In 2022 when Illumina and GRAIL leadership where touting how many lives would be saved if only the antitrust authorities got out of the way, here's what was really happening. Please read carefully, shows how this "life saving" test doesn't work:
"[With the] San Francisco firefighters, the test did not identify the statistically expected number of cancers, provided false positives for half the cancers it did identify, and missed at least three cases of confirmed cancer. In other words, the exercise showed Galleri to be a disaster."
"In this example prominently featured on GRAIL’s website and in marketing materials as an example of how “multi-cancer early detection screening can be critical for those at elevated cancer risk”—GRAIL provided 1,786 screenings to a group of San Francisco firefighters and their family members, a “high risk” group for certain kinds of cancer. During that testing round, which was conducted on December 6, 2022—Galleri generated six false positives and identified only five instances of cancer."
"...such a result is alarming in light of the fact that, based on statistical experience, cancer should have been detected in about 29 (not five) of the 1,786 tests. Moreover, of the five instances of where cancer signals were identified, two individuals already knew they had cancer to begin with. Further, all of the instances of detected cancer were at a “late stage,” and where the cancer was too advanced to make a difference for the patients. One firefighter was diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer and is now in hospice, while another firefighter was diagnosed with lung cancer, which has now metastasized to the brain."
"Galleri also missed at least six instances in which the San Francisco
firefighters actually had cancer—failing to identify instances of melanoma, prostate cancer, and lymphoma that were identified by private doctors just months after the Galleri test indicated “no cancer signal.”
"Further, in one instance in the San Francisco firefighters screening
where Galleri generated a false positive, the patient underwent a painful bone
marrow biopsy procedure to determine whether the patient did have cancer. In that case, the patient’s bone marrow biopsy procedure, clinically shown to involve “unbearable pain” to the “worst possible pain” a patient can experience, revealed that there was, in fact, no cancer."
"The screenings provided to the San Francisco firefighters were an
expensive “disappointment.” According to Tony Stefani, the organization’s
founder, the screenings demonstrated that the probability of catching an early-stage cancer through the Galleri test was “negligible,” and the screenings only caught “some serious cancers at a later stage,” which likely would have been detected within one or two months without the test. Given the test’s high costs and useless real-world performance, Stefani stated that Galleri was a total “disappointment” and that the foundation had been sold a “bill of goods.”
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