A 17-year-old diagnosed with melanoma in situ faced not just the prospect of cancer, but decades of mandatory surveillance—a experience that raises a troubling question: at what point does the management of risk transform into a disease of its own? This tension, explored in recent analysis published in The BMJ, reveals how modern medicine’s focus on identifying and monitoring risk has created a new clinical reality: the medicalization of risk itself, complete with its own burden of anxiety, economic cost, and reduced quality of life.
The Hidden Cost of Risk: When Medical Vigilance Becomes a Disease Itself
