Over-Diagnosis: Are Too Many People Being Given Medical Labels? (Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2026
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan thinks that we are getting diagnosis wrong.
In this episode the neurologist and author of The Age of Diagnosis explains how advances in screening have led to certain diseases being over-detected and why she thinks giving a condition a label can sometimes do more harm than good.
And Amol asks about some of the criticism she’s faced since her book was published last year.
GET IN TOUCH * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480 * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday and you can also watch them on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Cordelia Hemming. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by Jonny Hall. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:14.5 | Hello and welcome to Radical. |
| 0:16.5 | We have got an absolute cracker of an episode for you today. |
| 0:19.6 | Look, what we try and do, what I've |
| 0:20.9 | tried to do actually for quite a long time now is to shift some of the focus of public conversation, |
| 0:26.1 | especially in the news industry, from events, from the here and now to the deep underlying |
| 0:30.5 | trends. And my guest today is someone who has spent 30 years in neurology, understanding our brains, |
| 0:37.0 | as an NHS doctor doctor and writing books, |
| 0:39.6 | which have been read by a huge number of people about those trends as they pertain to medicine |
| 0:45.4 | and public health. |
| 0:46.9 | She is Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan, most recently the author of The Age of Diagnosis, and she |
| 0:53.2 | thinks that we are getting diagnosis wrong, basically |
| 0:56.4 | because we're doing too much of it. She wrote this book because she thinks that we all need to think |
| 1:01.4 | much, much harder about the trade-offs that are involved in getting a diagnosis. Diagnosis is wonderful. |
| 1:08.0 | It's an important stage in treating people who are not well. It offers clarity and maybe a bit of catharsis, but also a path to a better future. And yet, diagnosis in ways that to be honest, I hadn't really thought much about before I started reading her book and preparing for this conversation. Diagnosis has trade-offs. It has trade-offs at the individual level and at the social level. |
| 1:30.2 | And if we have a society which, as she sees it, is both being over-diagnosed and over-medicalised, |
| 1:35.3 | but not actually getting much better, well, maybe we need to think a bit harder about what diagnosis actually involves. |
| 1:41.9 | I should say as well, when I put out a punt for questions on social |
| 1:45.5 | media, lots and lots and lots of you got in touch. She answers your questions in our bonus episode, |
| 1:50.7 | which is going to come out on Monday. But I've also tried very hard in this conversation, |
| 1:54.6 | not only to swat up on the science, but to make sure that in a way that is fair, accurate and |
| 1:59.3 | impartial, we put the appropriate pushback and scrutiny to her positions. |
... |
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