The Epidemic of Fake Disease
The Epidemic of Fake Disease on HackerTube: recommended by 7 Hacker News commenters across 7 separate months, 2020–2026.
A Medlife Crisis video by cardiologist Rohin Francis on overdiagnosis and over-screening. It explains how detecting more disease does not necessarily mean saving more lives, and covers harms such as unnecessary treatment.
What HN commenters said
9 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
jamesbelchamberFeb 2026Recommends
It does, doesn't it! This is basically the reason scepticism in screening has risen (amongst scientists and medics, not the general population) - research seems to show that screening catches much more cancer but doesn't save many more people. Rohin Francis does a good video on it, which you don't have to watch because it has references underneath you can click straight through to (the video is good though): ▶ this video I am frustrated by this because it seems obvious to me that "more data == better" but I guess it makes sense if you think of the scans as having high amounts of noise, and us having a poor understanding of the system we're monitoring (this never happens in tech, of course :)).
in “How often do full-body MRIs find cancer?” · View on HN
fooblasterSep 2022Recommends
I'd encourage you to think about the consequences of over testing. Although it is somewhat counter intuitive, there are many negative consequences to patient outcomes from overtesting. A deeper overview: ▶ this video
in “Shocking hospital mistakes led to our daughter’s death” · View on HN
eruDec 2021Recommends
Compare and contrast this video from 'Medlife Crisis': ▶ this video > Trying to detect disease early seems like an obviously good thing to do. But reality isn't always quite so straightforward, especially in medicine. If It Ducks Like A Quack is a series where I try to go beyond the hype and explore how complicated the apparently simple phenomena in medicine are. One point from the video: five year survival rates of prostate cancer in the US are massively better than in the UK. However, roughly the same proportion of people die of prostate cancer in both countries. The US just screens a lot more.
in “The FDA's Restrictive Regulation of Home-Testing Devices (2017)” · View on HN
Someone1234Nov 2021Recommends
This video does a good job also of covering the topic of over-testing/over-treating potential cancer (or creating "Fake Disease" as it terms it): ▶ this video
in “The paradox of the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test” · View on HN
ejoltoMay 2021Recommends
This one is even more relevant as he talks about dangers of over screening for beast cancer, and side effects of mastectomy+chemo: ▶ this video
in “Are we screening too much for skin cancer? It's complicated” · View on HN
capn_cabbageJul 2020Recommends
The opposite can be just as dangerous * . "Medlife Crisis" has an [informative video][1] that explains some of what can happen. * Edit: I shouldn't have equated the dangers here. This was a bad take. I still believe there are good bits of info provided in the video, but the relevance to this thread is less than I considered and I should have thought more about what I was sharing. Edit 2: I didn't mean to link to a specific timestamp of the video in the original link. That has been removed. [1]: ▶ this video
in “I lost my boyfriend to cancer 'conspiracy theories’” · View on HN
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WillDaSilvaFeb 2020Recommends
>Are there legitimate safety reasons these mundane diagnostics are so locked down? Healthcare is not my area of expertise either, but my understanding is that the short answer to your question is yes. For a longer introduction to the issues surrounding letting anyone get whatever diagnostics they want to pay for, this Medlife Crisis video that came out today seems appropriate: ▶ this video
in “Walmart Gets Into Health Care” · View on HN
rdedevAug 2023Cites it
I think the consensus on cancer screening is stil not fully there? Came across this video by a cardiologist a long time ago ▶ this video I guess the main gist is that screening is not completely benign and a positive screen might lead to more interventions for what in the end could just be a benign tumor. Then there's the other point of detecting it late in life. Like treatment for cancer might not make much sense if you are already 89 years old
in “Most cancer screenings don’t extend life, study finds” · View on HN
i_cannot_hackJul 2022Cites it
Are you implying that more active screening would cause more good than harm, and that the scientific evidence that shows otherwise is mistaken? What makes you think the evidence is wrong? Screening is a very complicated topic and being overly aggressive with screening can really hurt patients. ▶ this video Or do you simply not support using scientific evidence and/or harm reduction to guide medical policy? What do you propose should be used instead in that case?
in “Vets today are like doctors yesterday” · View on HN