Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan

So it applies to cancer, it applies to diabetes, it applies to asthma, it applies to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, as much as it does depression, ADHD.

There's different ways that this happens. The two main ways that it happens is one, you are kind of diagnosing things that don't need to be diagnosed. So if we take diabetes as an example, we now have this state of pre-diabetes. So you don't have diabetes yet, but you're almost getting it. It's not really a diagnosis in itself, but it's becoming one.

There's different ways that this happens. The two main ways that it happens is one, you are kind of diagnosing things that don't need to be diagnosed. So if we take diabetes as an example, we now have this state of pre-diabetes. So you don't have diabetes yet, but you're almost getting it. It's not really a diagnosis in itself, but it's becoming one.

There's different ways that this happens. The two main ways that it happens is one, you are kind of diagnosing things that don't need to be diagnosed. So if we take diabetes as an example, we now have this state of pre-diabetes. So you don't have diabetes yet, but you're almost getting it. It's not really a diagnosis in itself, but it's becoming one.

Basically, the way these things come about is that we as doctors and scientists are encouraged to make sure we keep as many people healthy as possible and therefore to find as many people who might be at risk of disease as possible and treat them. So we are incentivized to find as many people who might get diabetes as we can.

Basically, the way these things come about is that we as doctors and scientists are encouraged to make sure we keep as many people healthy as possible and therefore to find as many people who might be at risk of disease as possible and treat them. So we are incentivized to find as many people who might get diabetes as we can.

Basically, the way these things come about is that we as doctors and scientists are encouraged to make sure we keep as many people healthy as possible and therefore to find as many people who might be at risk of disease as possible and treat them. So we are incentivized to find as many people who might get diabetes as we can.

And an absolutely religious belief in the assumption that finding diagnosis early and treating it is the right thing to do. So what we'll do is we'll say, OK, to be pre-diabetic used to mean that you had to have a fasting blood sugar of six. But you know what? I think that's too high. We might be missing some people.

And an absolutely religious belief in the assumption that finding diagnosis early and treating it is the right thing to do. So what we'll do is we'll say, OK, to be pre-diabetic used to mean that you had to have a fasting blood sugar of six. But you know what? I think that's too high. We might be missing some people.

And an absolutely religious belief in the assumption that finding diagnosis early and treating it is the right thing to do. So what we'll do is we'll say, OK, to be pre-diabetic used to mean that you had to have a fasting blood sugar of six. But you know what? I think that's too high. We might be missing some people.

So we expert committee get together and we say, let's change that parameter and say you can have pre-diabetes at 5.6%. Nothing has changed in science. Nothing has changed in our bodies or in society. The only thing that has changed is that in order to make sure we are missing as few people at risk of diabetes as possible, we are going to change the number at which you can be diagnosed.

So we expert committee get together and we say, let's change that parameter and say you can have pre-diabetes at 5.6%. Nothing has changed in science. Nothing has changed in our bodies or in society. The only thing that has changed is that in order to make sure we are missing as few people at risk of diabetes as possible, we are going to change the number at which you can be diagnosed.

So we expert committee get together and we say, let's change that parameter and say you can have pre-diabetes at 5.6%. Nothing has changed in science. Nothing has changed in our bodies or in society. The only thing that has changed is that in order to make sure we are missing as few people at risk of diabetes as possible, we are going to change the number at which you can be diagnosed.

And the idea then is obviously you identify all these extra people with pre-diabetes and that particular change applied to the entire population of China would have meant that 50% of men in China were pre-diabetic and something like a third of people in the US would be pre-diabetic. So these thresholds are being set phenomenally sensitively.

And the idea then is obviously you identify all these extra people with pre-diabetes and that particular change applied to the entire population of China would have meant that 50% of men in China were pre-diabetic and something like a third of people in the US would be pre-diabetic. So these thresholds are being set phenomenally sensitively.

And the idea then is obviously you identify all these extra people with pre-diabetes and that particular change applied to the entire population of China would have meant that 50% of men in China were pre-diabetic and something like a third of people in the US would be pre-diabetic. So these thresholds are being set phenomenally sensitively.

The thing we're not great at is proving that that actually is making people healthier. And there isn't an awful lot of evidence to suggest that by adjusting thresholds in order to identify pre-diabetes at an earlier stage, you're actually preventing lots of people from getting sick further down the road. Well, actually, probably aren't. And we tend to move these goalposts

The thing we're not great at is proving that that actually is making people healthier. And there isn't an awful lot of evidence to suggest that by adjusting thresholds in order to identify pre-diabetes at an earlier stage, you're actually preventing lots of people from getting sick further down the road. Well, actually, probably aren't. And we tend to move these goalposts

The thing we're not great at is proving that that actually is making people healthier. And there isn't an awful lot of evidence to suggest that by adjusting thresholds in order to identify pre-diabetes at an earlier stage, you're actually preventing lots of people from getting sick further down the road. Well, actually, probably aren't. And we tend to move these goalposts

and consider success to be how many new sick people can we find, rather than the more important endpoint, which is what difference has that made to these people's long-term health. What we very often don't do, say in the case of cancer, we'll say, well, we screened a thousand women for cancer and we saved one life, but we potentially treated 10 people for cancer who didn't need to be treated.