The only problem is that it’s likely that everybody has cancer.
The trick is finding out what tumors are dangerous and which aren’t.
I talked to a friend of mine who was a doctor and said that my approach to prostate cancer was never get tested, eat right, watch my weight, and hope I don’t get a metastasized tumor. She agreed that was a rational approach given how many false positives there are on prostate cancer tests and how harmful the treatment can be.
Exactly! Almost all men develop prostate cancer if they live long enough, and it is possible that almost all women will develop a somewhat benign form of breast cancer if they live long enough. The trick is in figuring out which cancers require treatment and which do not. The brave new world of detection is great, except that now so many abnormalities are found that nobody knows whether these are dangerous or not. It’s a poser.