The overall point is true that excessive testing leads to a valetudinarianism, false positives, true-but-meaningless positives (as with diagnosis of prostate cancer in older patients who will probably die of other causes), needless surgeries, and other individually debilitating and socially wasteful consequences. But it is pretty zany just to zero in on a small part of this problem and see -- as Brendan O’Neill does in "What a load of b*ll*cks" -- only some, ah, nutty plot to make young males less rambunctious. Medicine's ever increasing Will to Test is driven by more-pervasive impulses to control and, above all, to bill. I guess the future of the service economy won't be people taking in each other's washing but folks giving each other clinical tests.
Carl
>Quoting Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com>:
>
> > >From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
> > >
> > >On Aug 3, 2004, at 4:32 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> > >
> > >>With a bloated health industry predatory upon fears of disease, the
> > >>Democrats long-running pursuit of health-care reform only puts a
>radical
> > >>twist on the industry's scare mongering.
> > >
> > >Or are you saying that Americans shouldn't worry about getting sick.
>What
> > >do you mean by "scare mongering"? It's awfully easy to get any number
>of
> > >illnesses -- and even easier as one gets inexorably older. And the cost
>of
> > >getting them treated is getting higher and higher.
> >
> >
> > What a load of b*ll*cks
> >
> > Young men are being bullied into examining themselves for testicular
>cancer.
> > It’s not very dignified, says Brendan O’Neill, and may do more harm than
> > good
>
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