Smith-Bindman’s concerns are echoed by the American College of Radiology, which released a statement in April 2023 cautioning that whole-body scanning could lead to a raft of ambiguous findings that will “result in unnecessary follow-up testing and procedures.” But let’s set these worries aside for the moment and imagine a world of infinite medical resources, where money is no object and diligent doctors do excellent work under ideal circumstances—a rich person’s world, if you will. In that case, is it good to hunt down every errant cell? Can we really head off all degeneration and disease? What, in the grand scheme, are we asking for from new diagnostics like Prenuvo?
When I pose this query to Smith-Bindman, her first response is a long sigh. “People are looking for a miracle, cures for cancers they may not even have,” she says finally. “They’re looking for eternal life.”
My own visit to Prenuvo went like this: I checked in, filled out a probing digital questionnaire—me, my lifestyle, my family medical history, etc.—then retreated to a changing room to put on scrubs. A technician led me to the MRI room and, before strapping me down, asked what I’d like to watch on Netflix. For some reason I chose Our Planet. I was provided with headphones and a pair of mirrored sunglasses that reflected a computer screen playing Netflix into my field of vision. The polar vistas of “Frozen Worlds” unfurled before me as—clang, clang—the atoms or magnets or whatever got to work. For about an hour, I was pretty much just watching the show. Then, voilà, the MRI was complete, and I returned to the changing room to get dressed, grab my suitcase, and head off to catch my train.
Anxiety set in around Yonkers. What on earth would I find out? It took about two weeks to get my results; I spent them imagining possible futures undergoing chemotherapy, or living with an inoperable brain aneurysm, like a ticking bomb in my head. Meanwhile, when I told friends I’d had a Prenuvo scan, they expressed jealousy. “Are you afraid of something in particular?” I asked one notably fit pal. “Cancer,” he said. “Obviously.”
The thing is, there’s no such thing as “cancer.” There are cancers, as Smith-Bindman took pains to point out to me, and they come in various forms. Some are couch-potato cancers, mostly just loafing around. Others are fast-replicating, treatment-resistant ghouls. Experts debate whether certain tissue abnormalities called “cancer” should be given the name at all—to wit, DCIS, ductal carcinoma in situ, classified as stage 0 breast cancer, which Patricia Ganz, MD, director of cancer prevention and control research at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA Health, has argued should be interpreted as a “condition that is close to a cancer diagnosis, but is not.” The designation is meaningful because, thanks in large part to early-detection technology, breast cancers can be overdiagnosed and overtreated, and also because finding out you have “cancer” of any kind takes a profound psychological toll. “Cancer,” writ large, is the name we give to fear.
Still, the desire to know is powerful. It’s a form of agency. By knowing, we feel we have the power to direct the course of our future health and arm ourselves for battle against our great foe, death.
My Prenuvo-curious friend heard about whole-body scans on a podcast—Peter Attia’s Drive, maybe, he couldn’t recall. Something in the vast landscape of longevity-focused content that seems, increasingly, to be everywhere. Like me, he was keying into conversations about aging, and antiaging, as he settled into his 40s. “I go back and forth with it, because on one hand, it seems like there are these radical advances in understanding how aging works and how we can maybe slow the process down,” he told me. “And then, on the other hand, it might just be another form of self-optimization hysteria.”
The desire to ultraoptimize one’s health in order to live better for longer has given rise to a whole new range of products and services. Supposedly science-based supplements. Cryotherapy. The $23,000 Vitaeris 320 hyperbaric chamber that Kendall Jenner installed in her house. All aim to tackle aging at the cellular level. You can get an “aging wellness assessment” at a Modern Age medical clinic; book yourself into RoseBar, the deluxe longevity spa in Ibiza conceived by Young Forever author Mark Hyman, MD; or submit a saliva sample to Elysium Health and have it tell you your biological age. And then, of course, you may also want to invest in a Prenuvo scan, to find out what inside your body is betraying you, or seems likely to.
“There are a lot of influencers talking about how you can stave off aging, like it’s a disease,” says Deborah Kado, MD, codirector of Stanford’s Longevity Center and a specialist in geriatrics. Some of the research in that direction shows promise, she adds, but little is proven beyond conventional wisdom like “stay active.” “Avoiding a sedentary lifestyle, that’s more meaningful than any other single intervention,” Kado explains, going on to note that, on a macro level, the most influential factors in aging are what’s known in her profession as “the social determinants of health.” “If you live in an area with good access to nutrition, safe walking neighborhoods, and low stress, there are major benefits not just to life expectancy, but to quality of aging. And there’s no pill for that.”