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Keep in mind that what matters is total mortality and total morbidity, not risk of cancer.



This is absolutely right from the perspective of a primary prevention task force. Individuals might have slightly different values, so perhaps they would accept some tradeoff. (E.g., reducing a 20% lifetime cancer risk down to 10%, while increasing a lifetime fatal bleed risk from 1% to 5%, might be acceptable to some.)

Unfortunately, I readily admit that (1) we can't yet do a reasonable job of giving people their lifetime risk of X; and (2) people (doctors included) aren't great, generally, at statistical thinking.

So yeah, the goal should be to reduce total morbidity and mortality.




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