I would absolutely read the list, in part because I simply value (self) knowledge. I notice that some people don't value knowledge for its own sake, and have trouble understanding those who make decisions solely for the sake of knowing, or solely to avoid dishonesty toward others, even at some narrow instrumental expense.
But also, I would read the list of because of its instrumental value:
* If I knew I were likely to die in ten years, I would live my life very differently than I do now.
* If I knew I were at particular risk for certain illnesses, I would do what I can do minimize that risk.
But what if you are like most people and trust doctors to do the right thing and they convince you that unless you treat you'll die. You go along and the doctors damage you. This just happened to a mentor of mine (67 y.o.) with a PSA test followed by radiation that fried his nerves and did nothing for the cancer which he might have lived with for the rest of his life (his father died of prostate cancer at 97). In this case the "cure" was much worse than the disease and the early detection led to the almost fatal result.
I’m very truly sorry about what happened to your friend. That is an awful thing to go through.
Without being an expert on the subject myself, I can’t say whether his doctors recommended the right course of action but he got a bad roll of the die, or whether his doctors made a terrible mistake.
But I think if they made a terrible mistake, then the solution is to make more knowledge available about how to avoid such mistakes, not to make less knowledge available about people’s health.
My father recently went through prostate cancer radiation treatment, and here is our experience. The doctor did not say that unless it is treated, he will die. He did emphasize that with the modern day treatments, the risks and side effects are much lower than that of non-treatment. The radiation treatment was non-invasive, except for the placement of 3 markers inside the prostate to guide the radiation beams. My father did have stronger-than-normal side effects, however after 3 months the side effects have gone. We were actually amazed that cancer treatment was so easy. It is now a waiting game to see whether the cancer has been completely eliminated, but the peace of mind from having had the treatment is worth a lot.
On the other hand, a family friend had prostate cancer many years before, when the radiation treatment was not available, and he had to go through surgery. The surgery caused strong side effects, and also turned out to be not successful, as the cancer spread to his bones after 10 years, for which he is now receiving further treatment. In this case, where the loss of quality of life was high, it's not as easy of a choice.
Actually the side effects of radiation are often similar to surgery in the long run. Surgery is “front loaded” and may be followed by some recovery of function over a year or more. Radiation is “back loaded”, where you see the effects creep in over time. It all depends on a number of factors but it’s not that useful to compare short term.
I can't really see how not reading the list would require dishonesty towards others.
It's probably a good idea to live your life as if you were going to die in 10 years anyway. The chance of this happening is non-negligible unless you are very young.
Similarly, as far as minimising risk of illnesses goes, 99% of what you could do is what everyone should be doing anyway: eating healthily and exercising.
Fundamentally, the paradox here is that the extra stress caused by reading the list is likely to be much worse for you than the consequences of not knowing what's on the list.
Not reading the list doesn't require dishonesty toward others, but I was making a more general point: There are lots of people who are very ready to tell "white lies" to others for the sake of those others. As it happens, I think they are often the same people who wouldn't read the list. And these sorts of people don't really seem to understand the other sort: the sort who want to know the truth even if it's not instrumental.
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On the other topics: if I lived like I were going to die in ten years, then I'd have to abandon multiple projects of mine which I expect to take more than ten years to come to fruition. I don't think this would be appropriate unless I actually had a good reason to believe my premature death would come to pass.
I mean live as if there's a reasonable chance that you'll die in ten years. But even so, do you get no intrinsic satisfaction from the work involved? Is there no-one who could continue the projects if you died? If it's 'no' to both questions, then maybe you should stop doing them anyway.
There are always tradeoffs. I get intrinsic satisfaction from the projects. But I think both about the short-term and long-term. If I expected to die in 10 years, I'd do different things, because the balance of costs and benefits would work out differently.
But also, I would read the list of because of its instrumental value:
* If I knew I were likely to die in ten years, I would live my life very differently than I do now.
* If I knew I were at particular risk for certain illnesses, I would do what I can do minimize that risk.