this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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This is a tough one. Is it better to know about an incurable disease seven years later if you can't prevent the progression of symptoms? Amazing study though.
Yeah, especially when considering that placebo and (in this case) nocebo effects are a real thing.
What do people think would happen when being told they will be very likely diagnosed with an incurable disease in 5 years from now? Do they think their levels of stress, anxiety, negative thinking etc. will stay as if they'd never heard of that information? No, likely not. Therefore their health will potentially be affected negatively just by knowing of that information.
But the important part here is the "incurable"! Reason being that if there's any chance one can prolong good health for longer by acting in a preventive, health supporting way couple years sooner, then yes, it likely would be better to know earlier and change something about it even if it's likely to affect one at some point.
And what makes it even trickier is that nobody really knows what future medical advances will be like. What's called inevitable and incurable now, might, with early treatment, actually no longer be in the not too distant future.