alt Hacker NewsOne important point is that many people die WITH cancer but not OF cancer. So even for the 1.8%, only a fraction of those people were going to die of the disease (or even suffer significant symptoms) - the rest were just going to die of natural causes anyway.
But now you've found it you pretty much have to remove it, which has significant quality of life implications.
This seems like a wild statement.
Age is a big factor in the with/of cancer factor. If someone is 80 years old then there's good chance it won't be cancer that kills them (assuming they aren't already in a late stage).
But if you are 40 and you have cancer, there's a good chance you'll die of that cancer if it's left untreated.
I'm personally of the opinion that cancer screening should happen earlier for younger people and less frequently for older people. Like, if you hit 80, there's really basically no reason to screen for cancer.