders on. It makes sense to me that someone who identifies as a "hacker" would be offended by the idea of withholding information.

Tumors are actually a great example of over testing. The key is, you don't know what would have happened in the alternate universe, but when you say the word "tumor", you just assume it's a super dangerous thing that would have inevitably killed you.

The truth is, when we do a careful autopsy of old people who died of non-cancer diseases, we usually find a ton of hidden tumors that have just quietly been lying dormant, not really harming them. In those cases, ignorance is bliss because doing anything to remove the tumors only could have increased their risk of death given that the tumors didn't kill them.

We don't know what bucket of people any one person is in, we can only look at overall statistics.

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