Most people assume that there are significant benefits to be gained from such procedures.
Surely, if potentially fatal diseases can be detected at an early stage and cured, then we should be screened more often. David Bender, writing in HealthWatch , warns us that the evidence is less good than we might imagine. Bender also notes that even in the case of breast cancer, screening is of little benefit to women under the age of 50. Other forms of cancer screening, including bowel and prostate, are similarly disappointing in terms of the number of lives that they save. Even so, we might argue, screening can't do any harm.