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