All adverts for DIY health screening tests should be vetted

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/oct/18/adverts-diy-health-screening-tests-vetted


The Breastlight screening torch is claimed to help women detect breast cancer early. Unlike TV ads, online adverts don't require prior approval. Photograph: Public domain

One of the best lessons I learned at medical school was: don't carry out a test if you don't know what to do with the answer. In other words, doing a test just because you can is poor practice.

Far from being infallible, the data obtained by excessive or useless testing is likely to add further uncertainties. And this is just for tests commonly done within the NHS. Recently doctors involved with bowel cancer screening wrote to the BMJ noting the large number of incidental findings produced when patients who had been screened went on to have CT scans, and the subsequent dilemmas. Were they going to end up investigating and treating "abnormalities" that would actually have had no effect upon the person?

And this is the NHS. When it comes to some commercial home health screening tests, people have been misled with false promises way beyond the evidence.

This week, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld my complaint against the Tampap test, a self-test kit offering to tell women if they have HPV (human papilloma virus), which causes almost all cervical cancer.