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Comment Higher diagnoses (Score 3, Interesting) 33

I think this may contribute to an already existing problem with the high cancer rate: high detection. How many people who are diagnosed with cancer would have lived just fine and ended up dying from something else? We do find cancer in autopsies where the person didn't know they had cancer. Is the current trend of high cancer rates partly due to better means of detection, and it's just that lots of people have had asymptomatic cancer all this time? Does every form of cancer require massive amounts of chemo? My wife passed away from stage 4 colon cancer last year. It had spread to her lungs, adrenal gland, and liver. She had surgery for the original tumor, and underwent 3 years of aggressive chemo to remove the very tiny filaments elsewhere in her body. I can only wonder if, without the chemo, she would have had the same fate. There are people who forego chemo and survive. And obviously chemo is necessary for many people to beat cancer. But I have to wonder if getting better at detecting cancer will bring more good than harm.

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