An unprecedented window into how diseases take hold years before symptoms appear

It’s interesting they make no mention of trying to understand the body’s ability to self-defend and self-heal. That is, it’s possible to get X (e.g., cancer) and the immune system wins the fight (before it’s even detected).

In theory it’s possible the best early treatment is no treatment at all; that there might be such a thing as too-early detection.

This is a well known phenomenon in medicine. It is always carefully considered when making public health decisions regarding e.g. screening programs and intervention best practices.

For example, a PSA test is useful to detect cancer of the prostate, if a male patient has urination problems. But doing general screening for high PSA values in middle aged men is not considered a good idea, because there are too many false positives and it would likely lead to many unnecessary invasive interventions.

Have a friend working as urology surgeon - basically all men get prostate cancer, its just a function of time (unless you die young). Most of them is benign, or cause few issues and are often let alone.

If you would run scans on all males above say 45 there would be endless stream of operations happening, all of which would lower quality of life for everybody, and sometimes shorten their lives a bit or a bit more. Any public healthcare system would be brought to the edge of collapse by just this since surgeries are supremely expensive everywhere, that's not just US invention.

Yo, personal experience. I'll be undergoing a second test soon, as a precaution, but the first showed me at "acceptable risk level but cancer is still present".

My urologist carefully assured me ahead of the test that I "do have cancer, as all men my age do", and clarified the difference between "have" and "might well die of".