{"id":884189,"date":"2026-04-10T07:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T07:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/884189\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T07:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T07:44:17","slug":"what-happens-when-you-take-a-950-grails-galleri-blood-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/884189\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When You Take a $950 Grail’s Galleri\u00a0Blood Test?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little bit of blood. A short wait. A test for more than 50 different cancers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Loading audio narration…\n <\/p>\n

Grail’s Galleri test<\/a> sounds too good to be true. And with cancer on the rise among young people<\/a>, a simple, noninvasive test done at home sounds like a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Or is it?<\/p>\n

BI’s health correspondent Hilary Brueck decided to see for herself and took the test<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What she found sits in a gray area. The test has had some success with early detection, but it’s far from perfect. Grail’s own laboratory study from 2021 said the Galleri test caught cancer just 51.5% of the time.<\/p>\n

Hilary noted that the test doesn’t include much context or follow-up analysis. Her results were simply, “no cancer detected.”<\/p>\n

It’s also not cheap. With a listed price of $950, it’s not something the average American can spring for. Especially when it’s essentially a coin flip whether it detects cancer at all.<\/p>\n

Even Grail’s first CEO, Jeff Huber, sees that as a problem.<\/p>\n

“I do feel deeply offended by the current state of things where Grail is a rich people product,” he told Hilary.<\/p>\n

The Galleri test highlights the tension at the heart of new medical technology.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dismissing imperfect tests feels too extreme. In a world where doctors are coming up empty on the mysterious rise of colon cancer<\/a>, anything to help with early detection is a good thing.<\/p>\n

And the more chances companies like Grail have to fine-tune the process, the closer we could get to perfection.<\/p>\n

Investors don’t always have that kind of patience. Earlier this year, Grail announced its biggest trial yet had failed to meet its primary goal of reducing late-stage cancer diagnoses. Shortly after the news broke, its share price dropped 50%.<\/p>\n

Optimism for new health tech, when taken to the extreme, also has limits. Just ask another blood-testing startup: Theranos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But as long as the company is clear about a test’s limitations, as has been the case with Grail, stopping in pursuit of perfection feels like leaving a lot on the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A little bit of blood. A short wait. A test for more than 50 different cancers. Loading audio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4316],"tags":[49337,1204,30611,249943,249940,105,4348,301,84942,249941,21816,249942,14836,29345,88284,32504,3112,16,15],"class_list":["post-884189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-blood-test","tag-cancer","tag-early-detection","tag-first-ceo","tag-grail","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-heart","tag-hilary","tag-new-healthcare-tech","tag-patience","tag-perfection","tag-price","tag-rise","tag-tension","tag-test","tag-thing","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116379298555372925","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}