Can Cancer Blood Tests Live Up To Life-Saving Promise?
Joyce Ares plays with her poodles Gracie, left, and Oliver in the dinning room of her home on Friday, March 18, 2022, in Canby, Ore. She had volunteered to take a blood test that is being billed as a new frontier in cancer screening for healthy people. It looks for cancer by checking for DNA fragments shed by tumor cells.
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Jacob Marquez, a clinical research coordinator at Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cancer Institute in Portland, Ore., draws blood from clinical study participant David Parker on March 14, 2022. Parker is one of hundreds of people participating in a trial for a new liquid biopsy technology that could detect early signs of cancer in a person's blood. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)
Joyce Ares sits for a portrait in the dinning room of her home on Friday, March 18, 2022, in Canby, Ore. When she turned 74, Ares was feeling fine when she agreed to give a blood sample for research. So she was surprised when the screening test came back positive for signs of cancer. After a repeat blood test, a PET scan and a needle biopsy, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.
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