Re: The Near-Necessity of Health Insurance

[Asgaard <asgaard@Cor.sos.sll.se>]

On Wed, 18 Sep 1996, E. Allen Smith wrote:

>	While this is certainly your business, I would suggest at least
>one physical a year, including blood work, as a good preventative measure...
>I believe it _has_ been shown to extend lives; I can do a Medline lookup if
>desired.

Save yourself the trouble. To _show_ such a thing one would have to:

1) get some 10.000 persons, chosen 'randomly' (at least not chosen when
   they have already consulted medical proffessionals) to willingly 
   participate in the study and accept whatever group they would be
   coin-tossed into
2) randomize them into two groups of 5000 each
3) have one group checked anually and the other group not checked
4) wait 20-50 years
5) compare the groups for mortality

Without consulting Medline I can tell you that such a study has
not and will never be done. And all other approaches to try to
prove such a thing could be heavily criticized for likely bias.

Health tests, especially 'blood work', are done for profit, with
very little, if anything at all, to gain for the subjects. (There
are a few possible exceptions, f ex PAP-smears. Blood pressure is
more doubtful and cholesterol is a joke. But I'm not going to
argue on the details in this forum.)


Asgaard