Healthy people being harmed by over-diagnosis Writing in the British Medical Journal Ray Moynihan, of Bond University in Australia, and colleagues said new ultra-sensitive tests were detecting smaller abnormalities which are unlikely to ever become serious. At the heart of the problem is the "intuitive belief" in the value of early diagnosis, they wrote, which has meant that "Increasingly we've come to regard simply being "at risk" of future disease as being a disease in its own right." The authors added "Medicine's much hailed ability to help the sick is fast being challenged by its propensity to harm the healthy. Screening programmes are detecting early cancers that will never cause symptoms or death, sensitive diagnostic technologies identify 'abnormalities' so tiny they will remain benign, while widening disease definitions mean people at ever lower risks receive permanent medical labels and lifelong treatments that will fail to benefit many of them. One concern is that many senior doctors in charge of setting the definitions of illnesses, which are used to make diagnoses, have financial ties to companies which will benefit from wider use of treatments, the researchers added. They said: "As definitions broaden and thresholds fall, people with smaller risks or milder problems are labelled, which means the potential benefits of treatment decline, raising the possibility that harms will outweigh benefits." Dr Claire Knight, of Cancer Research UK, said: "Cancer Research UK is jointly leading an independent review with the national cancer director into breast screening which will examine the benefits and harms, including overdiagnosis. It's important for anyone experiencing a persistent or unusual change to their body to get it checked out by a doctor, even if it's something that they aren't worried about. It probably won't be cancer, but if it is, getting it diagnosed and treated early can make a real difference to the outcome.