[chrisamiller]

Money is absolutely an object. People are starting to do trials of early detection from circulating tumor DNA, and finding that the hit rate is alarmingly high. A decent portion of the population has some kind of malignancy, but most of these will either be cleared by the immune system, or be completely benign. Another problem is, if we detect this tumor DNA, it doesn't tell us where in the body the tumor might be. So then you're talking massive workups including while body CT scans and such for a problem that isn't going to be a problem for 99% of people. I'm not joking when I say that if rolled out as is, this has the potential to bankrupt the entire healthcare system with unnecessary procedures.

To be clear, I very much think that early detection of tumors will someday be an essential part of cancer treatment. We are not there yet.

[asdff]

>Another problem is, if we detect this tumor DNA, it doesn't tell us where in the body the tumor might be.

This isn't necessarily the case. A lot of CTCs have markers that are indicative of certain cancers or tissue types of origin. Different tissues have specific patterns of gene expression even if they all have the same underlying DNA, and there are databases with thousands of samples sequenced supporting these patterns.

[mjsabby]

Lots of clinics in Vancouver BC fully body MRI scans that are not super expensive. I really do think we should just make MRIs cheap and then get the whole world to do them.

I understand the cost, time, etc. but I still think if we can stop doing other useless stuff as humanity and do this it would be net positive.

[Nathanael_M]

I think the question being asked was "If money were no object, what is the best cancer detection method?", as opposed to stating that money wasn't an object.

Very interesting comment, nonetheless.