May, 31th
https://philarchive.org/archive/LARCDS
This article argues that the phenomenon of overdiagnosis is linked to both our increasing knowledge of cancer and the fact that this new knowledge causes bias in cancer screening, but also to our approach to cancer and the associated medical vocabulary.
The authors selected two types of cancer as particularly exemplary: papillary thyroid cancer and carcinoma in situ of the breast.
The often militaristic semantics and abusive designations of "cancers" for lesions that are not life-threatening contribute to both an increase in societal anxiety and overdiagnosis, a real scourge of post-modern medicine.