Over the past few decades, our understanding of cancer has changed. We now know some cancers don’t grow or grow so slowly that they’ll never cause medical problems.
But the way we label disease can harm. The use of more medicalised labels, including cancer, can increase levels of anxiety and the desire for more invasive treatments.
Given this growing evidence, my colleagues and I argue in The BMJ today that it may be time to stop telling people with very low-risk conditions that they have “cancer” if they’re unlikely to be harmed by it.
Our Understanding of Cancer Has Changed
Cancer screening for people who have no symptoms and the use of increasingly sensitive technologies can lead to overdiagnosis – a diagnosis that causes more harm than good. Overdiagnosis is most common in breast, prostate and thyroid cancer.
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