Opinion: Some people should stop being screened for cancer. Convincing them isn’t always easy
Cancer screening is a helpful intervention for many people — we just have to be better at recognizing when it stops being helpful.
During my training to become a primary care physician, the importance of preventive cancer screening was ingrained in me. The idea of catching cancer at an early stage so we can better treat it made intuitive sense. But as I’ve learned over the years, the simplicity of this concept can obscure its limitations and make it difficult to persuade older or sick individuals that screening can do them more harm than good.
Early in my career, I dutifully kept track of
