We should all get annual blood tests so we can track variance from out baselines.
Humans aren't precise machines, each person has different values and different value ranges for standard measurements - and asymptomatic deviations frequently mean nothing whatsoever. On the other hand investigations can be invasive, painful, risky and expensive.
There's a reason most tests aren't recommended for folks outside certain risk categories (age, family history, etc). And in a litigious society like America, it's not because it's expensive. There's some specific diseases where there's a lot of data backing this thesis - certain cancers for instance.
If these tests aren't run, then I am not sure if it would be "marginally earlier", it might be much later or even never that the problem is discovered.
Ideally, all chemical processes in the body could be known and we could have an almost "mechanical" model of the body. How else but with more testing can be reach that knowledge?
Can you? The problem is the test's sensitivity and specificity, there's not much statistical work to do after the test on a single case. It's not an advanced model deciding whether you're sick or not.
> Ideally, all chemical processes in the body could be known and we could have an almost "mechanical" model of the body. How else but with more testing can be reach that knowledge?
Yeah, ideally we would. Not a doctor, but as far as I can tell, we're a thousand years away from that.
All the risks associated with false positives (other than the side effects of actually drawing blood once a year, which I think is negligible) can be removed by simply not overreacting. Find a cancer? Well, consider not subjecting yourself to chemo just to get rid of it. Some cancers will kill you by winter, some will just stay there until you die of something else. How will we know which is which? By testing lots of people over long periods of time to see what's harmless and what's actually really bad. Or as the previous commenter said: "That's the whole point of establishing a baseline."
A concrete example is the NHS recommends against the PSA prostate cancer antigen screening test completely for everyone of any age because this test does more harm than good. They have a good write-up on why. [2]
Generally I agree this data should be collected, but aggregated and not used for individual treatments.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prostate-cancer/psa-testing/
We hardly ever measure the “good” or stable cases so when we start testing stuff when we are ill there is very little data on what is normal or even normal for you.
Ive heard of cars where due to family history someone preemptively screened on certain blood values. When those changed they knew something was up, even though the value was still within normal range it was up 100x for them.
"The Problem With Silicon Valley Medicine": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW3DGnHO2iY