Diagnosis Part One

Abstract

The problem with diagnosis centeres on the distinction between illness, which features subjective elements (symptoms) and disease which is defined purely objectively. Diagnosis the identification of disease works very well to explain illness by situating it within the accumulated body of pathological knowledge. it works much less well as a predictor of illness in the future. Yet medical practice increasingly focuses on identifying potential disease elements before the patient is aware of them. These data are inherently ambiguous and misleading both by identifying abnormalities which never materialize as illness (false positives) and by failing to detect perceptible signs of actual illness (false negatives). Above all they are dangerous by inculcating fear reducing risk to a statistical calculation and promoting drastic irrelevant and injurious treatment to correct them.