In its February 28, 2012, issue, The New York Times published a very thought-provoking op-ed article by H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. He is one of the authors of the book, Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. In the article, Mr. Welch makes a number of astute insights about the pros and cons of the widespread screening of people for health issues. Here are some of his comments about screening:
“This process doesn’t promote health; it promotes disease. People suffer from more anxiety about their health, from drug side effects, from complications of surgery. A few die. And remember: these people felt fine when they entered the health care system.”
No physician ever would knowingly want his or her patient to undertake a process of screening and diagnosis that ultimately would end up causing harm. And it goes without saying that more anxiety, side effects, and complications are the last things that the general population is after.
