We have all seen these ads in our feeds. “Screens for over a thousand diseases.” “A hundred biomarkers.” “See the full picture.” “No GP referral needed.” “Australia’s number one health check.” And the line that is the most provocative: the tests your doctor will not order.
A home DNA kit, a blood panel with a hundred markers, a premium check-up or a full body scan, sold as the thorough, modern thing your ordinary GP is too busy or too ham-fisted to give you.
It is a clever marketing pitch, and like all marketing, it only tells part of the story. So here is why we, as specialist general practitioners, usually do not order broad blanket testing. It is not cost-cutting, and it is not a lack of interest in your health. The simple fact is that, in people who feel well, more testing often does not lead to better health, and sometimes the opposite. When researchers pooled fifteen trials covering a quarter of a million adults, routine general check-ups did not lower the chance of dying, from any cause, from heart disease or from cancer. They mostly turn up harmless abnormalities, not problems worth catching.
“The tests your doctor won’t order. A thousand diseases. A hundred biomarkers.” This is built to suggest we are holding something back. We are not. More tests sound like more thoroughness, but in a well person they mostly mean more false alarms. Run twenty blood markers on someone perfectly healthy and, on average, one comes back abnormal for no reason. Stack a hundred and you are all but guaranteed to find something. Australia’s own GP guidelines say it plainly: screening people who feel well can cause needless anxiety, appointments, tests, medicines and even operations, and can leave them less healthy than when they started.
“See the full picture. Find it early.” Finding something is not the same as benefiting from finding it, and this is where the two get quietly swapped. Some of what a scan turns up is real but harmless, a slow change that would never have troubled you. One large study of whole body scans in healthy adults found more than nine in ten people had something flagged, and most of those flags did not matter. A minority did, an early cancer in about two in a hundred, plus the occasional serious non-cancer finding such as an aneurysm, and those are the honest case for scanning the right person. For most people, the flood of flags brings worry and follow-up, not benefit.
“No referral needed. Take control.” We know that making and attending a GP appointment is much less convenient than simply signing up for a test online. But a test without context is just a number, and making sense of it, against your history, your risk and your medicines, is left up to you to figure out. You are left holding the worry, and the follow-up bills, on your own.
DNA kits cut both ways. When consumer DNA results were rechecked in a clinical laboratory, around two in five flagged as “disease-causing” were false alarms. A kit that comes back “clear” usually reads only a handful of variants, so a reassuring result can hide a real risk. And think about what you are handing to a corporation. When one of the best known of these companies went bankrupt in 2025, the genetic data of more than fifteen million customers became an asset to be sold to the highest bidder. And in 2023, a breach exposed the data of nearly seven million users of one DNA service, and lists were assembled and sold that profiled people by particular characteristics, like ethnicity.
None of this means the tests are worthless. For the right person, the right test is valuable. A validated screening test can catch cancer early. Whole body MRI is only recommended for some people who carry inherited high-risk conditions. A blood panel sometimes uncovers real, undiagnosed diabetes. The difference is targeting. Aimed at one person with a reason, a test can change a life. Sprayed across a well population hoping to catch anything, it mostly manufactures worry, follow-ups and cost.
What this means for you. If something has changed in your body, that is a reason to come in, not to buy a panel online. If you feel well and want to be proactive, the screening that actually has evidence behind it, for bowel, breast, cervical and heart risk, is mostly free, and we can map out which ones fit you. And if you have a strong family history, a close relative diagnosed young with bowel or breast cancer, tell us, because there are proper pathways built for exactly that.
A test only means something when the whole picture is considered. That part is what we are here for.
Book an appointment online or call reception on 8389 1009.
