Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by aurisl 9 days ago
Horrible disease. We just buried my wife’s father because of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. A month ago, he was still living his life as usual. Then he developed abdominal pain, was diagnosed, and died three weeks later.

I think we should also invest more in better diagnostics and early cancer detection. That could save many lives too.

2 comments

I’m sorry for your loss. I lost my father to it. Like you said, it happened so quickly. Truly horrible disease.
> I think we should also invest more in better diagnostics and early cancer detection.

The issue with non-imaging early cancer detection seems to be false positives.

Afaik, medical regulatory agencies have been... resistant... to allowing marketing of tests.

The thinking seems to be "If people get a positive result, they may opt for interventions that are more harmful than their current disease state."

But, to me, that seems to leave unmentioned the fact that there's a finite "untreatable" cancer progression line, and while that's extending to later disease states, it's still a helluva lot easier to treat earlier.