In the abstract, I agree -- there are many situations where low res is better than none.
But given the amount of interpretation and reading (it truly is an art, not a science) that goes into reading an EKG and more importantly, a tumor x-ray, I think in this situation, low res is worse than none, because it's worthless (you can't tell anything from it) and it still cost you something.
If you do try to do a cancer diagnosis on a poor x-ray, you are basing cancer treatment on the flip of a coin.
no cancer? Well you might fill them up with expensive chemotherapy, which itself is carcinogenic. Actually has cancer? Well, you've just set them loose with an organic time bomb in their system.
Yeah, it's definitely an interesting question. I took two full years of biomedical ethics, and I think you could make a pretty strong claim for either side.
I personally think that performing a basic reading of an ultrasound or an ECG/EKG would be fairly simple with some training, but I also have a lot of experience reading raw data. I have a few friends who are Radiologists, and I'm going to have to ask them what they think. I'm really not sure what they'd think about all this, and I'm definitely open to the possibility that I'm massively overestimating my ability to interpret even "simple" diagnostic data.
I'd be interested to hear what you find out. I have a buddy who basically lost his police force job because of a mis-read EKG, which caused him to be taken off of his ADHD meds, which doctors wouldn't re-prescribe to him, because they thought he was an addict trying to score. He has a real case of ADHD. He wound up losing his job and his condo-- everything, basically.
But given the amount of interpretation and reading (it truly is an art, not a science) that goes into reading an EKG and more importantly, a tumor x-ray, I think in this situation, low res is worse than none, because it's worthless (you can't tell anything from it) and it still cost you something.
If you do try to do a cancer diagnosis on a poor x-ray, you are basing cancer treatment on the flip of a coin.
no cancer? Well you might fill them up with expensive chemotherapy, which itself is carcinogenic. Actually has cancer? Well, you've just set them loose with an organic time bomb in their system.