False diagnoses of cancer

You don’t see this subject put front and center in the mainstream press. For obvious reasons.

Mustn’t scare the patients.

Here’s a study published in 2018, in the journal, Cancer: “Implications of False-Positives for Future Cancer Screenings”.

“False-positive cancer screening test results are common. Over 10 years, approximately 50–61% of women undergoing annual mammography and 10–12% of men undergoing regular PSA testing will experience a false-positive result.”

“Similarly, 23% of individuals undergoing regular fecal occult blood testing will experience a positive result with negative follow-up colonoscopy.”

In that situation, the first test was a cancer-yes, and the follow-up was a cancer-no.

I don’t have figures on the percentage of all cancer tests for all types of cancer—where these false diagnoses are coupled with new tests which expose the original false diagnosis.

As you can see, the mainstream evaluation of its own tests isn’t comforting.