That's the conclusion of the article, which I didn't immediately understand from the title. I read "earns" as a negative reward, not a positive one.
In any case, people like you will get others killed. Like I said previously, with your logic, no one should even be stepping on a weighing scale or getting routine annual blood tests. The higher level goal is to lower the burden of testing to make it cheap and widely available to everyone for routine use.
Consider the case in England where they checked hospital admissions for HIV despite the absence of symptoms calling for it. They found very many patients who were HIV positive and didn't know it. Your misuse of math would've let them stay undiagnosed while the cases mount. Refer to DOI 10.1016/S2352-3018(26)00109-8.
He's saying that a full body MRI is so valuable, that if you got one and then smoked for a year, you'd be in the same place as you were before you started, health wise. No loss.
Obviously you'll come out way ahead if you don't do the smoking part: it's very valuable, in other words.
Ok, if this is the argument that you want to use, here is a counterargument that completely destroys your viewpoint.
Most civilized countries don't bill the patient, and it is entirely funded by either taxes or mandatory public insurance. So just like how it is in "big-medicine industrial complex's" best interest to maximize profits, it is in the health system's best interest to lower cost. So if whole-body scans for otherwise healthy (as in no symptoms) people means less profit for those companies, it means less cost for the health system, which would mean they would be promoting (or even requiring) whole-body scans. MRI machines are much cheaper than doctors.
> So the same effort you would expend to get out of those activities on account of their risk, the same effort you should be willing to expend to get a full-body mri.
"get out of those activities"
As another point, most of the negative costs of getting full body scans are actually poor reactions to the full body scans. The phrasing is "Hey, if you get more information, we are going to act badly on this information." I think the solution here should be just acting better on the information, not getting less information.
> However! When marketing the effect of global health interventions, a count of 27 qalys is typically considered “a life saved”. A life also happens to be a million micromorts, and I have a much better intuition for micromorts!
This came across as unintentionally funny to me. It goes from making the joke that one obscure unit of measure is inscrutable to saying, don't worry, because we can put it in another equally obscure unit of measure!
yeah there is a risk you get an infection but pancreatic cancer will kill you dead, and is no joke.
I will say, that for cancer specifically, tests like Galleri seem better, but as that cost comes down I could see in 5-10 years an annual $500 scan that offers a full body scan of some kind, plus comprehensive bloodwork including blood cancer screening, and the type of thing that could be done annually by many in the US.
A colonoscopy perforating the bowel and leading to an infection and sepsis.
These things happen, they are not common but they are not zero-chance events either.
And you have to consider the opportunity costs of consuming the doctor's time, the labwork, and the facilities, possibly delaying treatment for someone else who actually needs it.
Risk of perforation is something like .03% and almost never fatal whereas a colonoscopy reduces colorectal cancer mortality by 60-70%.
>And you have to consider the opportunity costs of consuming the doctor's time, the labwork, and the facilities, possibly delaying treatment for someone else who actually needs it.
That is also rarely true. More often, greater demand for a service soon yields economies of scale, more efficiencies and overall more patients served at a lower price. Low volume is expensive, high volume is cheap.
My wife had an MRI, incidental find on it caused a PET CT scan.
somat•2h ago
update: The article is second order analysis. need to read it's linked article to understand it is more about the costs(including psychological) of questionable tests and not a direct health risk of MRI devices.
pqdbr•2h ago
inigyou•2h ago
yazaddaruvala•2h ago
The conclusion is “you should do MRIs it is equivalently beneficial as all of ___ are bad for you”
greenpizza13•2h ago
happytoexplain•2h ago
happytoexplain•2h ago
No, what they are saying is that getting an MRI is as good as smoking for a year is bad, using some very fuzzy units of measurement. So getting an MRI "earns" you the reward of being allowed to smoke for a year (the author is being humorous).