Early diagnosis has become one of the most fundamental precepts of modern medicine. It is thought to be the best way to keep people healthy: to find out if they have (pick one) heart disease, autism, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or, of course, cancer—early.

Recently, however, there have been rumblings within the medical profession that suggest that the enthusiasm for early diagnosis may be waning. Most prominent are recommendations against prostate cancer screening for healthy men and for reducing the frequency of breast and cervical cancer screening. Some experts even cautioned against the recent colonoscopy results, pointing out that the study participants were probably much healthier than the general population, which would make them less likely to die of colon cancer.

The basic strategy behind early diagnosis is to encourage the well to get examined—to determine if they are not, in fact, sick. But is looking hard for things to be wrong a good way to promote health? The truth is, the fastest way to get heart disease, autism, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or cancer… is to be screened for it. In other words, the problem is overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

Screening the apparently healthy potentially saves a few lives. But it definitely drags many others into the system needlessly—into needless appointments, needless tests, needless drugs and needless operations (not to mention all the accompanying needless insurance forms). This process doesn’t promote health; it promotes disease. People suffer from more anxiety about their health, from drug side effects, from complications of surgery. A few die. And remember. these people felt fine when they entered the health care system.

Increasingly we operate under the early diagnosis precept: seeking diagnosis and initiating therapy in people who are not experiencing problems. That’s a huge change in approach, from one that focused on the sick to one that focuses on the well. Some doctors have long recognized that the approach is a distraction for the medical community. It’s easier to transform people into new patients than it is to treat the truly sick. It’s easier to develop new ways of testing than it is to develop better treatments. And it’s a lot easier to measure how many healthy people get tested than it is to determine how well doctors manage the chronically ill.

The rumblings show that that’s beginning to change. Let me be clear: early diagnosis is not always wrong. The question is how often and how far we should get ahead of symptoms.

For years now, people have been encouraged to look to medical care as the way to make them healthy. But that’s your job—you can’t contract that out. Doctors might be able to help, but so might an author of a good cookbook, a personal trainer, a cleric or a good friend. We would all be better off if the medical system got a little closer to its original mission of helping sick patients, and let the healthy be.

What is the best title for the passage?