He points out these problems:

1) It is unlikely that you will benefit, because a large percentage of cancers that are "caught" when they are very small are extremely slow-growing or will never turn into disease, and the cancers that are aggressive grow quickly and are likely to show up between tests.

2) You may have a "cancer scare" and face an endless cycle of testing.

3) You may receive unnecessary treatment. It appears that there is a vast reservoir of  asymptomatic cancer which is discovered only by accident, and would in all likelihood never cause a problem. However, they are often treated as if they were certain to become aggressive, with treatments that can cause other diseases and even death. In many cases, such as DCIS, it makes more sense to wait and watch to see if there is really any disease.

4) You may find a cancer you would rather not know about. The more carefully and systematically you are examined, the more likely it is that the tiny cancers that are found belong to the potentially bottomless reservoir of cancers which will not cause problems and which you don't need to worry about.

5) Your pathologist may say it's cancer, but others may not. Here is the bottom line with cancer tests: no matter how fabulous the technology that gets the tissue sample, the slides are interpreted by human beings with their own levels of skill and their own definitions of what is "cancer." The dividing line between non-cancer and cancer can be all shades of gray, and studies have shown that pathologists disagree radically on how to interpret test results. Naturally, being conscientious, many will make the conservative choice just in case.

6) Your doctor may get distracted. You may have symptoms that are relevant to other health problems, but they tend to get pushed out of the way if a screening test turns out positive, and even if nothing is subsequently found, that positive test hovers in the background of your health decisions. The more face-time is occupied by instructions for tests, interpreting tests, and tracking tests, the less time there is for other possibly more important issues to be addressed.

The other educational thing about this book is an insight which Dr. Welch gives to the attentive reader, although he never suggests this and I am here going beyond any conclusions he draws.  In process of demystifying cancer testing, he reinforces the reason why using alternative methods of treating cancer could in many cases be considered a more reasonable choice than the standard surgery, radiation, and chemo, which destroys the immune system in order to destroy the cancer.

Cancer is not one "thing," but consists of cellular abnormalities, which begin with one cell and can only be objectively diagnosed as "cancer" when they reach a certain level of difference from surrounding tissue and have specific properties. This is why pathologists disagree. As Welch says, it is probable that there exists at all times some potentially cancerous tissue somewhere in our bodies. Like a potential infection, its progress is kept in check by our immune response, which again is not a discrete thing, but a complex system which interacts with all parts of the mind and body.

The holistic point of view is that the whole body is one system, intercommunicating with itself and with the exterior world, whose health can be affected by fixed thoughts, stressful emotions, or unmet spiritual needs as well as by a host of nutritional deficiencies or environmental toxic excesses. It has been proven that immune system response can also be depressed by stress.

Therefore, there are many points at which one can enter the system and influence the behavior of those abnormal cells, including life changes, stress reduction, and strengthening the immune system with the vast number of herbal and nutritional remedies which have been in use for much longer than current medical therapies, which have never been subjected to double-blind testing against other approaches. And these approaches have in fact proven successful for many who initially choose alternative treatment or for whom conventional treatment does not work.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is nervous about cancer, which, considering how long we have been hearing about its dangers and witnessing the scary effects of the disease and its treatment, is probably most of us. It will give you a much firmer basis for making decisions about both prevention and treatment.