[petra]

>> treatments are not necessarily an improvement over having a mostly dormant cancer.

This is true today.

But if we could detect cancer at a really early stage, relatively reliably, maybe this means we could develop new and effective treatments that are low risk and low on side-effects ?

And if we had that, early cancer detection will also have a totally different meaning, so that could help with the mental health aspect too.

[jacquesm]

We could develop those treatments irrespective of early detection, there are plenty of examples of early detection of cancers today to make that feasible, this does not depend on a new test regime.

[yazaddaruvala]

You may know more than me about medicine, but when it comes to allocating resources, I know just as much if not more than you.

If we start to test more, and understand the magnitude of the problem better (despite false positives/negatives) we can better allocate capital to solving this problem.

Sure, "cancer is horrible, we should already allocate as much capital as possible" but this just isn't reality. As soon as the addressable market for early-detected cancer treatment goes from X per year to 100X per year (and 1,000X or 10,000X is "even better"), big pharma has more motivation to actually R&D safe treatments for early-detected cancers.

Not testing more to detect cancer early is silly, if only from the perspective of capital allocation.